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Creating your own website is often a first step in a journey. As you begin to find out what EverWeb‘s capable of, and the features that it includes, you may find that your initial website becomes something more! Adding more features to your site often comes as you gain more experience and confidence in using EverWeb. Once you have built your initial website, you will probably have more time to add any additional features you may have kept back from your site’s initial release. Once such feature may be to add a blog to your site.

Is Adding a Blog To Your Site The Right Thing To Do?

The first question you should ask yourself if you are considering adding a blog to your site is “Is adding the blog the right thing to do for my business and customers?” On the plus side, adding a blog to your website is a powerful way to enhance your online presence, engage your audience, and drive business growth. Whether you’re looking to improve your SEO, build authority, or simply to better connect with your customers, a blog can be an invaluable tool.

On the negative side, blogging may not be the right solution, or even beneficial, for your business. If the commitment to maintain quality, consistency, and strategic alignment is not feasible, it might be better to explore other ways to engage your audience and achieve your business goals. Managing and maintaining a blog can be very resource intensive.

Preparing to Start Your Blogging Journey!

If you have decided that blogging is right for your business, there are a few things that you might want to consider before creating a blog in Everweb:

• Build a Pipeline of Blog Post Ideas: Having a list of possible posts for the future is always worthwhile creating. This will give you a pipeline so that you can post on a regular, consistent basis. Also remember that your pipeline should include some ‘Evergreen’ content too i.e. content that has a regular anniversary or is content that is good to repurpose from time to time. Examples include product or company anniversaries, Black Friday, getting started guides and so forth.
• Posting Frequency: Choose a blogging frequency that suits your customers and also make sure that it suits you too. Writing a blog can take time and research so make sure you can handle the workload. When it comes to choosing a publishing time for you blog posts, check out when your social media feed is most looked at, then post at that time to maximise customer engagement.
• Blog Post Comments On or Off?: It is your choice as to whether you want your community to be able to comment on your posts or not. If you allow commenting, you, as a moderator will have to monitor and vet comments. This may take you time and effort. Also dealing with the potential for inappropriate or negative comments should be taken in to account as well. Allowing your community to comment can be a rewarding experience, so you may want to consider trialling commenting before committing to it.
• Choose Your Comment Engine: If you do decide to allow comments on your posts, you have two choices in EverWeb – Disqus or Facebook Comments. Check out the section in the EverWeb User Manual which takes you through the pros and cons of both as well as how to set up your blog on either platform.

Creating a Blog in EverWeb

Now that you have finished your planning tasks and have everything you need to start blogging ready, now is the time to create a blog in your EverWeb site.

1. Start by adding a new page to your site
2. If you are using a Theme Template already for your pages, check to see if there is a blog page available. If so you can use this.
3. Alternatively, choose either a Blank, or Blank Responsive Theme Template, then choose the blog page.
4. Click on the ‘Select’ button to add the blog page to your site.

EverWeb’s Blog Page Structure

The blog page in EverWeb is a special type of page. When you add the blog to your site, you will see that, in fact, the ‘blog’ page is a directory page, consisting of three pages:

Blog: This is the main page of the blog where you see a summary of the latest blog posts that you have created. The latest post is usually displayed at the top of the list with other posts displayed in descending date order.

Posts:This page is your blogging engine where you create the blog posts themselves. This is the page you will probably spend most of your time on.

Archive: This page is where you can view summaries of all of the blog posts that you have created in your blog.

Getting Started with Blog Posting in EverWeb

After creating your blog in your project file, the first thing you will probably want to do is to write your first blog. To do this, simply click on the Posts page in the Web Page List that runs down the left hand side of EverWeb. You will see that the first post has been created for you, ready to fill in!

In our next post, we will take an in-depth look at the Posts page so that you can get the most out of it!

If you have any comments or questions in the meantime about blogging in EverWeb, or any EverWeb related question, please let us know in the Comments section below. We are happy to help!

A new maintenance release of EverWeb for Windows and macOS is now available. If you are currently running EverWeb 4.0, we recommend that you update your version to the new 4.0.1 version.

EverWeb 4.0.1 is a free update for EverWeb + Hosting users and users with an active EverWeb Standalone Update & Support plan. 

Which Version of EverWeb Is For You?

EverWeb is available in the following versions:

• If you are running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, EverWeb 4.0.1 is available for you.
• If you are running an Intel Mac running macOS High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura or Sonoma, EverWeb version 4.0.1 is available for you.
• If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or Sonoma, EverWeb version 4.0.1 is available for you as a Universal Binary. EverWeb will run natively without the need to use Rosetta 2.
• If you are running OS X 10.10 – macOS 10.12 (OS X Yosemite, OS X El Capitan, macOS Sierra) EverWeb 3.4.2 is for you
• If you are running OS X 10.7 – 10.9 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks) EverWeb version 2.9.1 is available for you.

When updating to the latest version of EverWeb, the update process will automatically download the correct version of EverWeb for your operating system.

Fixed and Improved In EverWeb 4.0.1

EverWeb version 4.0.1 includes the following:

[IMPROVED] Blog Performance: We’ve made improvements to ensure typing on large blog posts (with lots of text and images) is smoother with minimal typing delays.

