February 2010 News

In this issue of Website Builder News, February 2010...

  • Free Training Sessions - Auckland, Wellington & Christchurch
  • One on One Training
  • WYSIWYG Editor Update
  • More new design templates - virbant colours
  • Navigational Tips
  • SEO Tip of the Month
  • How to help us promote Website Builder and get a 20% rebate
  • Websites of the Month

 

WYSIWYG Editor Update

We have upgraded the WYSIWYG editor to V5.1. This should fix the issues some people have encountered when pasting code from other software or when editing pages originally created with our old V4 editor. These issues have often presented themselves as adding spacing between paragraphs. If problems persist, please send an email to support@websitebuilder.co.nz clearly indicating the page you were working on, and what steps you completed prior to seeing your page going awol. If you do experience issue, in the interim you might like to try clearing your browser cache to ensure you have the very latest version of our editor, or editing your page with the old V4 editor tab, top right above the word style toolbar.

Educational: WYSIWYG means "What you see is what you get" as in akin to the word style editor with the iconised toolbar. This editor component is actually based on TinyMCE, a 3rd party component customised to work within our CMS.

 

Free Training Sessions NZ Wide

Our free training sessions will teach you how to use our website builder to build your own website or on line shop. The course covers all the basics with some tips on bulk emailer, shopping carts, and search engine optimisation included. We also have advanced courses available for a small fee.

  • Auckland - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours  - 16th April at 10am - FREE
  • Auckland -Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 16th April at 1pm 
  • Wellington - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours - 13th April 2010 - FREE
  • Wellington - Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 13th April at 1pm
  • Christchurch - Website Builder Introduction 2 hours - 14th April 2010 - FREE
  • Christchurch - Search Engine Optimisation, and intermediate web design 4 hours - $75 - 14th April at 1pm
  • More Locations and Times - Book Your Training Here

Please invite any friends along to our training events. Remember you will get 20% referral discount off your hosting ongoing for any who go live with their website..

 

One on One Training / Hourly Web Design Service

One on one training is a great way to enhance your website at a discount price. Sit down with one of our professional web designers for an hour and see what evolves. This is a great way for intermediate users to increase their skills, or for novice users to sped up the process of creating their website. For just $100 your website will be greatly improved. The same fee also applies for SEO or any other professional help you need. One on one available at our Onehunga Auckland office with either Albie or Mike. Reply to this email or phone to book a time.

If you are not based in Auckland, our design staff can still provide the same service over the phone. They will look at your website, and make changes that you will be able to see as you refresh your browser.

 

More New Templates - Vibrant Colours

Mike has designed a new set of design templates with vibrant colours, a split menu, with a top drop line menu for main pages, and a right menu for category pages. In addition a search box as part of the template, and a Zone 2 area where you can paste additional information in to your right column on a page by page basis..

You can change your existing website design to one of these new layouts in the design settings area, but remember there is no undo option.

To make it easier to distinguish between templates, we have also doubled the size of the sample thumbnails. Also take note of the template descriptions and tags as to any special features or limitations.

See the new templates here

 

Navigational Tips

  • Clicking on the main left menu buttons will give you even more options than is presented in the hover windows.
  • While editing any page, or working in any area of the CMS, you might see tabs in the top right. These tabs make it easier to move around sections, or access related features.
  • When selecting a page to edit, you can hover over the page and click 1 of the 3 icons for fast access to edit, rename or view. However, if you click the main page button, or right click the main page button, then you will get even more options.
  • When working on laptop with a small screen, you might have trouble accessing all the options from the tab menus, without scrolling down the screen. Try using the scroll wheel in the middle of your mouse if available.
  • Try using the search box top left of the CMS to search for any word on any page. If you have a big website, this is fast way to edit the pages you want. 
  • When you first log in to the CMS, you will see a list of recently modified pages. That is a great place to start if you are typically only maintaining a few pages of your website in the long term.

 


SEO Tip of the Month - Domains and Hosting

 

Stay online, do not let your web hosting or domain renewal lapse. Even though you can easily reinstate your website or domain upto 90 days later, Google does not apply the same rules. If your website goes offline for even a day, Google may delete your listing or downgrade your ranking. Stay live always!

Google can also easily check the expiry date of your domain names, and it does make a comparison between domains that will not expire for more than a year, versus domains which may expire within 90 days. This allows google to distinguish between people who are committed to the longevity of their website, versus domain squaters who only renew at the last minute. So our suggestion is to renew for at least 3 years in advance, and to periodically check that none of your domains is expiring in the next 52 weeks.

Where you host your website is really important for SEO and speed to end users. We offer 4 locations in the world where you can host your website, Auckland, Sydney, London and USA. If you have multiple domain names, then you can host your website in upto or all 4 locations for the price of hosting only 1. We use a mirroring system that is connected to the domain name. We do calculate the total traffic used across all servers for hosting plan selection, but we are not concerned about how many instances of your website you have.

More tips at the following link, or book in for one of our SEO training courses next year.

/DIY-search-engine-optimisation.html

 

Help us promote our Website Builder (20% referral discount for your troubles)

There are many ways for you to help us promote website builder. If you would like any brochures or business cards, please contact us and we will send you a bundle. Please let us know how many you require.

If you would like to promote website builder from your website, you can now easily add an affiliate page using the "add page" button. This page will allow you to write your own introduction about how wonderful our service is and will include a link with tracking codes so that you will receive the 20% referral discount automatically.

Alternatively, please encourage your friends to just sign up directly for a free trial, or to come to one of our free training courses. Once they have signed up for a free trial, please don't forget to contact us and let us know so we can link your referral.

Or if you are finding work a bit slow in this recession, why not start your own business selling websites. Did you know that we really like customers who want to resell our services and add their own value. If you have SEO skills, business skills, graphic design skills or just super enjoy building websites with our free website builder, then we encourage you to start a business doing it. You will not be stepping on our toes at all. We want to support you in your business endeavours and will give you access to special advanced training courses and support, so that you can in turn provide better support to your customers. Using our affiliate scheme or our official reseller scheme, you can also make ongoing revenue from web hosting. But we encourage you to correctly place a commercial value on the time you put in to helping your friends start websites. We hope we are providing you with a great new opportunities during this recession. 

White label reseller accounts also available for a setup fee.

More information about affiliates and reselling here

 

Websites of the Month

Here's a selection of some of our recent Go Lives. DIY websites are always a mixed bag, so we encourage you to view several example sites if determining if Website Builder is right for you. Please note that some DIY websites may have been completed by 3rd party professional web designers.

Do you want a more professional look and feel for your website? A more professional look will instill greater trust in your customers, and encourage them to stay longer on your website or make a purchase. Please use our on line quote or contact us.

 

Do you have any feedback on our newsletter or CMS products? Please let us know.

 

Best regards,
Reuben Jackson (CEO)

Web Widgets - Free Website Builder

www.websitebuilder.co.nz
Phone: 09 6220797

Posted: Mon 22 Feb 2010

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