Take a Peek at the New Version of WST Page Designer
The WST Team has been working hard to make the WST Page Designer even easier to use.
We've packed in more features, easier navigation, expanded screen workspace, a better
WYSIWIG experience, and yes! faster speeds.
Take a look at our demo and see how we've changed your website creation experience. And when
you get a chance to test drive the new editor yourself, please take a moment to let
us know how you like it. Your feedback is what drives the changes we make in the
application, so keep it coming!
How do I go "behind the scenes" on my pages now to add key words, page descriptions, meta tags, etc? I clicked on "Show Properties" up at the top of the new Page Designer and nothing happened except that all the buttons for Page Designer were disabled and "Show Properties" had changed to "Show Designer." What is up with that?
Hello Jenni,
I tried launching Properties window by clicking Show Properties in a WST account. I was able to view the page where you can enter meta tag, etc.
Can you contact our support team with a screen shot?
Thanks,
Gomathi
Will there be an ability to upload a document file while editing in a block? Or will we still have to close the block we are editing and open the manage tab to upload a document?
If this is included it would streamline workload more than any layout change for those of us who upload a lot of document information for our users.
thanks
Hello Lisa,
We are working on the ability to upload a document when you edit a block. This feature will be available soon.
Thank you for your feedback.
Thanks,
Gomathi
I see I still have to close a block to upload a document file. This is a slow process and the window to hyperlink to any upload opens very slowly. This bogs down my editing and is way slower than other vendors online edting formats. I am disappointed I was hoping for more streamlined edting in this upgrade, what I get is a new layout to learn that does not save me much time in editing. Jury is out on this upgrade.
I Would like to see you streamline my edting request, it has been 6 months since I suggested it.
Hello,
We have release several upgrades to our WebSite Tonight application. This has resolved some of the concerns you have.
Please let us know what you think.
Gomathi
Hello,
First of all i want to say:
Good job on making the navigation easier to work with! Thank you!!!
I wanted to ask - i have 10 pages on my WST account. 1 of them is named Blog - but its not really blogging with an rss feed for news. Is there anyway of turning a certain page into a news feed? how to do that?
In other words i dont want to put a code that will pull news into my site from other sites, but rather push news out as if it was a blog. Is that possible?
Thanks.
Thank you Bina for your feedback.
We will definitely add your suggestion to our feature release.
Gomathi
I set up my website a couple of days before you implemented this new version of website building. I had viewed the video beforehand and liked what I saw.
Since you changed over to the new version, I think I'm coming across some bugs. Maybe the bugs have always been there, and maybe the bugs only recently started, but here's a list of things I've encountered so far:
The website design tool does not render properly in Firefox. For the most part things look alright (although some of the formatting is off), but some of the keys just don't work at all when I'm in Firefox. I am currently using Firefox 2.0.0.14 as my primary browser, but now I have to use Internet Explorer when I work on the website.
Moving blocks is so buggy! Half the time, I can't even get the move icon to display. When it finally displays, I have a hard time getting the move to take and have wasted so much time. Then when I finally think I've moved the block, I publish the website and view it and that block has moved some place I didn't want it. In fact last night I moved a block of text, published the website, viewed the newly published website that looked just the way I wanted it, and then this morning when I went to the website the block I'd moved was displayed in a different place. I finally just deleted it altogether, but this needs to be fixed.
I added a counter to the bottom of my home page - the white, very generic one - the first one in the list. After I published my website, the counter did not display properly - it showed code. I removed that counter and am using a different one which was not my first choice, but it's working.
I am using a template that shows the navigational buttons to the right of the website. Isn't there some way I can use the dead white space below the navigational buttons to post pictures, advertisements, and anything else I wish? This is a waste of space and makes the website look unbalanced.
Julie
I also find the website tool to be extremely slow. Isn't there some way to speed things up a bit?
Please use 24/7 Support on the left side of the blog side to send your support questions.
thanks,
Gomathi
WST page designer improvement release is immediately easier to use and a welcome change. Thanks for the effort; yeah, Team!
Thank you Emil for your feedback.
Gomathi
I've been putting my website together and am just about done with the home page, but when I click on preview, it gives me a mish-mash of all the other templates and files I discarded previously. It looks nothing like what I've done in page designer. Why is this happening? Can anyone help me?