[FIX] Widgets and Assets: Widgets that had issues with Asset Lists are now functioning properly.

[FIX] Publishing Stability: Fixed an unexpected crash when publishing websites with mouse-over transitions.

[FIX] Website Preview: The Previous/Next links will now function correctly when you’re previewing your website.

[FIX] Styled Text Editor: For a more comfortable editing experience, the Styled Text Editor used in the FlexBox, Text Section and PayPal widgets now has a larger height.

[FIX] Text Exporting as An Image: The issue where text wasn’t exporting correctly as images has been resolved. 

How To Update To EverWeb for Windows

You can easily update EverWeb for Windows by either:

1. Launching EverWeb then opening a project file. From the Help menu at the top of the screen select ‘Check for Update’ or by
2. Downloading EverWeb from the EverWeb website.
3. Downloading EverWeb from the Support-> Downloads section of the EverWeb Client Area.

After downloading EverWeb, double click on the EverWebSetup.exe file. Note that the file name may have the version number appended to it and that you may need to initially trust the file to be able to download it.

Follow the instructions in the Installation Wizard until the installation is finished. You can delete the EverWebSetup.exe file afterwards by dragging it to the Recycle Bin.

How To Update To EverWeb for macOS

You can easily update EverWeb for macOS by either:

1. Launching EverWeb then going to the EverWeb menu at the top of the screen and selecting ‘Check for Update’ or by
2. Downloading EverWeb from the EverWeb website.
3. Downloading EverWeb from the Support-> Downloads section of the EverWeb Client Area.

After downloading EverWeb, double click on the EVERWEB.DMG file. A window will open. Drag the EverWeb icon on to the Applications folder icon. 

Once the file has been copied, you can close the installation window, delete the .DMG file and eject the 

About Your EverWeb Update

Remember, you won’t lose any previous data when updating as your website project files are stored elsewhere on your computer.

The update is free for EverWeb + Hosting users and EverWeb Standalone users who are within their 1 year of free upgrades and support period.

You can easily check your EverWeb update period from your EverWeb-> Preferences… window on macOS, your Edit-> Options menu on Windows or from your client area.

If you have passed your one year of free EverWeb updates, you can purchase 1 more year of upgrades and support from your client area.

You can easily re-download earlier versions of EverWeb from your client area if you are not ready to purchase an additional year of updates and support.

Login to your client area and go to the ‘Manage Product’ page. On the left of this page, select ‘Downloads’ and choose the version of EverWeb that you need.

More Information About EverWeb

For more information about the new version of EverWeb, please check out the following resources:

• The EverWeb website which has up to the moment information in its blogging section
• New EverWeb videos on YouTube
• The EverWeb User Manual in EverWeb’s Help-> User Manual menu on macOS or Help-> User Manual menu on MS Windows
• The EverWeb Discussion Forum

If you can’t find what you need, or have any other questions, comments or feedback please let us know. 

Starting your own business is an exciting time, turning your dreams and ideas in to reality. It’s also a time where you are likely to want to get your EverWeb website up and running to promote your business and sell your goods and services. Here are some suggestions as what tools you may want to use when starting out…

It Starts with a Name…

When you start a business, one of the most important things to decide is your business name. You may want a name that tells your potential customers or clients what your business is about. The problem new businesses have is trying to match their business name with their website domain name. More often than not, someone is already using the domain name you want. So be prepared. Make a list of four to six business names that you like, in order of preference. Then check with your Chamber of Commerce to see if any of these names are available.

You can look at choosing your business name in another way. Is the domain name for the business name I want available for purchase? Quite often, businesses choose the website name first, then check to see if the business name is available at the Chamber of Commerce. By getting the website name first, it is more likely that the business name will also be available for use. You can check if a domain name is free using EverWeb’s Domain Name Search feature.

When choosing a name you also will want to look at the scope of the name. This comes down to looking at the extension that is used in the website name e.g. everweb.com. Most websites aim for a ‘.com’ suffix but other extensions are available e.g. ‘,org’, ‘.gov’, ‘.edu’ or a country e.g. ‘.co.uk’. ‘.nl’, and even ‘.eu’ for the European Union. This may give you more flexibility when choosing a website name, but bear in mind that some extensions are designed to be used for a specific purpose.

Finally be careful of names that are very similar to other names or using hyphens to try to differentiate your name from someone else’s. For example, you want to call your company ‘abcd business’ but the website name ‘abcdbusiness.com’ is already in use. So you decide to make ‘abcd-business.com’ your business name. We would not recommend this. When potential customers search for your business, you may find that they actually click on your competitor’s site instead of yours.

Choosing Your EverWeb Version

Once you have your website name and have registered your business with your Chamber of Commerce, the next step is to build your site. The next decision to make is where to host your website? You can either host your website with your own Hosting Provider or with EverWeb. The choice is yours. You can still build your website in EverWeb and publish it to whichever Hosting Provider you have chosen. We usually recommend hosting with EverWeb as you get hosting features built directly in to EverWeb itself. You do not have to worry about the Hosting end of things at all as EverWeb takes care of this for you.

