WebSite Tonight

Take a Peek at the New Version of WST Page Designer

2008-06-21T17:32:22Z

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!

Hey Ho, let's Geo Part 2

2008-05-02T12:54:54Z

Following on from the last article on how to add a map into your project, it’s time to take a look at the type of map that you add and how you can best represent your business or organization.

Since I’m going to be using Google My Maps feature, you will need to have a Google account. We will be discussing how to add specific content for your business, club or family.

Have a hard to find location?

Strip malls? Stripped of any defining features and often possessing numbering schemes that seem to require that you saved that secret decoder ring from your cereal a couple of decades back. Worse yet, you may have no actual address. For example, you may be trying to give your camp group a map to a tail gating party.

Here’s a way to show people on your website where you are. You can add notes, your contact info, your website, and even a photo of your building into this map. Then you can bring it all into your Website Tonight project using the steps shown in the previous article. As an added bonus, your business now shows up in searches based on your geographical area.

Let’s make a map.

Head to maps.google.com and log in, search for the location, and view the type you wish to use. For this purpose, satellite usually works best (though it depends on the area of the country that you are in). Go to the “My Maps” tab.

Start by clicking “Create new map” and then select the tool that best fits your need. I want to make an area showing our location, so I’ll pick the “Draw a Shape” tool and create a box. Once this is done, you can now add further details to the box. When this is done, OK the changes, click “Done” and then copy the map’s html code using “Link to this page”, for placement within your Website Tonight project.

That’s great for those staying in a fixed location. What about the more mobile endeavors? It’s back to Monterey, Ca for a small charity walk.

Creating a route

Organizing a charity walk Fun run or parade? Maybe a motorcycle run? You can create the route on Google Maps and then place these results within Website Tonight.

For this example, I placed a start and end point and then used a line tool to highlight the route. Now your site visitors can see exactly where you are going and you can include hints, suggestions and things to look out for on the way. You can add the same type of links and content as mentioned in the prior example, as well as way points that provide additional information.

These are only two examples, but hopefully you’ve seen a way you can benefit from the use of Google maps into your WST . I’m always interested in seeing what uses you’ve put this, and other third party services, to within WST. Please let us know of any interesting examples.

GoDaddy.com is not liable for the consequences of any action taken on the basis of information provided.

Let he who is without screen… cast the first comment.

2008-04-29T17:41:39Z

Greetings,

As you may have seen, I’ve recently added a screen cast to my last post about adding a map into your Website Tonight Project.

First, I’d like to tell you what I’m trying to achieve. While we have a full help system, we’ve not really gone into suggesting avenues of where you can go with your website.

The screen casts hope to show you interesting ways to use the existing feature set within WST to extend your website using the latest services out there. So, during this trial period I’d like you to toss in your 2 cents on anything that you would like to see changed that would make to make the screencasts useful to you. (E.g. Screen size, length, clarity of supporting text, etc.)

The screen casts are produced using a moderately priced webcam, a decent mike, a basic video editor, and the video conversion software within our Blogcast program.

I’m hoping that alongside the specific examples addressed, the creation of your own videos for use with your visitors or customers will be a running theme throughout these screen casts. If you have any questions on how to get started or include these within your WST, ask away.

John

Adding a Paybal button to your Project ( part 2 )

2008-04-29T17:38:55Z

Adding commerce to your Website Tonight account. Part 2.

In part two of this article I suggest some ideas on how you can make the PayPal buttons / site integration more fluid for visitors of your site.

Please realize that this is a superficial look at what this, and other, payment services have to offer when used alongside WST. This is more of a primer on what you can do with WST when used as the basis for an online store, rather than a soup to nuts breakdown on E commerce for small business. (Then again if enough of you would like to see one, it could be fun to write.)

Selling multiple items at once.

In the first example I used a “buy now” button. That's pretty much a one-off and suited to those with only one product to offer or those that are willing to make and encrypt multiple buttons for each product.

If you have multiple products, it's time to look at the “Add to Cart” button. It's basically the same item which is placed the same way apart. When your shoppers add an item, they get the chance to continue shopping. If they don't find anything else that they like, they're going to need a way back. Be sure to add a View cart button too. For best results, place the view cart button so that it's visible throughout your entire site.

