As we start the new year, for many of us it is a time to look towards new challenges or to update and refresh things in our lives. When it comes to your website, the holiday period can also be a time to inspire you to update your own site for the new year. If you have not kept up with the updates to EverWeb in 2024, check out our EverWeb’s 11th Anniversary post and also our post on the recently released EverWeb version 4.3!
One of the new features in EverWeb may be something that you would want to add to your own site – scrollable Textboxes! This is a great new feature that can help you save space on your page, giving your page a cleaner appearance rather than been cluttered with text.
Before You Begin…
You can add Scrollable TextBoxes to either fixed width or responsive pages in your site. The only other requirement is that you are using EverWeb 4.3, or higher, for macOS or Microsoft Windows.
Creating a Scrollable TextBox For A Fixed Width Page
First let’s look at adding a TextBox to a fixed width page, typically this will use the Centered Layout page layout type. You can find out what type of Page Layout you are currently using in the Page Layout section of the Page Settings tab in the Inspector Window.
Add a TextBox to your page using the TextBox button in the Toolbar. Next, either type in the text that you want in to the TextBox, or copy and paste the text you want in from another source.
To make the Textbox scrollable, you will need to size the TextBox so that some of the text within it is no longer visible. By default, when you add text to a TextBox it will always resize itself so that all text is displayed. Usually this is what we would want, but in this case we do not want this as we want to hide some of the text so our visitor has to scroll the TextBox.
To achieve this, first make sure that the TextBox is selected. You can see if it is already selected if there are grab handles displayed around its edges. If not, simply click once inside the TextBox.
With the TextBox selected, go to the Inspector Window and click on the Text Inspector icon. At the bottom of the Text inspector, you will see the Export Options section. In this section check the option for Scrollable Text.
After setting the Scrollable Text option, go back to the TextBox and take one of the grab handles and resize the Textbox so that some of its text is no longer visible. That is all you have to do! Once you have resized the TextBox, you can try out the scaling by previewing the page. When using Preview, place the mouse cursor over the TextBox and use the mouse to do the scrolling action.
Adding a Scrollable TextBox to a Responsive Page
The basics of creating a scrollable TextBox are the same for both fixed width and responsive page layouts, but with a responsive page layout there are a couple of things that you may need to bear in mind.
If you add a Textbox to your page as a full width object, you can resize the height of the TextBox using the grab handle at the top center or bottom center of the TextBox. If you want to reduce the width of the TextBox, go to the Metrics Inspector and use the Maximum Width and Margin settings to constrain the TextBox width.
Alternatively, you may have placed the TextBox within a Responsive Row widget. In this case, you may want the TextBox to be of a fixed width. In this case, you will have to make sure that the Full Width option is not checked. This will allow you to use the Width field instead so that you can fix the width of the TextBox within the Responsive Row. For best results in this case, you would probably fix the width of the TextBox to about 320 pixels so that the TextBox will be able to display on any mobile device.
Test out your Scrollable TextBox page using Preview. If you are using Fixed Width TextBoxes within a Responsive Row widget, you might want to use EverWeb’s new Preview QR Code Mobile feature to make sure that the fixed width, scrollable TextBox looks correct on a mobile device.
Scrollable TextBoxes are super easy to create and their versatility can help you save space on your site’s pages and make it easier for visitors to scroll text on mobile devices.
EverWeb on Social Media
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With the Christmas holiday season just in the rear view mirror, our attention quickly swings in to preparing for the new year! So now may be a great time to review your EverWeb made website to prepare it for 2025!
Reviewing Your Website’s Performance
It can be very difficult to critique your own website objectively. Perhaps the best way to start is to think about whether your site has met its objectives over the last year. You may want to measure this by the number of visits people have made to your home page in the last year, or by sales generated from your site, enquiries received from your contact form, newsletter signups and so on.
Once you have reviewed the metric, or metrics, that mean the most to you, or your business, you can decide whether you need to make any changes to your website or not to improve it for 2025.
What Works, What Doesn’t…
Once you have finished reviewing your site, make a list of what’s good about it and what you want to improve upon. This may also be a good time to get feedback from family, friends or colleagues as well, but make sure that this kind of feedback is honest and constructively critical. You may also have had some feedback over the last year from your customers or clients that can be added in to the mix as well.
After collecting your feedback and some self reflection, you will hopefully have an idea of what is good about your site and what needs to be updated, changed, removed or added! For example, if you are selling products or services, do you need to remove some products, update your product descriptions or images, or add in new products or services?