Also remember that EverWeb comes with a free stock image library of over 500,000 images to help you choose the perfect images for your site. Just click on the Media button in the Toolbar and select the ‘Free Stock Photos’ option. Enter in your search criteria, then drag and drop the image you want to use into the Editor Window.

SEO Matters…

As you are building your website, you may also be aware that you need to get your site’s pages as high up in search engine results pages as possible. So remember as you design your pages to add in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) key words and phrases to pages that you want to be relevant for SEO. You do not need to include SEO for pages such as Contact Us and About Us type pages. Check out our SEO for EverWeb Video Course for a full tour of SEO and how to easily and quickly apply it to your website.

If you are selling good and services online or your need to maximise your website’s potential, you may also want to consider EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp Addon. The Addon lets you refine your SEO allowing you to assign priority and frequency to your website’s pages, creates and SML Sitemap that can be crawled by web crawlers, optimises your site for search engines, submits your pages to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Alexa, and makes your pages load faster for your visitors using GZip Compression.

And keep an eye on this blog and the EverWeb User Forum for exciting news coming for SEO in the upcoming EverWeb 4.0 release!

Securing Your Website

Whilst SEO will help your page rankings improve, your site’s security is ever more an important issue to keep in mind, both for your site itself and also for your visitors. Most sites today are secure so you see a padlock next to your site’s name in the browser search bar. This indicates to your visitors that data transmitted to and from your site’s server is end to end encoded. The other plus point here is that search engines rank secure websites above non-secure websites. All of these features are available with EverWeb’s Site Shield Addon including Enhanced Security Settings for advanced website security. EverWeb Site Shield Addon is available for purchase through your EverWeb Client Area.

At the moment Site Shield Addon is available only to EverWeb+Hosting customers, but stay tuned as that is about to change in the new EverWeb 4.0 release which should make this addon available to everyone.

Contact Forms

Communication and interaction with your customers is vital to keep a thriving business, especially online. EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget enables you to create powerful, flexible forms to help you engage more effectively with your customer base. You can take your contact management one step further though with EverWeb’s Contact Forms Enhanced Addon. This addon is great when you want to store email addresses for later use and collect data from contact form submissions for analysis. You can design your contact forms for specific campaigns you want run through your website.

Contact Forms Enhanced also lets your visitors upload files to you through the contact formant mass emailing features are also available. For details about purchasing this addon, check out EverWeb’s Online Store. There will also be more features in EverWeb 4.0 to further revolutionize contact form design!

Membership Sites…

Our final consideration is to add a Membership Site to your website so that your visitors can access free and paid for content by signing up to your Membership Site. Easy to use. Easy to set up. Easy to administer and fully featured. It’s coming soon in EverWeb 4.0!

Setting up your website and adding in the features that you need to make your business safe and secure and profitable is easy with EverWeb. Our upcoming EverWeb 4.0 release is going to add great new features and enhancements to make your website building experience even better.

If you have a question about this post, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

As 2022 comes to an end, it’s always a good time to take a final look at your EverWeb website for the year and to think about what you want to do with it for the next year. Here are some suggestions as to how you can retool your website for the year ahead!

1. Start by Changing Your Site’s Copyright Year!

The first thing that you should in 2023 is changing your site’s copyright notice year to 2023. Having a copyright notice on your site is a good idea in itself as it shows your visitors that you are the owner of the content of your pages. Although it is not usually necessary, or mandatory, to have a copyright notice, having one reduces infringement risk of your content and claims of “innocent infringement”. Having a Copyright Notice costs nothing and helps deter infringement, so if you don’t have one, add it to the pages of your site and to your blog. Remember, in EverWeb, this is quicker and easier to do if you use Master Pages in your site!

2. Aim For a More Secure Website in 2023!

Keeping your online presence as secure as practically possible should be a priority for any business that has a website. If your site is still using just HTTP, now may be the time to think about upgrading it to HTTPS. If you have an EverWeb+Hosting plan, you can easily secure your site using EverWeb’s Site Shield Addon. In just a few clicks you can secure your site. EverWeb Site Shield Addon has been engineered to make this potentially complex task a super simple one! If you want to maximize your site’s security, you can also take advantage of Site Shield’s new advanced security options! Again, we have simplified these options for you so advanced website security is available for you by just a few mouse clicks.

EverWeb Site Shield Addon is available for only $39.95 USD/Year if you have an EverWeb_Hosting 2GB plan and requires EverWeb 3.6 or higher.

3. Give Your Site’s SEO a Higher Priority

If you are running a business, having a website is one way in which you can expand and grow sales. If potential and existing customers find it hard to find your site, products or services on the Internet, then you probably need to improve your site’s Search Engine Optimization.

Adding and improving SEO in your site can take time and effort, and is something that you should review, maintain and update on a regular basis. EverWeb does help you with SEO by taking the contents of certain fields (e.g. the Web Page Description field in the Page Settings tab) and using it for SEO purposes. You can, however, refine your SEO to be more targeted to your needs easily and without extra cost. Our Free SEO for EverWeb Video Course will show you how!

If SEO is important, or critical, to your business, then using EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp Addon is the tool you need to use. The Addon can be purchased through your EverWeb Client Area ($29.95 USD/Year) and is free for EverWeb+Hosting 10GB or higher plans. The Addon give you the ability to prioritize and set the frequency of when your pages are crawled for SEO purposes, allows you to add in your own SEO keywords on a per page basis, and much more!