Tip 1

Another way to close the circle on the payment process and make it a seamless transition from your WST to PayPal and back again is to create two pages to accommodate PayPal’s button redirect.

These pages will be used for a successful payment and a canceled order screen respectively. You can thank the shopper in the first and maybe add in a survey or feedback form in the latter, in order to see why they wanted to back out of the purchase. There are some conditions on how these pages have to be formatted when using PayPal, so please adhere to their requests if you go this route.

Tip 2

Edit the PayPal shopping cart to match your WST Site. You have to do this within your PayPal account but you can match the look and feel of the cart to your site. If you use an image within this design, it’s recommended that you link from a photo stored on a service that allows secure (https) images. Such as our Online Photo Filer which you may already have free with your domain.

Without an https link to the image, most browsers that try to display a site with a mix of secure ( https) and insecure ( http) elements will pop up a warning telling people that not everything on the site is secure. It may only be an image, but it’s your image that suffers in the minds of those that don’t understand the mild nature of the warning and they will choose to go elsewhere.

Tip 3

Create a template for your products. Before you even add products, work out all the common items such as Price, shipping, and color, and then copy and paste the code into new content blocks.

Well that’s the basics of starting a store with your Website Tonight program. As I’ve said, this is merely scratching the surface. So, if there’s any question arising from this, let me know and we’ll address them in a future entry.

GoDaddy.com is not liable for the consequences of any action taken on the basis of information provided.

Adding a PayPal Button to your Project (part1)

2008-04-29T17:31:28Z

Adding basic E- commerce to your Website Tonight account.

Cash Register tonight?

In this two part article and screen cast, I'll be suggesting ways to add a basic payment / E Commerce feature to your site by adding payment buttons in your WST project. In part two we'll look at more specific suggestions to make the whole experience more fluid for your visitors.

http://blog.websitetonight.com/2008/04/29/adding-a-paypal-button-to-your-project.aspx

Is this right for you?

I see this as being useful for people that have limited number of items to sell, or groups that want to collect contributions from their membership or the general public. There's no reason you couldn't create a thousand item stores from these methods, but the day to day upkeep would require more time than setting up a dedicated shopping cart. ( Our shopping cart starts at $9.99 a month)

For this example, I'll be using PayPal, but the basics apply to Google Checkout and Revolution Money exchange equally and it's up to you to work out which service best fits you needs.

All of these services have a method that allows you to generate code for a button that you place within your WST project. This button then launches the service’s site, the transaction takes place, and the user is returned (if you've set it up to do so), to a location of your choosing.

You'll need an account with one, or more, of these services but first let's get started with the buttons

Obtaining the Button

Log into your PayPal account and click on “Merchant Services”. As you can see, there's quite a choice of button types, and while they all can be added to WST, the choices they offer is something you should take your time to familiarize yourself with. I'm going to go with a basic “buy now” button, which is a bit of a misnomer since there's really a lot of versatility within the button. I'll address that specifically in part 2. While nearly all of these options are self-explanatory, it's worth bringing up the choice between an encrypted and unencrypted button since this has implications on the type of button you can offer.

With the encrypted button, the code you paste into your WST project can't be edited. If you want to change the name, price, or shipping, you will have to go to PayPal to create a new button every time.

Unencrypted buttons are normal human readable code that you can change the values on.

With unencrypted, you have more options available such as the ability to create drop down selections for size and color, amongst other things. If you are comfortable with HTML, you can even add your own custom form options.

Why could this be an issue?

Well there's nothing stopping other people grabbing the button code, editing the values and then submitting an order with altered values. Obviously if you approve each item prior to shipping, it’s more annoying than anything else. But, if you need options then this may be acceptable to you. Otherwise my suggestion would be to create an encrypted button for each option. What you choose is really up to your business model. I recommend you research the limitations of either method.

Placing the button

We've done the research and have the code for our button. The easy part is placing it into WST. There are two main ways to do this. The basic one is to enter into the content block, click on HTML, and then paste in the code, click html, and then OK. You are done and you can admire your handiwork on the screen.

