Hello developers! We have some great updates to share today about the API. We’ve got some new nodes for you to play with, a security change that will make accessing Wufoo programmatically more secure and a quick update about our API Contest.

###Meet the Battle Axe!

The [Wufoo API Contest](http://www.wufoo.com/apicontest/) is going really great. We’ve been blown away
by the volume and quality of the submissions already sent in. So far, we’ve received several API wrappers, multiple mobile applications on different platforms, a few content manager plugins and a number of really interesting mashups. To help remind you of what you guys are fighting for, we’ve got some behind-the-scenes photos of our guy, Craig from [armor.com](http://armor.com), forging our custom built battle axe.

That’s right, my friends. That axe is hand made by a real blacksmith and is truly one of a kind. (We do not mess around.) Remember, this weekend is your last weekend to crank something out for the contest and so we wish everyone participating the very best of luck!

###On SSL and the API

We’ve also added some features to make the experience with the 3rd party applications developed during our contest more secure. From now on, **all calls to Wufoo APIs must be made via HTTPS**. By default, we’ve designed all of our examples and wrappers to make calls to the API over SSL (even if the user is on a Free plan). However, we noticed that some users have made changes to their code to make those requests to Wufoo over standard HTTP. Because we take data security and privacy very seriously at Wufoo, we’ve decided that it’s important to do what we can to promote best practices and so will error out all non-encrypted calls to the API. If you’re a developer coding against our API, be sure to switch any non-SSL calls to the HTTPS ones.

###New API Nodes

Based on feedback from the developers using our APIs, we’ve added some requested properties to some of our more commonly used APIs. For example, to the [Forms API](/docs/api/v3/forms/ “Forms API Documentation”), we’ve added an `` node which will help add some visual cues to your projects. Also, we’ve spiffed up the [User API](/docs/api/v3/users/ “Users API Documentation”), adding both `` and `` nodes. We offer these nodes to keep you from having to build the URLs yourself and they take the place of the `` node which we will eventually deprecate. We also added a `` node to the Users API, which will help you decide how to display your user’s form links.

###Developer Mailing List

Finally, we’ve created a mailing list to reach out to our developers about issues that strictly concern them. The [Wufoo API Developer’s Mailing List](https://master.wufoo.com/forms/wufoo-api-developers-newsletter-signup/ “Wufoo API Developer’s Mailing List”) is dedicated to the hard-core code-monkey. We hope to keep the chatter on this mailer low, so you get only the information that concerns your development effort. To get the ball rolling, we’re automatically adding anyone who’s ever sent an API request through our new [REST API](/docs/api/v3/ “Wufoo REST API”), but you can also [sign up for the Wufoo developer mailing list](https://master.wufoo.com/forms/wufoo-api-developers-newsletter-signup/ “Wufoo API Developer’s Mailing List”) if you’ve just decided to make your mark on our [Friggin’ Battle Axe](http://www.wufoo.com/2010/08/02/win-a-real-battle-axe-in-the-wufoo-api-contest/ “Wufoo’s Friggin’ Battle Axe”).