Also, in one of the generic templates, with three 'place your photos here' blocks, it repeats the image you place on the first block, on all three blocks. Is there a way to disable that so I can have different images per block?
Thanks
Hello,
If there is a support issue, please click 24/7 Support on the left side of the blog.
In the particular template, the designer intended to have the same image repeat 3 times. Please select a different template or use Advanced Style Options to update this.
thanks,
Gomathi
Hi, I have a Google Sitemap problem that seemed to start a few days ago, perhaps the same day you upgraded WST.
I have 5 sites that use WST, and I've just started getting an error message when I launch the Google Webmaster Tools from WST.
All 5 of my sites are giving me the following error: "All the URLs in your Sitemap are marked as having dynamic content. Because dynamic content is difficult for search engines to crawl and index, this may impact your site's performance in search results. Check your Sitemap to make sure your site information is correct."
Is this related to your upgrade, and is there anything I can do to resolve this?
Thanks,
Paul
Paul,
You and many other WST users are the victim of a new Google change that isn't highly publicized. In WST, when setting up your sitemap, you have an option to specify change frequency (Manage > Google Sitemap). The default setting is "ALWAYS", and you have additional changes of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, never. Previous crawling theory held that you would get better ranking if your change frequency was ALWAYS so that it would get indexed more often, but it looks like Google has changed the rules of the game.
I can't find any supporting documentation at Google, but looking at similar posts on webboards, it appears that if all of your pages are set to a frequency of ALWAYS, Google interprets that as being a dynamic site, which is very difficult for a crawler to index and rank appropriately over time. This setting now apparently hurts your site ranking.
To resolve this, go into your WST account and use the Manage > Google Sitemap option and set you page change frequency to something that more realistically represents how often your content is changing. Google's crawling policy has always been akin to 'honesty is the best policy', and sites have been penalized for trying to adjust their rankings via various ploys, and this is just a continuation of the same theme. At the end of the day, as search engine users, we rely on Google's ranking neutrality, sometimes I just wish they'd let us know what they're up to!
Thanks for bringing this to our attention as it will help all WST users
WST Staff
Hi Robin,
thanks for responding. I've made the changes to the frequency you suggested but the site map still shows the same error message, even though Google has just indexed it again. Is there anything else I can do? I'm very concerned because all of my sites have now dropped down several pages in the Google index.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a tricky thing, and there certainly is no single "right way". This is really a ways out of the domain of Website Tonight, so I'd have to recommend starting out by just doing research on SEO. There are tons of useful resources out there to help you optimize your rankings. And, you may even be interested in our Traffic Blazer product, which provides tools and documentation to help assist with those optimizations. Best of luck to you!
I used a template from Website Tonight called finance. In the template CSS editor (advanced style options) I was successful in changing a top header color from 616267 to FFFFFF (white) to give the appearance that there is no top border and freeing up my logo. I have not been successful in removing or changing the color of the remainder of the border on the right side and now something is terribly wrong. There seems to be an embedded image that I can't remove or overlay. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. I am not a web designer and my time to get this site functional is of the essence.
I can be reached via email at dean@statusequity.com.
Thank you.
Please escalate your issue by selecting the 24/7 Support option in the left side of the blog.
thanks,
Gomathi
Need help with a template problem. I purchased a Website Tonight template called Finance. On the top border there is a long gray border that would view over the embedded logo (my upload). I was capable of changing the CSS style in the editor to make the color white. Unfortunately, the right side border image is still burned into the template even after I removed the image from the file. I could really use some help to finish this issue off once and for all. I am not a designer and I fear I am about to bolux the whole affair.
Thanks in advance.
Please click 24/7 Support on the left side to escalate your support question.
thanks,
Gomathi
I have a recent Dell Inspiron laptop with Vista that I've been using for the past year with Page Designer. Since the new upgrade of Page Designer, I can't get to the 2nd "Publish" button to release content for the actual publishing. I hit the publish button in the upper right corner of the Designer page and it goes to the Publishing page. But, the next step of Publish Updates or Publish All never shows up on my computer. I can go to any other computer in the office or house and not have a problem. Anyone else having this problem?