The alternate method is to add the button as a script object. To do this, click on the content block. Then from the sidebar navigation click Tables and Objects > Insert Object, then Script. Paste in the code, save then save again. You will need to then preview the page if you want to see what the button looks like.

Why two methods?

I prefer using the script method as it doesn't slow down the page designer by showing the buttons / code each time. It's also neater when you have many buttons within a content block. If you add an unencrypted button with options, the edit mode will show you all of the fields that make up the button. If you have many of these, you can see how hard it would be to keep track of multiple buttons within the same content block.

NOTE: Don't try to edit the button's options or values using the WST form tool (located in the forms section). The form wasn't created by this tool and none of the changes you make will take effect.

That's the basics of how to get the button into your WST project. In part two, I’ll be showing you how to create a complete purchase path.

GoDaddy.com is not liable for the consequences of any action taken on the basis of information provided.

PayPal is a registered trademark of PayPal, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

CSS and Templates: Some changes you may have missed.

2008-04-28T11:07:58Z

Greetings,

How do you feel about the kind of advertising campaign that invites you to reevaluate your perspective by suggesting that what you had yesterday isn’t good enough for today?

If you’ve only seen this once then you’ve not really seen it?

I don’t really care much for that form of marketing myself. I just wanted to get that out of the way prior to getting into this entry.

If you’ve not seen our templates recently; you haven’t really seen them all

Templates

We’ve been releasing new templates on an ongoing basis. If you’ve been a Website Tonight owner for years, and are happy with how it looks, then now would be a good time to catch up on shredding your junk mail.

Otherwise read on.

Our talented team of designers works hard to get these templates looking this good. However, it’s free to look at the new templates. No sales person will call and you may just find that we’ve used one, or more, of your suggestions. From time to time check back to see the latest designs

You can get to this from the Design tab and then select Template and color. Change the category to new and browse to “What’s new.”

Having dispensed kudos in the direction of the design team, I’m obligated to point out that the program developers work hard giving you the ability to modify the templates to your liking.

Advanced Style Options (CSS)

We’ve added the much requested Advanced Style Options feature within Website Tonight.

What is it?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet, which is a markup language that defines the look, feel, and style of a webpage. With this you can change fonts, layouts, colors and quite a bit more. It’s a new choice within the design menu that enables site owners to override the template’s design and radically affect the look and layout of the template by providing CSS code of their own.

Why do I want it?

There are many style elements that you may wish to add to your WST site that would require you to open up every content block and locally change the style. For instance, many people have asked for a border around the content blocks.

If you want a template in a color scheme that we don’t offer, you can alter one of ours.

What else should I know?

You have to have the Apply box checked for any changes to be displayed.

You don’t have to copy the entire read only view. Copy only those elements that you wish to change.

What now?

Start creating! I’m really interested to see how our users will use this feature. If you have an interesting layout that you’ve styled using this feature we’d love to see it. I’ll be posting more on how to use this feature over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I suggest this resource to assist you in getting started with CSS.

Coming up.

Getting started with CSS.

Hey ho let's GeO! : Adding a map into your Website Tonight project. (Part 1)

2008-04-21T17:16:12Z

Your phone, your car, and your PC probably have a better idea of where they are than do their owners. While I'm not going to even get into the irony of misplacing a gps-enabled device, I would like to share a recent example of just how much you can achieve with today's mapping sites.

I was driving around Phoenix looking to purchase a truck and stopped at so many dealerships that the relative sameness of the inventory, arrangement of giant inflatables, and sincerity really made it hard to tell where I was. The next day, I had decided to take a test drive. I wanted to call ahead to make sure that the truck was still for sale and that it would be ready to test drive. Problem? I couldn't recall which of the myriad of dealers on the strip actually had the car for sale.

Enter geek mode. (aka everything can be solved by silicon)

I called up Google® Maps, selected a hybrid view (that's the type that combines satellite imagery with an overlay showing the street name), located the junction nearest the dealership, and found the building. I clicked to street view and up popped a picture of the building alongside the contact details.