4. Spreading Your Word with a Blog

Adding a blog can be a great way to engage with your customers and potential customers. It also gives you an easy way to keep your customers informed about what your latest products and services. A blog is also a great way of providing in-depth information that you would not usually find, or have space for, in the regular pages of your site. You can even use EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget to link blog articles to e.g. the Home page of your site. And a blog also lets your customers know that your site and business are alive and kicking!

Blogging can take some time and planning but once you get in to he swing it can be incredibly rewarding. Checkout the chapter on Blogging in the EverWeb User Manual for more information on setting up your own blog and enabling discussion with your community by enabling Comment Engines.

5. Creative, Consistent Content!

Whatever type of website you have, one of the key things to bear in mind is keeping your site up to date. If you update or refresh your site on a regular basis, it is more likely that visitors will come back again. Keeping your site up to date also means that the information it contains also stays up to date. There’s nothing worse than e.g. visiting a site at the end of 2022 and seeing that its last update was in 2019! As discussed above, a blog can be a very useful tool, especially if most of your site’s content is relatively static.

You may find that refreshing the look of your site from time to time can help, but keeping your content up to date and original is of greater benefit as it will be better for your SEO.

6. Work Smarter, Not Harder…

Keeping your website up to date with fresh content and making sure that your pages are always ‘SEO ready’ may seem to be somewhat of a daunting prospect. But there are ways in which you can work efficiently and effectively. Here are some tips that may help you…

• Plan in Evergreen content for your website and its blog: We all have events in our calendars that repeat every year so why not make a note of these for your site or its blog so that you can have content ready in time for such events e.g. New Year, national holidays, festival days, your company’s anniversary and so on…
• SEO only pages that need it: When it comes to SEO, you do not need to use it on all of the pages in your site. Just pick the pages that are the most important ones in your site to add SEO to.
• When adding images in to your site, make sure the image’s filename is SEO worthy. Additionally, make sure that the size of your image files are not going to drag your page performance down and that you add in ALT Text whenever you can to an image.
• Keep up to date: Every year EverWeb adds new features and enhances existing features. You may find that a new feature replaces an old one, for example, this year we added in-line Heading Tags. You no longer need to use the Heading Tags widget to add in these tags. Now it is simpler and easier to add in these tags and style them, so you may want to replace the ‘old’ with the ‘new’ – it’s more efficient for you in the long run!

We hope that we have given you some food for thought about how you can retool your site for the new year. Got your own tip? Then why not share it? Let us know in the Comments Section below. And if you have any questions, please ask!

Happy New Year EverWebbers!

We are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of EverWeb for Windows. All of the website building features of EverWeb for macOS are now available to enjoy on Microsoft’s Windows operating system!

EverWeb is the leading website builder that requires no coding – just use drag and drop to build the website you’ve always wanted! EverWeb comes with all of the features you would expect of a modern website builder: Responsive and fixed width website design styles, full drag and drop capability, a complete blogging environment, one click publishing, advanced shopping cart features using payment providers such as PayPal and Stripe and much much more!

Downloading and Installing EverWeb for Windows

To run EverWeb on Microsoft Windows you will need EverWeb for Windows version 3.9.1 or later. If you have not already purchased EverWeb you can download the app from our website and try it for free.

If you have purchased EverWeb for macOS and want to use it on Microsoft Window, check out the ‘If you are Already Using EverWeb?’ section below.

Which EverWeb Version Is For You?

Choose the version of EverWeb that best suits your requirements…

• EverWeb + Hosting: If you purchase, or are already have, an EverWeb + Hosting plan you get the benefit of being able to use both EverWeb for Windows and EverWeb for macOS at no extra cost.

• EverWeb Standalone: If you want to use your own hosting provider, choose EverWeb Standalone, either for Windows or for macOS. If you want to use EverWeb on both platforms, you can easily purchase a one time only Multi-Platform license.

If You Are Already Using EverWeb…

If you already use EverWeb on macOS and want to use it also on Microsoft for Windows, you can do so with ease:

• If you are and EverWeb+Hosting user you can download and use EverWeb for Windows for Free.
• If you are an EverWeb Standalone user you can purchase our One Time Multi Platform license for $24.95 USD. The license is available to purchase from your the Upgrade/Downgrade Options section of your EverWeb Client Area.

Multi Platform Compatibility

Your EverWeb website Project files are compatible between MS Windows and macOS. Generally, EverWeb will also work in exactly the same on both Windows and macOS platforms. Some differences in use will, of course, arise due to the differing nature of these two operating systems.

System Requirements

EverWeb for Windows is compatible with Microsoft Windows version 10 and 11.

If you want to use EverWeb on macOS we recommend using version 3.9.1 or higher which is compatible with macOS versions 10.13 (High Sierra) or higher.

For more information on EverWeb for Windows and EverWeb for macOS please check out our website or let us know in the Comments Section below.

When you purchase EverWeb, as part of the purchasing process, you create your EverWeb client account for the type of product you have purchased – EverWeb+Hosting or EverWeb Standalone if you use your own hosting. Your account is set up in what we refer to as your ‘EverWeb Client Area’.