Lori,
We apologize for the delay in responding to your post. WebSite Tonight has gone through several releases since last July. Please let us know if you are still experiencing problems publishing your site and we will investigate it immediately.
Regards,
Eric
Hello,
My question is about changing the layout on templates. I noticed that some of the columns don't seem to be wide enough to handle a standard Google "skyscraper" ad that is either 160 or 120 wide.
When I click on the column it gives me the "resize" option, but when I click on it nothing happens. Can you tell me how to adjust the width of the colums in a template to handle a Google ad? Thanks for responding.
You can either switch to a layout which is wide enough for the Google ad or you can resize the block's container via the mouse. Please let us know if you need more details on how to resize.
Regards,
Eric
Hi,
I noticed that my images in WST now have a blue border around them. I didn't select a border, nor do I see a way to remove it from the image. (see www.stopdrinkingalcohol.com for an example). Is this a bug with the update of WST, or can you tell me how to remove the blue border? Thanks.
Hi Paul,
The image blue border issue has been fixed in WebSite Tonight. Please let us know if you are still experiencing this problem.
Regards
Eric
On the website I want to display some samples of pictures I've taken. But I don't want people to right click and save them off. Is there an easy way to stop this? I'm not an HTML expert.
Please refer to this article how to protect your photos on the internet.
http://help.godaddy.com/article/2246
Hope this information is useful for you.
Thanks,
Gomathi
Thanks, I had read that prior to my post. it just seems it would be easier to have some code to diable the right click simply to do this for each picture becomes quite a hassle. I will also say that either way I see the code provided but have very limited knowledge of were or how I would place that code in the website. That's why it would seem, to me at least to have an option to choose on each image to disable the right click.I've seen this done on other web sites. thanks would appreciate any help with the code if that is my only choice. thanks
We will add this feature (to automatically disable right click on all images) to our application.
thanks,
Gomathi
I wondered about the same thing, so I used the "mouseover feature" and then changed the mouseover image to an image that only had text on it that had my company name and copyright date on it. So when someone right-clicks on the photo, the mouseover image shows up instead but goes away when mouse is moved away.
Rosanna,
That is a great idea. Thanks for sharing with us.
Regards,
Gomathi
I added the mouseover feature to the images I didn't want copied, so when a visitor right-clicks your image, the mouseover image takes it's place and goes away when visitor moves mouse off the image. I created a copyright text but saved it as an image then uploaded the image and used it as the mouseover image. It was a lot simpler and quicker way of protecting my images.
I find the website tonight software to be extremely buggy. Are you aware of the bugs in this software and, if so, when can we expect some resolution? If you are unaware of the bugs in this software, do I need to call someone and make them aware of the bugs? The bugs make the software almost impossible for me to work with.
Please contact support by clicking 27/7 support link to escalate your support issues.
thanks,
Gomathi
I started with WST shortly before you made your changes. What a welcome relief that was! I've been slightly spoiled by running my own apache server in the past, but I had to get this site off my desktop. I'm looking forward to more "ease of use" improvements in the future. (The ability to edit my website from a Linux box with firefox comes to mind.)
Thanks Laurie for your feedback. We are planning more releases that will improve ease of use.
Regards,
Gomathi
I wish you could make it easier to edit the head. I wish we could have an easier access to our source code
Thanks
Mark
Hello Mark,
We are continuously looking at usability issues. We are looking at a common place to edit the header. We will keep you updated.
thanks,
Gomathi
New feature requests:
1) "This page last updated on ... ".
2) Ability to better browse the image library (unless I'm missing something)
3) Ability to use WebSite Tonight from Firefox running on Linux
Hello,
We will add 1 and 3 to our feature list.
For 2 - You can enter cow or moon or baby and search for images.
thanks,
Gomathi
One more for the wishlist: Polls (with ability to see instant results).
Thank you for your suggestion. We will add it to our list of features.
thanks,
Gomathi
Hi,
I just wanted to say that the new page editor is awesome! It's super easy to use, and I think you guys did a great job.
Also, thanks for updating the forum, but I've just noticed that the signature field won't accept HTML code anymore, it would be cool if you guys could fix that.
Thanks!