So a happy accident for the dealership, but let's not leave YOUR business or event's location up to chance. In this two part entry, we’ll start out by adding a map to your Website Tonight project and look at ways in which you can make the maps you add even more valuable.

http://blog.websitetonight.com/2008/04/08/hey-ho-lets-geo--adding-a-map-into-your-website-tonight-project-part-1.aspx

Let's set out to add a basic map.

For this example I'll use Google Maps (maps.google.com). While you don't need an account for the basic embedded maps, you're missing out on quite a bit if you choose not to.

Within Google Maps.

Bring up Google Maps and find your address and view you wish to include within Website Tonight. Next, click on “link to this page.” Now it’s unlikely the default size is going to be suited to your project, so click on “Customize and preview embedded map.” This will allow you to choose from several presets or you can select your own custom size. With those changes made, select the code and copy this into your clipboard. Don’t worry about getting the size exactly right. You can directly change the width and height within the first line of the code. Anything over 320px wide is likely to cause scrollbars to appear in our smallest content block.

Within Website Tonight

You will need a content block to place your map in and from there we are going to do something a little unexpected. Rather than paste the code directly into the HTML section, we’re going to place it within a script object container. Now this removes the real-time preview within the designer but makes the container far more responsive and easy to update edit on an ongoing basis.

You sacrifice a little immediate feedback when seeing how the map looks as you place it within the container. Otherwise the map will try to load every time you edit anything on the page.

Click on the content block and when it’s in edit mode, select the table & objects tab from menu on the left, mouse over insert object and then click on script. Paste over the existing code with the Google Maps code and then click OK. Click OK again to save the content block.

You should be looking at a script tag within the content block. To see how your map looks, go to page options and then preview page.

In the next entry I’ll be suggesting ways in which you can make the maps you add more valuable.

WST 4.4.1 Upload your own custom flash introduction.

2008-03-10T10:46:50Z

Just a quick note to let you know that we’ve added a user requested feature to Website Tonight. The feature allows you to use your own choice of flash intro with the program. It’s located under add-ons, Flash Intro, and then select the “upload custom flash intro” radio button. Further information on using this feature can be located within our help section.

Don’t know how to obtain or create a flash intro? A quick trip to your favorite search engine with this phrase “free flash intro” will give enough reading for the next few hours. Most of the services will not only give you the flash intro but the surrounding code to enable it to run within your web page. Luckily, we’ve taken care of that part for you within Website Tonight and all you need is the file that ends in .SWF.

Once uploaded, you can match the background, size your file, add metadata, and add sound to your finished intro. If the intro already contains sound, it’s best to leave this off.

Other than that, it’s best to avoid files that are not self contained (e.g they need additional parameters for the text /images used), since we won’t be able to reference those in this context.

Until next time

Read me Seymour. Adding RSS into your WST project.

2008-03-04T13:39:04Z

While I don't want to detract from the joy many of our users gain from tweaking and updating their sites, the less time you spend updating WebSite Tonight, the more time there is to focus on your audience. Over the next couple of entries I'm going to show you how you can add various forms of dynamic content to your web site. This will keep it relevant, with renewable content that provides a reason for people to keep on coming back. I like to think of this content as the type of advertising that people actually want to receive.

First, let's define what a feed is.

A feed is a way for websites to distribute content for consumption by other sites or subscribers. Don't take my word for it. Try some other words over here and here.

Ah, but I want people to come to my site.

It may seem counter intuitive that providing feeds that could remove the need for people to visit your site can actually lead to a greater degree of engagement by your visitors. Obviously there are exceptions, those people whose sole product is the content that is contained within their feed. If you are in the latter position there's no reason you can't talk about the content and then link back to it. Your mileage may vary on how successful the following suggestions are for your specific case.

Ways in which you could use feeds?