Why Do I Need An EverWeb Account?

Once you have setup your EverWeb customer account and purchased EverWeb, you need to enter the same account email address and password in EverWeb itself. To do this, log in to EverWeb, then enter your login details using the EverWeb-> Preferences-> Account menu option. Once you have entered in your account email address and password, check the box Add to Keychain so you do not need to login again. Under your login details, you will then see the products and services that you have purchased and their ‘Next Due Date’.

It is important to login in EverWeb itself because without these details you will not be able to publish your website to the Internet! The other important reason for having an EverWeb account is that it enables you to do some behind the scenes administration tasks if you need to. In this post, we will be giving you an overview of some of these features!

Logging In To Your EverWeb Client Area

There are a few ways in which you can log in to your EverWeb Client Area.

1. Using your browser. In your browser go to the following URL: https://billing.ragesw.com/clientarea.php. Enter your EverWeb account email and password to login to your EverWeb Client Area.
2. In EverWeb go to the File-> Edit Publishing Settings menu option, then click on the ‘Manage Account’ button in the bottom right hand corner.
3. Again in EverWeb, use the EverWeb-> Preferences-> Account menu option and again click on the Manage Account button in the right hand corner under your product details.

EverWeb Client Area Features

Your EverWeb Client Area is probably a part of EverWeb’s eco-system that you will not use very often but it is worth knowing what it does offer you. Below is a list of some of the Client Area’s main features:

1. Support Ticket logging and tracking.
2. Purchased Product and Renewal notifications.
3. Account Administration.
4. Email Administration (EverWeb+Hosting only).
5. Contact Forms Enhanced Addon Administration (if purchased).
6. Website Metrics (EverWeb+Hosting only).
7. Webmail Access (EverWeb+Hosting only).
8. Domain Services.
9. Access to the EverWeb Discussion Forum.
10. Available Product Downloads.
11. EverWeb Knowledgebase.

The Client Area Dashboard

Once you have logged in to your Client Area, you will see a dashboard of your main customer details and purchases. If you click on any one of the dashboard boxes – Services, Domains, Tickets or Invoices – you will be taken to the relevant page for that feature.

Client Area features can also be listed down the left hand side of the page you are currently on so, for example, on the dashboard page your own Client information is displayed so that you can edit and update it easily if you need to. You will also see on this screen your Client Area account contacts, shortcuts etc. In addition if you have purchased EverWeb’s Contact Forms Enhanced Addon you will have access to your Contact Forms Submissions from this screen.

The options in the left hand side of each page of the Client Area are context sensitive so that you will always see only the options that are relevant to what you are doing at the time.

Quick Client Area Tools and Tips!

There are lots of options to explore in the Client Area, but here are some of the typically most popular things that you may want to do…

• Log a Support Ticket: Just click on the ‘Open Ticket’ menubar option. To quickly check the status of any existing just click on the Tickets dashboard button.
• Using the EverWeb Knowedgebase: There is a wealth of information in EverWeb’s knowledgebase. Just click on the Support-> Knowledgebase menu option and enter your question in the search box.
• When are my products an services renewing? You can quickly find out when your EverWeb products or services are going to renew just by clicking on the Services dashboard button.
• When is my domain going to renew? In this case, just click on the Domains dashboard button to see your domain history and when any active domain will be up for renewal.
• How do I gedownload my version of EverWeb? If you ever need to redownload the latest version of EverWeb you purchased you can do so easily via the Support-> Downloads menu option.

All the Options You Need…

In this post we have given you a top level view of EverWeb’s Client Area. There are a lot of features that we have only mentioned briefly or have not covered at all. If you take the time to explore the menu options in the Client Area you will find a wealth of configuration options. Some of these are quite technical so our advise is not to change anything unless you are 100% knowledgeable about what you are doing. If not, you can always ask out Support Team who will happy to help and guide you as needed.

Please let us know if you have any questions on the EverWeb Client Area, we are here to help!

We introduced EverWeb Site Shield Addon in 2017 giving EverWeb+Hosting customers the ability to end to end data encrypt their websites in just a couple of mouse clicks. In our latest update, EverWeb version 3.6, we’ve added a slew of enhanced new features to Site Shield Addon, to make your website as secure as it possibly can be!

EverWeb Site Shield Addon uses HTTPS to bring end to end data encryption between the EverWeb Sever hosting your site and your visitor’s browser window. Using EverWeb Site Shield Addon can even help improve your SEO rankings as Google (and other search engines) give data encrypted websites a rankings boost over non-secure websites.

Make Your Website’s Security Easy To Implement

Understanding how to secure your website properly can be a long, difficult task. Using EverWeb Site Shield Addon simplifies these tasks making it extremely easy for you to implement advanced security options for your website. All the enhanced features options are clearly explained, making it easy for you to choose the best options for your site’s security.