Getting Ready For Change!
Now that you have listed the things that you want to change in your site, it is time to get to work. This may be a simple task, for example, you may just need to collect together images and product descriptions then work through your site’s pages to update them all properly. You may also want to review your text too. If your existing text is time sensitive (e.g. includes event dates, time stamped blog posts etc.) you should update the text. There’s nothing worse than a site that looks like it has not been updated for a long time.
If you are adding new features, or wanting to revamp the look of your site you may need to look at your websites that inspire you, or to EverWeb third party widget providers to give your site a fresh look and better interaction with your site’s visitors. if you want to improve your site’s SEO you may want to look at EverWeb’s SEO Power Up Addon. To improve your site’s security checkout EverWeb Site Shield Addon and if you are looking to start a membership or subscription service, there is also EverWeb Membership Sites which you can start at no cost.
If you want to revamp your site look, consider changing the fonts and/or colors the site uses or update the images that your site uses e.g. check out EverWeb Free Stock Photo Library on the Media button in the EverWeb Toolbar for new images to use in your site.
When preparing to update your website, we recommend that you make sure that you are using the most up to date version of EverWeb. In this way, you will get all of its latest features (Check out our EverWeb’s 11th Anniversary feature for more on this!) Finally, do not forget to back up your EverWeb Project file at regular intervals and before you make any changes to your site.
Implementing Your Changes
Now is the time to implement your updates and changes! When doing so, we recommend that you implement EverWeb’s Paragraph Styles feature to your existing text. This will help save you a lot of time in the future. When you apply a Paragraph Style to your text, if you change the paragraph style at a later date, any text that uses the style will automatically update.
When adding new or updated images to your site remember that they should be optimized so as not to drag down your page load speed.
If you have updated your version of EverWeb, you may also want to check the built in widgets for any updates that may add new or updated features. In addition, check out newly introduced features to the product as well such as video backgrounds and new shape fill options such as Map Fill, Video Fill and Slideshow Fill. All such features may help you streamline your site whilst updating it for the new year!
Questions, Problems, Issues? We Are Here To Help!
When updating your website, it is possible that you may get stuck implementing some of your changes or you may have a question about how to achieve something in EverWeb. If you need help it is here for you! For a start there is the EverWeb User Manual that is updated for every release of EverWeb, both on Mac and Windows. Just go to the Help Menu in EverWeb, then choose the ‘EverWeb PDF Manual’ option. If you need more help. than the User Manual can give, you can always post your problem or question on the EverWeb Discussion Forum. There are also plenty of EverWeb video tutorials available on a wide range of subjects, but if you still need help, our Support Team is happy to help as well.
Final Steps! Publishing and Testing!
Once you have finished your changes and updates, we recommend that you preview your site before you publish it to the Internet. Don’t forget to run EverWeb’s spell checker through your site’s text before you publish to catch any possible typo’s!
Once you have finished checking your updated site with Preview, publish your site and go through its pages to check that everything has published properly, that your pages load speedily and that all of your page links work properly.
… oh, and don’t forget to update your copyright year to 2025 on the first day of the new year!
Updating you site for the new year helps keeps it fresh for you and your visitors and will hopefully generate new interest in your business in 2025!
Happy New Year!
EverWeb on Social Media
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The recently introduced EverWeb 4.3 for macOS, or Windows brings a host of new and updated features to the product, with the headline feature being the introduction of the new PayPal Modern Widget!
Our new widget uses the latest PayPal button API, adding more options for how your customers can pay you. This means you have more control and flexibility to offer different payment methods, making it easier for visitors to purchase products and services from your website. You can now offer Venmo payments in the US and local European and Australian payment methods including PayPal’s pay later options.
The new widget also enables you to sell subscription services as well as products, from your site.
Before we get started with the PayPal Modern widget, remember that EverWeb also includes the PayPal Widget. We recommend that you check out this widget as well in case it is more appropriate for you to use our original widget rather than the new PayPal Modern widget which we will be exploring below..
Getting Started With The PayPal Modern Widget
To use PayPal Modern widget, make sure that you have signed up for a PayPal account, if you do not have one already. Once you have a Paypal account set up you can add the widget to your page in EverWeb. If you are using a Center Aligned page layout, you can just drag and drop the widget on to the page and size and position it where you want. If you are using a Responsive page layout, you will need to add the widget in to a Responsive Row widget. To do this, drag and drop a Responsive Row widget on to the page, then drag and drop the PayPal Modern Widget in to the Responsive Row that you just added, or in to an existing Responsive Row.