There are many ways in which you could use feeds to enhance your small business site, and they nearly all relate back to it being “your” business website. There's no one better placed to discuss your products, service in depth and to promote upcoming items that yourself. It doesn't need to stop with just the one feed either. Your town paper, your suppliers, and any trade associations you belong to may have relevant feeds that your visitors may find of interest. I would suggest that you follow these external feeds just in case information that conflicts with your business reaches a prominent position. It's an interesting problem but one which can be solved by either writing the blog the feeds come from or by using a feed aggregate service such as Google Reader. Briefly, this lets you subscribe to all the feeds you are interested in. The entries you like can then be shared with Website Tonight's feed reader.

I realize this isn't an in depth guide about how to do it. The link for that is below. But, this is more of a start to get you thinking about ways in which your website can attract repeat visitors by using new content.

How do I get it?

http://help.godaddy.com/article/3058 has all the details.

Why do I want it?

I think we established that in the above entry.

Website Tonight 4.4

2008-02-07T17:43:19Z

Greetings

We've just released WebSite Tonight 4.4 which has many performance improvements, fixes and an extended feature based on feedback received within the program.

Improved Video handling:

We've expanded the options in the video section, per user request, to include additional choices. You can choose the video's behavior to autoplay and loop. Why is this useful? This allows you to have multiple videos on a page without them all trying to play at once. If you want to play them all at once, continually, you can do that too. (If anyone actually comes up with a good use for the latter please let us, and the rest of the web know).

Note:

If the player appears on your Firefox browser without player controls and ignores your settings, you may need the latest version of the WMP plug-in for Firefox which you can obtain here.

http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx

Thank you for all for your feedback via the blog and the link within the application. I assure you we read every one.

Web Site Tonight 4.3 release

2008-01-22T16:56:46Z

Greetings,

We’ve recently released version 4.3 of Website Tonight. In the prior release we’d added the ability for brand new users to create a complete themed site within just a few clicks. While this is a great way to quickly set up a site for the first time user, it's pretty neat for those of us that already have a site and either want to start anew or quickly add additional content.

Add pages: Pre-built site option

What is it?

A quick way to add pre-built template elements into your existing web site.

Why do I want it?

Allows you to replicate existing pages within your pre-built site, with the same layout type you created them with.

Where Do I get it?

Click Add Page, switch to Pre-built page, and then select the site and page type from the drop down menus. Note: If you are using a legacy template ( xml ) this option will not be available to you until you change your template.

Restart site: (I have become the destroyer of sites.)

What is it?

This is the end of the site as you know it. The nuclear option of mutually assured deletion for your existing website. In plain English…restart.

Where Do I get it.

You can access it by going to MANAGE, then RESTART SITE.

What now?

Read the instructions that appear and maybe take one last stroll around your website to remember the way it was. If you have a site that you wish to restart, but are not 100% committed, its annihilation

Backup!

I strongly suggest you backup before proceeding. If you're just trying out the various types of free sites after starting an account, then there's no need to take this step. If you have removed your site without first taking a backup, I'm sorry but it’s deader than plaid.

It's worse than that, Scotty. It's dead Jim? Hopefully, I've made the point that failing to backup your site prior to hitting restart is irreversible.

SSL Site Seal.

For those of you with a secure certificate, we've made it easier to place your “Site Seal” within Website Tonight. You can access this in the page designer by selecting this option from “Table and Objects” in the toolbar.

Full details can be located here: ( http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=4073&topic_id=178)

Enjoy the cycle of destruction and creation. We have pre-built site types at present, but we're planning on adding more. If you want us to do the heavy clicking for you, send us your suggestions via the blog, or use the feedback link within the program.

New years and new bloggers

2008-01-05T15:07:03Z

Greetings WebSite Tonighters,

Let me first start off by saying thank you for reading and taking part in our little blog. It's a great way to get out information on the happenings of the WebSite Tonight software, as well as to let you know some of the things that we are excited about here in house.

My name is Benjamin and I will be taking part in future blog updates that will appear here, as well as responding to the comments that our users may have about WebSite Tonight. As a little bit of background, I have been with GoDaddy for nearly three years and have been working with WebSite Tonight since before its previous incarnation ever came about. I cut my teeth with the program when it was still in its previous 2.7 format as one of the friendly call center representatives, and was there for the massive switch when we went to the 3.0 version of the software. I spent some time doing Quality Assurance for the call center (yes, when the voice says "This call may be monitored for Quality Assurance," we mean it) and have spent the last year and a half in our Advanced Technical support group. Now I am with our Advanced Product Support group, specializing in Website Tonight and working with the developers.

In our current public version, 4.2, we encourage people to take advantage of the forums, easy to manage guestbook, and other plug-ins which, can make your site more dynamic and useful (such as RSS feeds and information submission forms). If you're still using the older version (2.7) of WebSite Tonight, there has never been a better time to upgrade than now because we are offering 3 months of free service on top of your existing plan, simply for switching to version 4.2 and seeing what we have to offer. In fact, we have even created a way for you to pull the content from your previous version to save you time and ease the transition. For a full description of how to do this, you can check out Importing Content from Previous Projects or Backup Files and Importing Photo Albums from Previous Projects or Backup Files.

Any Web site is only as good as the amount of attention and care put into it. I have said this about WebSite Tonight since I started in the call center to give our customers a fair estimation of the commitment involved, and I still stand by this statement today. I would go a step further to state that this is true about nearly everything in life, but that may be beyond the scope of our humble little blog. We aim to give our users the tools necessary to make creating your online identity as easy and practical as possible, so that the time invested really is a labor of love instead of just a lot of labor. Having watched the evolution of this software, it is truly exciting to see how great some of the end results can be, as well as the amount of variety that we see between our user's live sites. I look forward to giving helpful hints and suggestions in this upcoming year to help make your WebSite Tonight experience as positive as possible. Having said this, we wish you all a happy, safe and productive new year and will look forward to working with you in 2008.

Sincerely,
Benjamin
WST Team

WebSite Tonight 4.2 released.

2007-12-21T13:57:37Z

We've just released Website Tonight 4.2 with two new features which you may find of interest, as well as many fixes and improvements to our existing offering.

Quick Shopping Cart Integration.

Many of our website owners are small business owners as well. Quite a few of you have both a Website Tonight and a Quick Shopping cart. Until now you have had to manually create the links to your store, and recreate the button on each page. Now you can create a relationship between the two with a couple of clicks.

How to get it

ADD ONS > QUICK SHOPPING CART

For users with a single store, all you need do is name the button and click OK. If you have more than one QSC store, select your store from the drop down and then click OK.

Note: both WST and QSC have to be active and within the same account.

Pre-built Sites

Presently there are five pre-built sites with helpful content and related graphics to inspire you to create your presence on the web. The choices are Author, Club or Organization, Small Business, Personal Portfolio, and Family or Baby.

How to get it

Presently, these are only available at the time of site creation. While this may not help you immediately, the next time you’re setting up a Website Tonight account, time should fly by.

We've also improved cross browser support, improved responsiveness, and removed many of the small annoyances that you've written us about. Until next time, thank you for all your feedback and requests please keep them coming.

Mark my word, err… images.

2007-12-03T13:16:03Z

After all, you have an image to protect.

One of the great things about the WWW is that people get to see the results of your creativity, work, and skill. This is excellent if you make furniture, restore cars, or sell any tangible item or service online. But, it’s not so convenient when the item for sale is often directly reproducible with a screen capture, right click save, or a myriad of devious, though readily circumvented, techniques. I’d like to qualify this line from the help files linked to below.

“NOTE: The securest and safest method of protecting valuable digital images is to refrain from sending them through the Internet or posting them online.”

That does make it rather hard to showcase your work doesn’t it? It’s almost worth putting Photoshop(r) back in the box, dusting off your developing reels, and breaking out the developer Roxanne. But wait! You don’t need to put on your red light as Photoshop and similar image editors can get us out of this, err…fix.

We’ve updated two articles that speak to this concern, within the help system for our Online Photo Filer program. The information is generally applicable for image content no matter where it ends up.

http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2246&topic_id=337

http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=2269&topic_id=337

A change in the way we handle comments to our blog

2007-11-06T20:25:00Z

Greetings,

We’ve upgraded the commenting procedure within the blogging application we use (GoDaddy.com ’s Quick Blogcast) to more effectively counter comment spam.