If you are using Everweb 3.6, or higher, when you publish your website, click on the ‘Advanced…’ button next the ‘Use HTTPS Secure URLs’ checkbox in the Site Publishing Settings screen to see all of the available enhanced website security options. If the ‘Advanced’ button is not highlighted, you will first need check the ‘Use HTTPS Secure URLs’ checkbox. The ‘Advanced’ options are grouped in to two sections. The first section contains options that are non-website specific so are safe to apply without causing permanent changes to your site. The second set of options can result in permanent changes to your site. Below is an explanation of all of the options…

General Enhanced Website Security Options

When you tick the ‘Enable Enhanced Website Security’ checkbox, all of Site Shield Addon’s Advanced options become available. By default, the first three options are already checked as this is our recommended minimum security implementation advice. The first four options are:

1. Prevent 3rd Party Sites From Embedding Your Website: The first option prevents any other site from trying to embed your website in theirs which is trick which can lead your visitors having their personal information stolen. By using this option, you can make sure that malicious sites cannot try to impersonate your site, steal your search engine rankings and/or mislead your potential visitors.
2. Prevent Content Type Interpretations: The second option will not allow browsers to interpret the type of content they are accessing from your website. For example, should someone upload a malicious script to your site, using this Site Shield Addon option can help make sure the code is not executed.
3. Enable XSS Protection: The third option protects visitors to your site who are using older web browsers from ‘cross site scripting’ (XSS) hacks which can be used to steal their data.
4. Secure Referrer Policy: The last option is not enabled by default because it may block data that you may want to see in your website stats software, however, it is an important security enhancement. By using this option, you will block the re-refering url from being sent to the following website if the protocol switches from secure HTTPS urls to insecure HTTP urls which can help protect your visitor data. 

Powerful Website Security Options: Use With Caution…

The second section contains two options. These are more powerful security tools but can cause website loading issues. For this reason, we have included a Test mode and Production mode for the Content Security Policy option.

1. The Content Security Policy: This option will block access to resources that your visitors do not need access to. While in test mode, any issues will simply be reported in the error console of your web browser. That way you can see if any content is not loading that should load. We recommend that you use test mode first and watch the error console. This will only be an issue if you are using third party widgets that are using non-secure content. If you need help, please contact EverWeb customer support.
2. HTTPS Strict Transport Security: This is an option that makes it so that your website will never work if the HTTPS certificate is removed or if you happen to have a non secure url on your website. It tells your visitor that their web browser should not be able to access any resource that is not over HTTPS. Once you enable this option you will not be able to turn off HTTPS urls which you would probably not want to do anyways.

Our Recommendation…

We recommend that all of the Enhanced Security options are enabled as this offers the most secure website and doing so may also give you a boost to your websites’s search engine rankings. However, you should also consider the possible impact of your choosing all options, especially the last two options, on your sites, your website stats or the possibility of downgrading your website from HTTPS to HTTP in future.

EverWeb Site Shield Addon: Available Now!

You can easily purchase EverWeb Site Shield Addon immediately if you have not done so already. Just go to the Site Publishing screen in your EverWeb project file then check the ‘Use HTTPS Secure URLs’ checkbox. You will then be guided through the purchase steps. After your purchase has been confirmed, publish your site using the File-> Publish Entire Site menu option to secure your website!

If you have an EverWeb+Hosting Plan of 10GB, or higher, EverWeb Site Shield Addon is free. For other EverWeb+Hosting plans, Site Shield Addon is available at $39.95 USD/Year. If you have purchased Site Shield Addon prior to the release of EverWeb 3.6 your yearly renewal price remains at $29.95 USD/Year.

For more information, or if you have any questions, please contact EverWeb Customer Support.

When using EverWeb you pretty much have everything to hand that you need to build a website but sometimes you may want something extra for your site. Perhaps you want better security, or you want to sharpen your site’s SEO, or you want to use the data gathered from your contact forms. EverWeb’s Addons are here to help you get even more out of EverWeb!

Site Shield Addon

EverWeb’s Site Shield Addon is designed for EverWeb + hosting customers who want a secure to transmit data across the internet to all of the devices your website visitors may be using. The ‘end to end’ data encryption of data is provided through the use of HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) in place of HTTP.

WhyEverWeb Site Shield Addon Is Important

There are a number of reasons why EverWeb Site Shield Addon might be important to your website:

1. Your data is end to end encrypted across the Internet protecting you from ‘Man in the Middle’ attacks;
2. Sensitive data, such as financial data, confidential data, web shopping carts or medical data, is safely and securely transmitted;
3. Site Shield Addon will help improve your SEO rankings. For example, Google prioritizes HTTPS sites over non-secure HTTP sites;
4. Using Site Shield Addon also makes Google Analytics more effective as Referrer data is saved which is not the case if you only use HTTP;
5. Site Shield Addon builds trust with your potential and existing customers. The Padlock symbol that appears beside your URL in a visitor’s browser search box indicates that the site has secure end to end data encryption enabled. This visual symbol is a great way to let your visitors know that you take data security seriously;
6. Installing EverWeb Site Shield Addon is really easy, you just tick a checkbox in EverWeb’s Site Publishing Settings screen! There is no configuration needed. Just publish your entire site once you have checked the ‘Use HTTPS Secure URLs’ checkbox.

To purchase EverWeb Site Shield Addon, just check the Use HTTPS Secure URLs’ checkbox. A dialog box will appear which will guide you through the purchase process.