Once you have placed the widget on your page, choose the button type from the dropdown menu. You can choose either Purchase for goods and services, or Subscription if you are offering a subscription service.
The PayPal Client ID
After selecting the button type that you want to use, the next step is to enter your PayPal Client ID in to the PayPal Client ID field. If you do not have a PayPal Client ID, click on the “Get Client ID” button. This will take you to PayPal’s Developer website. Although the developer’s website has a lot of tools to use, we are only interested in generating a PayPal Client ID that can be used in the PayPal Modern widget.
At certain times, you may be required to log in to your PayPal account e.g. when first accessing the developer website. Once you have logged in, you will be taken to the PayPal Developer Dashboard.
Click on the Create App button, then enter a name for the app in the App field. it does not matter what name you choose here, so you could call it e.g. ‘My first app’. After entering a name for your app, click on the Create App button to finish.
The next screen you will be taken to is where you will see the Client ID which has been automatically generated for you. All you need to do here is to click on the Copy icon to copy the Client ID to the Clipboard.
After copying your Client ID to the Clipboard, you can logout of the PayPal Developer app and go back to EverWeb. Paste the Client ID in to the PayPal Client ID field. If you are not going to use the widget to add a Subscription Plan, you can skip the next section and go to the section ‘Completing the Widget Settings’ below.
Creating a Subscription Plan
If you are going to be using the PayPal Modern widget to create a subscription service, you will need to first create a subscription plan in PayPal itself. When you create a subscription plan, it will have its own PayPal Subscription Plan ID.
In the PayPal Modern widget, remember to set the Button Type in the Widget Settings to Subscription before you start. Next click on the click on the Create Subscription Plan ID button. If asked to, login to your PayPal account. You will then be taken to the Subscriptions home page.
Begin by clicking on the Getting Started button. if this is the first time that you are accessing the Subscriptions page you may see a short slideshow first before being taken to the Manage Subscriptions page.
PayPal will guide you step by step to create your subscription service plan. Once the plan has been set up, you can either save the plan you have created as a draft, or you can turn the plan on. After creating your plan, copy the Plan ID to the clipboard, then return to EverWeb and paste the Plan ID in to the widget’s Plan ID field.
Completing the Widget Settings
After entering your PayPal Client ID and, optionally, your Subscription Plan ID, you can now complete the rest of the Widget Settings…
Product Name
Use this field to enter the name of the product or subscription service that you are adding to the page. When you update the Product Name field, the widget updates automatically in the Editor Window. If you want to change the font of the Product Name (and the font of the Product Pricing and Currency fields), click on the Fonts button in the Toolbar and select the font that you require. The font size is automatically set for you.
Product Details
The Product Details section of the widget is where you add a detailed description of the product, or subscription service, that you are selling. The description is added using the Styled Text Editor so you can use predefined Paragraph Styles to automatically style your descriptive text.
At this point, you probably will want to add an image of the product, or subscription. To do this, scroll down to the Appearance section of the Widget Settings. Click on the Product Image field’s ‘Choose…’ button to select the image that you want to use.
Product Pricing
Enter the price of the product or subscription service, the currency used, and the country in which you operate your business in. Note that you can only use one currency per page so make sure all PayPal Modern widgets that you add to the page use the same currency.
EverWeb also lets you specify which Payment Sources you would like to use, by checking the appropriate payment sources in the Payment Sources list box.
If a tax rate is applicable to your product or service, enter the Tax Rate in as a percentage.
If the product or subscription is something that buyers can purchase multiples of, check the ‘Allow Multiple Quantity’ field,
The Quantity label by default will display ‘Quantity’, but you can change this if you want. In addition, you can also set a maximum quantity a buyer can purchase in the Max Quantity field.
Options
The Options section of the Widget Settings is used when you are selling items that have different options available. In my example, I am selling a standard lawnmower model, and also a deluxe version, so I can list both as options to buy. Start by clicking on the ‘Add Options with Price’ button. Enter the option that you want, in my example this is the standard lawnmower model. Next, enter the price of the product. Now click on the ‘Add Options with Price’ button again, and add the deluxe lawnmower model and its price.
The second option allows you to do the same thing as just described, but without the price difference. So for example, in this case I could add different color choices as my options.
