January 2015 News

Happy new year! We hope you had a good break, or are still enjoying the endless summer sunshine.

In this issue of Website Builder news:

Address auto completion
Server Migration to AWS
Shopping Cart Upgrades
Product Location
Field Validation
No Free Email Service
Professional Web Design Services
Better Broadband
Affiliate discounts
Start your own business - reseller options
Cool links/system links
Websites of the month

Address Auto Completion

At the end of last year we added address auto completion to various forms and shopping carts. Address auto completion is powered by Google using data from many different providers around the world. This speeds up data entry for users, and encourages auto completion and use of post codes.

Learn more about: Address auto completion

Server Migration to AWS

On February 17th, at approximately 5am NZ time, we will be planning a 1 hour outage during which we are migrating our core web services over to Amazon Web Services data center in Sydney. We expect no down time to websites, but there will be a short duration at that time when you won't be able to edit your website via the CMS. Also, any orders that are received during that time, may be disrupted in some way, but you will receive email notifications ordinarily of orders and receipts.

Learn more about the web services migration

Shopping Cart Upgrades

Auto Address Completion
Change sorting of products on dockets
Product Location
Product Edit Screens (new layout of the main product editing screen gives faster access to key data)
Minor changes to stock screen daata entry

Product Location

You can now record a code for the location of products, this is great if you have a large list of products. You can also sort your shipping docket item lines into location order, to make picking items more efficient.

Field Validation

Form fields are now validated as they lose focus, rather than when the form is complete. This is a more user friendly way to help users fix data entry issues, and identify mandatory fields.

No Free Email Service

Email is provided free to users who are paying for a web hosting plan. Email is not provided free merely with a domain registration. We also have a email only hosting plan.

Some users have previously enjoyed a free email service on old account plans when they were not paying for any web hosting service. In February, we will be changing those legacy account rules to disable email where it was never intended for us to provide a service.

Please note that if you wish to have an email service prior to your website going live, or after your website hosting has been cancelled, or while you host your website elsewhere, you will need to pay for a specific email only web hosting plan. This email only hosting plan is only $7 a month or $70 a year, and it includes a free single placeholder web page if you want one, enough for a photo and few contact details.

Learn more about the email only hosting plan

Need one-on-one Website Builder Training?

If you require personalised training, please contact one of our consultants, who are based all over NZ. Many of our Auckland team can also provide over the phone training at a scheduled time.

We would encourage all customers to get at least one hour of training at the early stages of building their website, and one more review prior to going live, just to give your website that professional critique, and quick tidy up of the rough bits.

Training topics include:

How to use website builder and shopping cart
How to design websites
How to crop and tidy up photos
How to optimise to get your website higher on google and other search engines
How to setup a facebook page, or other social media account
How to send newsletters
How to use any other feature we offer.

Book personalised training here

Clearing your Browser Cache and Publishing

Caching speeds up your computer, but it also causes confusion when viewing changes to your website. Every web master needs to become familiar with this concept. Almost a third of all our support tickets relate to mis understandings about caching. We can't change the nature of the internet, we only educate.

With the introduction of the international CDN hosting service, it's important that we highlight a few issues with regards to browser and proxy caching.

The importance of the publish button is even greater now. Once apon a time, product page and blog page updates might have published instantly, now you have to press the publish button to see changes.
If your site had errors, or was offline for a short period, you may need to press PUBLISH again to tell our CDN service to check for updates on your website. Publish will generally resolve most issues.
People in different parts of the globe, may now see different versions of your content. The CDN will cache your website in different locations based on the time content was first accesses. Pressing Publish will ensure every one gets the latest version.

Learn more about Clearing your browser cache

Professional Web Design Services and Training

If you require training or professional help getting started with your website, please review their portfolios, specials etc and contact a local consultant. We have authorised all our resellers and design consultants to engage with you directly, and bill you directly for their time.

You can see all the available consultants at the following link from all across NZ.

/webapps/d/21/347206/web-designers-specializing-in-our-cms

Better Broadband

We have teamed up with the awesome 2talk team to offer you some great broadband options. If you have become disgruntled with your current isp, now is the time to get a great bundled broadband offering.

/webapps/l/21/347206/nz-broadband-providers

Receive a 20% discount off your web hosting, for life, by referring a friend

Did you know that if you refer a friend to use our awesome website builder service, you get a 20% discount off your hosting? If you refer 5 friends, then you will essentially get your web hosting for free! Not only that, but your friends will also get their 2nd month web hosting absolutely free. That's a nice little encouragement for them to check our service out and gives us the opportunity to setup your discount. Both discounts apply for your 2nd and subsequent websites also. It doesn't matter if it is yours, a friend, family or a stranger. Discounts begin once both websites are live. Please make sure you or your friend communicates the referral at the earliest opportunity.

More information about affiliates here

Opciones de revendedor

We have an awesome new offer for web designers and awesome business networkers. We can setup any web designer who is interested with all they need to get started as a web designer at no cost:

There are no setup fees, no contracts to sign.
You will earn $2+ on every domain name sold (based on RRP $19 per year).
You will earn (20%-50%) commission on hosting
You can manage all your customers content, domains, emails etc, easily from just 1 login.
We take care of all the billing arrangements, so no administrative hassle.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, point them at our reseller page. We'll offer a $100 finders fee commission for any existing customer who finds us a new reseller who set's up 3+ live websites. Offer expires 28th Feb 2014.

More information on reselling here

Need Help! is at hand...

There are several places you can find answers to questions about how to build your website and add features (which, there are a lot of) and its free for you to look:

If you can't find the answer you need - then get professional help

Contact - Web Designers or lodge a Support ticket

In 99% of cases the answer to a problem is covered in one (or more) of these places. We always fix bugs fast, with all the users we have we get notified very fast of any real bug - they are not common, so if you are having an issue operating the CMS consider some online training with us - you'll always take something away worth value. In all other cases we are happy to do anything you are having trouble doing yourself for a small fee starting from $20 for 10 minutes.