Contact Forms Enhanced Addon

EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget debuted in EverWeb 2.0 as a replacement for the original Contact Form widget. Whilst you can still use either widget in your site, the Contact Form Advanced widget is:

1. More Secure than the Contact Form widget through the use of SMTP Settings in the Widget Settings.
2. Has 17 different Form Control types so you can control and customize data input in to the form just as you want.
3. Improved SPAM protection. The use of forms in a website is one way in which SPAMmers can infiltrate your email box with SPAM. EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget uses Google’s reCAPTCHA to help reduce this attack vector.
4. Enhanced Form Confirmation and Submission Settings are included so that you can highly customize your form. You can even forward your visitor to a different page in your site once they have clicked on the form’s submit button.
5. Advanced Form Error Validation helps guide visitors if they have not filled out the form correctly and try to send it to you.

The EverWeb Contact Forms Enhanced Addon Advantage

These above features make the Contact Form Advanced widget the perfect tool for form creation in EverWeb. The Contact Forms Enhanced Addon, introduced in EverWeb 3.0, seamlessly integrates with the widget and offers the following advanced features:

1. Easily manage your Contact Form data from within your EverWeb Client Area.
2. Reporting on your Contact Form data is also easy and customizable.
3. Contact Form data can form the basis of mail shot campaigns by exporting the data out in to CSV format.
4. Contact Form data is securely stored on EverWeb’s Servers.
5. Use ‘Calendar’ and ‘Select Time’ Form Controls to create your own in-form calendar which can be used as the basis of a booking system.
6. Your customers can upload files to you from within the form using the ‘File Upload’ Form Control.

To purchase EverWeb Contact Forms Enhanced Addon, add the Contact Forms Advanced widget to your page then click on the ‘Contact Form Enhanced Add-on’ field then click on the ‘Add Contact Form Enhanced Features’ menu option. You will then be guided through the purchase process.

EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon

The most recent addition to EverWeb’s collection of add-ons is SEO Power Up, which debuted in EverWeb 3.4. The new add-on builds upon EverWeb’s existing built in SEO features to giving you more customization options to fine tune and focus your SEO.

EverWeb SEO Power Up lets you add your own keywords to individual pages, set the priority of your pages for SEO purposes and the frequency in which web crawlers crawl your pages. You can even designate pages in your site that you do not want to be included in SEO.

To purchase EverWeb SEO Power Up, just go to our secure online store.

More features will be added to SEO Power Up in the upcoming EverWeb 3.5, as well as a host of new features including site wide search, so check back on our blog or go to the EverWeb Forum for the latest news!

The last 12 months since EverWeb’s 6th anniversary have been incredibly busy as usual! We’ve packed a lot in to four point releases this year giving EverWeb even more great features, great enhancements to existing features, lots of optimizations and even a new product addon!

As we celebrated our sixth anniversary last November, EverWeb 3.0 had just been released. We celebrate our seventh anniversary with the recently released EverWeb 3.4!

Here are just some of the highlights from the world of EverWeb this past year…

Welcome Dark Mode!

One of the most dramatic additions to EverWeb over the last year was the introduction of Dark Mode which came to the product last December. This feature is available to any macOS version that supports dark mode and we think EverWeb looks absolutely gorgeous in the dark!

Parallax Scrolling and Color Overlays

One of the most visually stunning features to come to EverWeb in recent months is the new Parallax Scrolling feature which gives you a great sense of motion when used on full width images in your site. There is no set up needed, you just add your full width image then apply the Parallax Scrolling feature to it from the Shape Options tab!

There’s also a new color overlay option so that you can add a filter to your image. This is a great feature when you want to bring objects in the foreground to the front but need to subdue the background image a bit to do so!

Set Shape As Scroll Position

Scroll Position is a great way to add anchors to your pages in EverWeb. The feature was introduced before we added the Responsive Page Layout to the product, so Scroll Position would not work very well in a responsive website. Not anymore though, as we added a new Set Shape as Scroll Position feature to Scroll Position. Now it is super easy to add an anchor directly to almost any object, in any page layout type, Fixed or Responsive!

SEO Power Up Addon: Talking Your SEO To The Next Level!

EverWeb’s new SEO Power Up Addon takes your SEO to the next level. EverWeb SEO Power Up replaces our old Sitemap Automator product with new and updated features built directly in to EverWeb.

You can now add your own SEO Keywords directly into any page you want. You can also set the importance of your pages using the Priority field and the Change Frequency field tells crawlers how often you expect your pages to be updated. These tools let web crawlers know more about the pages of your site that are important to you.

EverWeb SEO Power Up also creates your website’s XML Sitemap file when you publish your site, and its robots.txt file which helps web crawlers know which pages they can, and cannot, crawl.

The addon is available to all EverWeb customers. If you host with us, you get the extra bonus of built in GZip compression which will make your pages load faster in your client’s browser window. If you have an EverWeb+Hosting 10GB or higher account, EverWeb SEO Power Up is totally free of charge!

To purchase EverWeb SEO Power Up just click on the ‘Optimize & Submit Website to Search Engines checkbox in your website’s Site Publishing Settings. A dialog box will appear to guide you through the purchasing process.

New Additions to Contact Form Advanced Widget

As always the Contact Form Advanced widget gets special attention and this last year was no exception. We added customizable Form Validation so that you can enter your own message if your visitor fails to enter required information in to the form.