- Dude
Hi,
All of a sudden I am not able to use the drop down menu to create hyper links. As I move my cursor over the menu it just says "more" but won't open to allow me to use the tools in the menu. I called tech support and they said it was my browser, but offered no suggestions as to fix the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Rosanne
Hello Rosanne,
We would appreciate if you can give us a screen-shot as well as the browser information, operating system information.
Thanks,
Gomathi
After clearing browser cache and re-booting, the problem went away. Thanks for replying.
The new page editor is easier to use, but is much more restrictive to the template design. Everything must be in a box, nothing can be freeform as before. Also the use of font sizes is SEVERELY limited compared to before. I cannot add text to the blank area in the header because there is no box in the template ... and it will not let me add a box myself. In short, I want to recreate the appearance of my existing site in the old editor to take advantage of the faster-running new version but cannot do that. The capabilities are not equal.
Hi Vicki,
Thanks for your feedback regarding the page editor.
We are looking at updating the font size and the fonts available in the system.
There are several templates available among which some have areas in the header for you to enter text and some have images. There are some templates that are generic under Generic theme that you can customize to a larger extent.
There is also another option called Advanced Style Options where you can edit the css to customize the template.
Hope this helps.
Gomathi
Hi there,
I have a web form at http://www.shadowpeak.com/Registration.html. When most of my customers hit submit it works fine, but I'm getting more and more reports of certain customers reporting a timeout error after they hit Submit and I never receive the submission email. In taking a close look at the web code for the form, it appears that the form is being submitted with an HTTP POST to this URL:
http://sitesupport.websitetonight.com:10001/formmailer.aspx?.....
I think the unusual port number of 10001 being used is giving these certain customers issues since many corporate networks these days only allow certain ports out of their networks to the Internet. So while these customers can surf my website fine, when they attempt a form submission over port 10001 the firewall on their end blocks it since it's not on the approved list.
Is it possible to change the port used for form submission from 10001 to something that is a little more commonly allowed outbound like 80, 443, 8000, 8080, 8888, etc. to hopefully get around this issue? Thanks!
Hi Tim,
Thank you for bringing this to our notice.
We will work on this as soon as possible and change the behavior to use normal ports.
We will keep you posted.
thanks,
Gomathi
It looks like form submissions now take place over the more "usual" port 80 and I have not had a customer complaint about their firewall blocking a form submission since the change.
Thank you very much and well done!
Cool, looks good.
http://www.buildabearfun.info
and
http://www.mytrafficsignal.com
hi, I am using a template which has a horizontal navigation bar towards the top of the page below the banner picture. I would like to make some of these navigation bar buttons have a slide down menu appear upon mouseover but am at a loss of how to get this done - some help pls ?
I see the head section in the page properties where i can add javascript code but am not really sure what to add there to get this to work ? thanks for the help.
The easiest way to use drop-down navigation is to click "Edit Navigation" from the designer, and use the "Add Subnavigation" button. This should perform the desired effect.
Website tongight is so awesome! Love the new changes! I was just wondering if there is a way to make a website tonight website look like yours here, with the blogging format? Thanks!
Thanks for the kind words!
As for making WST look the same or similar, most templates work on both WST & QuickBlogCast, so you can get the appearance somewhat close by changing your template.
Is there a way to set a default font for each new text block that I open. I'm using the property manager template, and everything seems to default to Georgian font. Even if I am within a table where i have set everything to Arial, when I add a new row, I have to reset to Arial again.
Also if I am within a text block, and select some text, there is no way to tell what font or size the text is. The pull down font/size menu's do not indicate what is currently being used.
Thanks!
The new page designer is more user-friendly and I'm able to find what I need. However, I happened to look at the HTML to modify a table width and I've never seen such "dirty" HTML being generated. It took me a 1/2 hour to clean up the multiple instances of different HTML commands, that were doing nothing but taking up space. Some were repeated 50 times one after another. Any ideas on this?
Dear Dennis,
Thanks for giving us this feedback and we would like to hear more from you.
Just to let you know, we enhanced the html editor in WebsiteTonight recently and in one of the recent versions we enabled the functionality of converting non complaint <Font> tags to XHTML compliant <SPAN> tags. We heard some concerns from our customers that it was creating too many SPAN tags, so we disabled this feature. I am not sure whether you refer to the same.
When you get a chance, can you please get back to us for these questions?
Best Regards,
Lakshman