Recent News

As many already know, Firehouse Solutions is partnered with SmarterTools in Phoenix, Arizona to provide a robust email solution for our customers. We are pleased to announce that SmarterMail 16 has been developed, tested, and released by SmarterTools. Our team will be upgrading the SmarterMail server to version 16 on Sunday, May 28 at 2300 hours. Expected downtime is approximately 15-20 minutes.

SmarterMail 16 introduces a whole new user interface that is redesigned for the future. ...

Over the past few days, spam bots have wreaked havoc across our forms on our websites. A spam bot is a computer program designed to automatically fill out forms on the Internet in order produce unsolicited messages.

In order to combat this issue, our team has implemented Google reCAPTCHA on all public forms.

Google reCAPTCHA is a free service that protects your website from spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA uses an advanced risk analysis engine and adaptive CAPTCHAs to keep automated...

Our team is proud to announce that we have built and tested mobile friendly technology that will power your website. Mobile friendly refers to a website that displays information accurately between your desktop/laptop computer and a mobile device such as a handheld phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry) or tablets (iPad, Kindle, Galaxy).

Our programmers carefully followed the "Webmaster's Mobile Guide" provided by Google to produce a mobile interface that is simple, clean, and straight...

Our team is proud to feature an easy-to-use comment tool for news. This tool gives public website visitors an opportunity to comment on news stories produced by your organization. We believe that commenting is a safe, quick, and effective way for the community to provide feedback to you and your members. In fact, here are just a few benefits of commenting:

- Comments encourage discussion and show that your organization values the opinion of your readers - Comments collect feedback and...

Our mail server has been upgraded to the latest version of e-mail software, SmarterMail 15 Enterprise. Feel free to read about the newest features by checking out SmarterMail 15 Release Notes.

Did you know that your members can connect to SmarterMail securely using SSL (Secure Socket Layer)? Yes, in fact, we highly encourage them to do so. SSL is important because the information sent on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to a destination server. Any computer in...

For improved usability, our team has activated a new and innovative mobile-friendly solution for the Members Area. The mobile version complements the existing user interface by providing an optimized viewing experience for members using tablets, smart phones, or other handheld devices.

Users accessing the Members Area with a mobile device will benefit from a sleek and intuitive navigation system. They will also notice that the screen resolution is optimized for their device.

With an...

Our team is happy to announce that we have raised disk storage limits for both your Website and SmarterMail. Package One will now have 20 gigabytes of website disk space and 20 gigabytes of e-mail disk space. Package Two will now have 10 gigabytes of website disk space and 10 gigabytes of e-mail disk space.

We also wanted to let you know that we have recently upgraded the SmarterMail server to a SSD (solid-state drive). This new virtual drive increases disk read/write speed from turtle...

In order to organize application code, our team has updated the Members Area Homepage URL for your website. This shouldn't change the login and viewing experience in any way.

However, users that may have bookmarked the Members Area Homepage will need to update these bookmarks in their web browser. The old URL will no longer function.

This change coincides with our efforts to deploy a mobile-friendly Members Area, which we plan to have completed this Winter. Just in time for hot...

We are proud to introduce Duty Scheduling. This newly developed tool allows your first responders to sign-up when they plan to provide Fire/EMS coverage.

As a member signs up, they can set coverage to "In Quarters" or "At Home." These options are indicated by green and yellow dots on the schedule. They may also choose to leave a "Note", such as "I'll be there after the Redskins game!". These features and colors can be customized.

Duty Scheduling is included on Package One and we...

Firehouse Solutions Website Administrators:

We recently introduced a feature that attaches an ICS file attachment to all Calendar e-Alerts. This works extremely well and allows users to click on the file to add an event directly to their personal calendar.

However, with the introduction of this feature and our new business growth, we noticed that e-Alert processing is running slower. Last night, a customer with thousands of members updated their calendar for the entire year. Each...