In addition, you can now also forward your visitor to a specific page after they have submitted their contact form to you. There is also a new Transparency style available for your contact form,

New Additions for Contact Forms Enhanced Addon!

EverWeb’s popular Contact Forms Enhanced Addon debuted in EverWeb 3.0 creating a super easy way for you to retain contact form data when visitors to your site use its contact forms.

We had a lot of great feedback about this addon and this helped us to make the feature even better than ever. We added totally customizable confirmation emails, the ability to remove branding from submitted emails and most recently in EverWeb 3.4 new Calendar and Set Time Controls to give you more control, and style, over your contact forms.

More Ways to Find Things in Your Project File!

In the last twelve months EverWeb has added more ways for you to find almost anything in your EverWeb Project File. You can now use search to find the web page you want in your project, the asset you want to locate, the widget you want to use and the theme template you want to add. Just use the built in dedicated search boxes!

More Speed, More Optimizations!

As always we have spent a lot of time and effort to make working with EverWeb as fast and easy as possible, even if you have large website projects. We have optimized the performance of our built in widgets dramatically over the last few months as well as making the UI performance slicker than ever!

Publishing added a new ‘auto continue publishing’ feature so that if your website’s publish stalls, the process will automatically try again after a few minutes.

As always we are always optimizing the code that EverWeb generates to create your site so that it is the most efficient as it can be!

These are just some of the highlights of the last year for EverWeb. As usual, your input is always appreciated to help make EverWeb even better. So please tell us what you would like us to add to EverWeb, or improve upon, in the coming twelve months in the Comments Section below!

EverWeb on Social Media

You can also find EverWeb on the following social media platforms:

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

EverWeb’s Preferences are used to define systemwide settings and controls. As such the Preferences that you set will apply to all of your EverWeb projects. You can access the Preferences window through the EverWeb-> Preferences menu option or by pressing the Cmd+, shortcut keys.

The Preferences window is a floating window so you can keep it open if needed whilst working on your website project. You can minimise the window using the yellow minimise button in the top left hand corner of the window. This will minimise the window to the dock. Click on the window in the dock to return it to its pre-minimized state. If you have the Preferences window open, but cannot find it (e.g. you have many other windows covering it), use EverWeb’s Window menu then select Preferences. To close the Preferences window, use the red close button in the top left hand corner of the window.

There are four Preferences tabs: Account, General, Publishing and Backup. In this blog we take an in-depth look at the first tab…

The Account Tab

The first tab in the Preferences window is the Account tab. This is the tab that you use to login to your EverWeb account. It is the same account as the one that you set up originally when you purchase (or try out) EverWeb.

Creating and Using an EverWeb Account

If are evaluating EverWeb and have downloaded the software to try it out, use the ‘Create Account’ link to create your own EverWeb account. Click on the Account dropdown menu and select ‘Register’. Enter your details and click the box to accept the terms and conditions before clicking the ‘Register’ button to create the account. Once you have an account you can use it on the EverWeb Support Forums. The account you create can also used if you decide to purchase EverWeb at a later time.

When you have created an account use the email and password that you have set up in the account registration form in the Email and Password fields of the Account tab. Click on the ‘Sign In’ button to log in to your EverWeb account. You can opt to add your email/password details to your Apple account’s keychain (which is recommended).

If at any time you need to change your password, you can do so by using the ‘Forgot Password’ hyperlink. Follow the instructions to reset your password.

Usually, you will always stay signed in to EverWeb. There is no need to sign out.

The Accounts Dialog Box

Once you have clicked on the ‘Sign In’ button, the ‘Accounts’ dialog box will display information about the services that you have associated with your EverWeb account together with when they are due to expire. Note that the expiry date for EverWeb relates to the technical support and updates that you receive. If you do not renew your support and services plan after the expiry date, you will still be able to use the original EverWeb product that you purchased. You will, however, not receive any product updates or qualify for 7×24 technical support.

If you have an EverWeb+Hosting account, you will see on the left of the account name a triangle dropdown symbol. If you click on this symbol, you will see all of the domains that are associated with your account.

In addition to your EverWeb account you may also see additional accounts e.g. if you have purchased the Contact Forms Enhanced you will see this listed below your EverWeb+Hosting account.

Managing Your Account

When signed in to your EverWeb account, you have access to the ‘Manage Account’ button. When you click on this button you will be taken to your EverWeb Account profile in a browser window. Once you have logged in to your account, you will be able to administer your customer profile and all the services attached to your EverWeb account.

Other Account Tab Options

The Account tab has two other options. The first is ‘Use Secure Publishing’. If you have connection problems when trying to publish your website, deselecting this option may help your website to publish.

The last option ‘Automatically Check For Updates’ was introduced to EverWeb in version <find out> When a new version of EverWeb is released, when you next log in to the product, you will be asked if you would like to install the update if you are not currently on the latest version. If you dismiss this reminder, EverWeb will prompt you again a few days later if you have the ‘Automatically Check For Updates’ box checked.

In the next blog, we will take an in-depth look at the Preferences window’s General tab.

EverWeb on Social Media

You can also find EverWeb on the following social media platforms:

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram