September 2008 News

In this issue of Web Widgets News, September 2008...

  • Beat the Recession Blues
  • Chinese Domain Name Scam
  • New Staff - Morgan and Andrew
  • Free Training in Auckland and Wellington 
  • Google Web Browser Released
  • Improved Search Widget 
  • Purchase quantity selection on product detail pages
  • Excess traffic fees
  • Making the best use of email
  • Websites of the Month

 

Beat the Recession Blues

Aparently NZ is technically in a recession. If you are finding that you or your staff are less busy working in your business, then now is a good time to work on your business. If your website is out of date, now is a time to login and make changes. If you had let your trial website slide, then now is a good time to start a new trial site and check out our new wizard templates, these will jump start your website based on your industry selection.

They say that in times of recession, although we should consider all outgoing costs, we should use this time to invest in our business so that we are ready for the growth period that will follow. With a Web Widgets site your costs are low, so its only a matter of investing your time or your staff's time in building and improving your website. You should also consider the aspects of business processes around your website. Are your pages search engine optimised? How are you ranking in search engines? Have you got a good FAQ to answer all the questions from your customers?  (Those same questions that you were recently too busy answering to have time to work on your FAQ)  How about making some new websites focused on specific products or portals for consumer groups?

If anyone would like us to work on their website and are looking to spread their costs, we are happy to split the final go live payment, so that any design costs for a website are spread over 3 months. eg Deposit, Go Live, and a final third one month later. If you would like this option, please just let us know. It is only available for projects costing more than $1000 

 

Chinese Domain Name Scam

Just a reminder that if you get an email from any Chinese domain name providers or intellectual property lawyers that it's a scam.  They are just trying to sell you domains that you don't likely need. There are hundreds of domain suffixes possible, and soon there will be even more. Your really don't need to "secure" your name, as there are so many variations. I encourage everyone to secure their .com and .nz domain names only.

The .com suffix is perfectly suited to an international audience. If you do decide you want to purchase Chinese domain names or other suffix domain names, then just do a quick search on google for a selection of competitive priced registrars. When registering your domain, please ensure you use our nameservers, ns1.cms-tool.net and ns2.cms-tool.net. At the completion of the process, don't forget to connect your domain to your website using the 3rd option under the red "register domain" area, eg to connect a domain name registered elsewhere using the nameserver method. Please note if you need any technical help to setup a domain registered elswhere, a fee of $20 will apply.

 

Paymex now supports 10 currencies

The NZ based Paymex payment gateway now supports 10 currencies. Payment is currently remitted into NZD bank accounts only, and an additional 2% currency conversion fee applies.

UPDATE 18/9/2008 - PAYMEX HAS GONE OUT OF BUSINESS

 

New Staff - Morgan and Andrew

We'd like to welcome 2 new staff. Morgan will be answering your support calls and emails on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons while Auvasa takes a little study leave. Andrew will be sharing some of Albies web design load. We have included a sample of each of their recent work in our websites of the month section. 

 

Free Training in Auckland and Wellington

We will be running a free one-hour training session in Auckland and Wellington. These will provide a basic understanding of using the CMS in line with answering the questions that most new users face.  We plan on conducting these sessions in an informal group setting such as an internet cafe or library so that each of you will have access to the Web Widgets system as we work through it with you

The Wellington session will run from 11:00am to 12:30 on Wednesday the 15th of October.  We are in the process of locating a suitable venue, such as an internet cafe' in the central city, so if you have a recomendation let us know.  If you would prefer one on one training, there is still one training session available that afternoon (one hour @ $100) be in quick. 

The Auckland session will run from 11:00am to 12:30 on Wednesday the 22th of October in Onehunga.  As a reminder - one on one training at a rate of $100 per hour is available at any time (by arrangement) to those able to visit us here in Auckland.