The first time we receive a comment from an email address unknown to Quick Blogcast, we issue an email asking the sender to confirm their address before passing the comment along. Once the email address has been confirmed, the comment will display to the owner.

This is not a retroactive measure, so if you’ve already posted to any of our blogs with your mail address, please be on the lookout for this confirmation.

Website Tonight 4.0.6 You can do it, Icon help.

2008-01-31T08:09:16Z

Greetings,

Back again so soon?

We've just released version 4.0.6 of Website Tonight. There's a new feature, Favicon support, as well as slight changes to existing ones. Nearly all of these changes have been driven by your feedback and requests on the blog.

FavIcon

We just added the ability to customize your site's favicon. If you're not familiar with favicons, they're those little icons that show up next to the site name or URL:

The favicon selector control can be found within the settings tab, as well as Manage > Website information. It couldn't be simpler to set up. just upload an appropriate image, press the page's Save button, and then publish.

The tricky part is in creating a favicon because there are a lot of restrictions. For example, it must be 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high. It must be an ICO file if you want most browsers to be able to see it. Internet Explorer can only use ICO-based favicons. If you're not worried about Internet Explorer, then you can use GIF-, JPEG-, or even PNG-formatted images (all the other browsers will show them just fine).

There are a plethora of resources on the Web about creating favicons, as this Google search for favicon shows. Favicons aren't terribly important but they are a detail that will make your web site more your own.

Upload images in files and zip progress.

We'd received several requests to add the ability to specify that images be uploaded and stored as files rather than within the gallery. To accommodate this request, we've added a check box under Manage > upload files on both our regular and bulk uploader. Within the same section, we've added a progress bar on the unzip files feature. It still takes the same time but looks better while doing so. There's many small changes to polish the application's stability and usability including more usable defaults on the add video section, improvements to the html editor, and allowing dib and TIFF files to be uploaded.

Until next time, please keep your suggestions rolling in.

John

WST Team

Adding video to your website , go on make that radio star pay.

2007-10-22T14:53:10Z

Greetings and Salutations.

Thirty years ago a green cursor flashing on a green background was considered an event worthy of gathering the family around the table. Times have changed and people will now gather around to look at someone using green backgrounds to create video that was impossible thirty years ago, cutting edge twenty years ago, and expensive at the turn of the millennium. Today, video can be created on your home computer with footage derived from a relatively inexpensive camcorder.

Website Tonight has two main ways to add video to your web pages. You can add your own video files or add videos from online services.

Presently we support the upload of the following formats: WMV, AVI, and MPG. However, you can get practically any format that QuickTime supports to appear. AVI is not recommended, as it is a large file format in relation to the other choices. There are free encoders, which you may already own. I suggest using an encoder to convert the AVI into another format prior to uploading (unless you have a specific need for AVI on your site).

How to add your own Video from a file.

To add your own video, begin by selecting the page you want to add the video to, and then create a content block. Select the block you just created and click Content Options. Select insert object and then video. On this screen you can either reference a file you previously uploaded, load a file from your computer, or enter the URL if the video's on line. Once the file is in place, you can visit the properties tab and set the Width and Height according to the type of material you are showing. For standard video, 320W x 240H or 400W x 300H will keep the same 4:3 ratio as most material shown on a conventional screen. For widescreen format, 400W x 225H creates a 16:9 ratio. Click OK when you have completed setting you Width and Height, then click OK to save the content block.

A Tip

If you have .MOV or MP4 files, try renaming them to an .mpg extension and then uploading them. This should work if visitors to your site have the correct player installed in their browsers. (If not, a blue question mark will display). Another option is to convert the video into another format or upload it to a video sharing site such as You Tube, and then use the following steps to add it to your page.

How to add videos from Online services.

This method works with most of the popular video sharing sites such as You Tube, Revver, and Metacafe. To add a video from an online service, you will need to locate the embed/sharing code. You Tube's displays this under each video on their site. To copy the code, right click on the code and select copy.