Please RSVP by Tuesday 30th September to secure your seat

 

Google Web Browser Released

It was only a matter of time until Google invented their own web browser - "Chrome".  It is easy to install, quick, has less screen presence, and works quite well with the Web Widgets content management system. We note some issues with editing tables, but Google should hopefully fix that in future versions. 
http://www.google.com/chrome/

 

Improved Search Widget 

Those of you using the site search feature on your site will notice improved results (available as an option under "supersize my site" in the design settings menu). The headings, summary and content are all searched and the results page includes the searched phrase in bold, includes the surrounding context and perhaps even more impressive is the results now include a thumbnail picture of the product!  

If you havn't yet checked out our CMS help facility, now is a good time to see where we answer many of the questions many of you face when building your site.
http://www.help.cms-tool.net/


Excess Traffic Fees

It is very important that you are on the correct web hosting plan to avoid excess traffic fees. In the past we have run reports and manually upgraded people to a suitable plan as soon as we noted increased traffic. However we will now be leaving people on their chosen plan, and automatically charging customers 10c per megabyte for unprovisioned excess traffic usage. So if you only go 20% over the hosting plan allowance for 1 month, you are probably ok to stay on your current plan. However if your traffic is increasing at a steady pace, then it is time to ensure you are on the correct hosting plan. 

You can check your total bandwidth on your web statistics for all your domain names. Your web statistics can be accessed by clicking the red "stats" button under each of your domains listed in the "my web addresses" in our CMS. Please remember to add both "viewed traffic" and "not viewed traffic", as you are responsible for paying for all traffic generated by search engines. That search engine traffic is not displayed in the history of previous months.

Please refer to the following link to ensure you are on the correct web hosting plan. You can change your hosting plan anytime before the end of the calendar month either in your accounts area, or by contacting us.
http://www.webwidgets.co.nz/web-hosting.html


Making the best use of email

There are many different ways for you to configure and check your domain email but here are our recomendations.

Our number one choice is Gmail. You can quickly and easily configure Web Widgets and Gmail to send and receive using your own domains email addresses. Gmail is easy to use, you can use it anywhere you have internet access, including iphones. It has a huge storage capacity and you always have access to all your email history and sent items folder. On any broadband connection, it is less cumbersome to use than outlook and the search feature is faster.

Microsoft exchange is good option for companies who can afford to pay for regular onsite IT support. Enough said about that one.

Or use your currrent ISP or a professional email service. This is the option that most of our customers use. There is no need to move your POP accounts to us, we can forward your email to your existing accounts, this is the easiest option to set up, but is still lacking compared with Gmail.

Web Widgets also offer POP3 and IMAP accounts, with added webmail facility. This is the traditional way of receiving email, however you may experience the following issues no matter which ISP you use. When you are on holiday (or your computer crashes) you lose access to your historical email and sent email folder. Many people forget their webmail address even though it is just the word "webmail" in front of their domain name. And there is a limit to the filespace. We have an official mailbox limit of 100MB, which means if you receive alot of attachments or leave your email on the server, then you might full up that space. IMAP which is good for storing email on a server, is too slow to be a good day to day option. If you really do feel more comfortable using your current email client, please consider doing the following:

  • Ensure you clear your main email accounts at least weekly when you are on holiday or out of the office.
  • Only use IMAP for storing important files, treat it as a set of folders, not your main inbox. Never publish your IMAP email address.
  • Get a GMAIL account and forward your important email and files there for when you are travelling.


 

Websites of the Month

The following websites were designed by Andrew and Albie. If you want a really professional look for your website, then please contact us for a design quote.

And we'd like to showcase a small selection of our customers newer DIY websites. Some of those we think have done a great job of designing and creating using the Web Widgets tools.

Do you have an existing website with us that you have spent a lot of time and effort revamping? Why not contact us for possible inclusion in the website of the month section. This email is delivered to over 2000 SME businesses in NZ.  Another useful idea is to write us a testimonial (for our website), this will also get a link back to your website from our highly ranked website.  So your testimonial is as helpful to your own SEO as it is for making us feel good.

Have you got any feedback on our newsletter or CMS products? Please let us know.

 

Best regards,
The Web Widgets Team

Posted: Wed 17 Sep 2008

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