From the WebSite Tonight Page Designer, select the block you want to add the video to. You can create a new block or use an existing one. From the Toolbox, select Table and Objects > Insert Object > Script, and then Paste the embed code. You can usually adjust the height and width within the code at this point, but keep in mind that when you resize the video, the width to height ratio must remain the same or you risk cutting off some of the content.

Note: If the site you are using provides a code that starts , the video may not function. Basically, most video services using an embed tag should work but please bear in mind there are hundreds of video services and testing them all is impractical. If you encounter an issue with a service, let me know and I'll take a look at it. Until next time.

Website Tonight 4.0.5 release. New Text editor and Multi File uploader.

2007-10-16T16:55:35Z

Greetings,

It's been a busy few weeks for the Website Tonight team. Although it’s been quiet on the blog, I can’t keep quiet about the latest release. We recently launched WebSite Tonight version 4.0.5. This version contains two very useful features.

New Text editor:

Website Tonight’s text editor (within the page designer) has been improved. It includes several new features that we've been eager to pass along including the ability to paste from Word ( a popular user request),an undo feature, and a more consistent experience regardless of the type of browser your using.

Multi File Uploader:

One of the largest chores in setting up your website is gathering the images and files that make up your website. Corralling them, browsing for them one by one, uploading five at a time, and then repeating until all 200 images are now in your gallery, can be quite a chore . Today, you can accomplish this all in one process. We let you upload in bulk and pass the time savings onto you.

Under Manage > Upload files, we have added an option to upload your files in bulk (up to 30MB at a time) as well as providing the handy ability to extract your zip files within your account. Images are automatically sorted out into the gallery and the remainder are sent to your Files tab.

Fixes and improvements were made to the flash intros, guest books, and many other features that you hopefully hadn’t noticed were even in need of changes. Until next time, please keep your feedback coming in. If there’s any feature or task you’d like us to cover in more depth, please let us know.

Thanks

John

WST team.

WST 4.0.2 release. Updated Site Organizer and new login option.

2007-10-03T16:55:55Z

Greetings,

We have released an updated Website Tonight, version 4.02, earlier this morning which includes the following main feature updates.

Organize site.

Our old one was pretty slick, easy to use and it could be worth asking “why mess with a good thing?” Well since we're in an aphoristic mood it's basically that all good things come to and end. After you had created many pages we noticed it getting rather slow, you noticed it get rather slow too. Before a fit of generosity overtook us the WST had a limit of 20 page, no slowdown though after our premium plans expanded your website to include sites of a hundred pages or more some of you, while waiting for the site to organize, called us up and suggested that we revisit this feature.

Login without going through MYA

Many people have requested an alternate login , a page to bookmark, rather than going in through the main site , well now you can. Head on over to https://login.websitetonight.com/ where you will need your Website Tonight Domain, your hosting user name and password.

The first one, domain name, is easy but the other two have probably been long since forgotten since you never needed them to login to the program after initial setup.

First log into Website Tonight using the traditional way and from the tools and resources box , bottom middle, click on “Hosting Settings”.

At the top right notice the name to the right of “Logged in as”

Now click on settings and select “Account Login” and reset your password you're now ready to go to https://login.websitetonight.com/ and login.

There are also many small improvements to features which including being able to chose between small, medium and large images in your gallery, additional help files, checks to prevent you leaving a page without saving and many more. Thank you all for your feedback and comments on the 4.0 version keep them coming

John
WST team

Adding Google Analytics on WebSite Tonight.

2007-08-14T14:48:37Z

In the past I’ve covered the importance of site content and tracking web traffic to your site but I know a lot of you out there use Google to search so here is a different way of tracking traffic and site content via Google.

You’re going to need a Google Analytics account so go to www.google.com/analytics and set that up when you can. Once you set it up, you’ll get some script that you need to add to your WebSite Tonight project.

The code will look similar to what I have below and click here if you need to know how to add a script.

The instructions say to put the code just before the tag in your HTML but putting it into the footer of your project will do equally fine.

Once you've added the script, Google Analytics will start tracking your site but you will have to wait until the next day before you see the results in your Google Analytics control panel.