Shipping Options
If you want to add a shipping cost to the product check the ‘Enable Shipping’ checkbox. Click on the ‘Add Shipping Method’ button to add a shipping cost option. For example, you could add a standard shipping and express shipping options.
In addition, you can allow shipping outside of your own country by checking the ‘Allow International Shipping’ checkbox. You can also allow shipping by quantity, by clicking on the ‘Calculate Shipping Per Quantity’ checkbox. Furthermore, you can add a Handling fee to the customer’s purchase using the ‘Handling Fee’ option. The fee can also be calculated by quantity if you want. To set up International shipping, or handling, based on quantity you will need to do this in PayPal itself.
Discounts
If you want to add discount possibilities you can do so in the Discounts section. A discount can be applied as a percentage of the product price, or as a fixed amount.
Directing and Redirecting Your Customers
Use the Actions section of the widget, to redirect your customers to a ‘Thank You Page’ or to a ‘Cancelled Page’ that you have created in your site. This is useful to do as it will keep your customers within your website after their purchase.
If your customers are not redirected automatically back to your website after their purchase, you may need to set up in PayPal the redirect back to your website after the customer purchase. To activate this, log in to PayPal then go to your PayPal Account Settings.
Under the Website Payments option, make sure that your Website Preferences are set to ‘bring customers back to my website after they pay with PayPal’.
One you have completed your settings, preview or publish your site to test that the features you have added work properly.
The new PayPal Modern Widget opens up a new world of possibilities to PayPal users by allowing subscription services for your customers to purchase in addition to product sales. The new widget also gives you more control over the different payment methods that you may want to offer your customers.
EverWeb on Social Media
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We are thrilled to announce the immediate release of EverWeb version 4.3 for macOS and Windows.
Which Version of EverWeb is for You?
EverWeb 4.3 is available to you on the following Operating Systems:
If you are running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11.
If you are running an Intel Mac running macOS High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma or Sequoia.
If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or Sonoma, EverWeb will run natively without the need to use Rosetta 2.
Older Operating Systems can run the following versions of EverWeb:
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.
EverWeb 4.3 Includes…
[NEW] EverWeb for Mac is certified for use with macOS Sequoia (macOS 15.)
[NEW] The new PayPal Modern widget supports the new PayPal button API, enabling additional payment options.
[NEW] You can choose to use mini icon buttons for Layout and Settings in EverWeb-> Settings-> General in EverWeb for Mac, and Edit-> Options-> General in EverWeb for Windows.
[NEW] Justify Text option in the Text Inspector.
[NEW] QR Code for Mobile Preview lets you easily preview your website on a mobile device by scanning a QR code.
[NEW] Fonts in the font dropdown list in the Inspector are displayed using their corresponding font style on macOS.
[NEW] AI Bot Control. Prevent AI bots from scanning and indexing your website content in the -> File, Edit Publishing Settings menu option.
[NEW] Customization options are available for the Block AI Bots feature. You can now edit robots.txt and .htaccess files directly from the Site Settings screen. EverWeb SEO Powerup Addon Required.
[NEW] You can now drag and drop stock photos to Inspector-> Shape Options-> Slide Show.
[NEW] TextBoxes now support scrollable text. If the text exceeds the height of the TextBox, visitors can scroll through the content. This option can be found in the Inspector->Text -> Export Options -> Scrollable Text.
[IMPROVED] Most of EverWeb’s built in widgets have been translated in to all the languages that EverWeb support.
[IMPROVED] EverWeb now strips some unprintable characters in image file names when importing assets.
[IMPROVED] Improved preview in Google Chrome browser.
[IMPROVED] Better font handling when switching projects from Mac to Windows.
[FIX] Fixed issues with the spell checker on Windows.
[FIX] Fixed images getting distorted in some widgets.
[FIX] Fixed a line spacing issue with lines with no text in text objects.
[FIX] Fixed EverWeb SiteShield Add On validation when publishing to a third party website.
[FIX] Incompatible characters are now properly stripped from image file names to prevent loading issues during publishing.
[FIX] Fixed an issue with Global Styles used in lists in blog posts.
[FIX] Fixed issue with the backslash (“\”) character in blog posts.
[FIX] Fixed an issue with moving all objects below the selected object by holding the Control and Shift keys on Windows while dragging an object.
[FIX] Fixed an issue with Image Galleries not being clickable on preview and the pagination when the pagination is left aligned.
[FIX] Fixes some issues with the Navigation Menu widget.
[FIX] Fixed issues with Animated GIF widgets so they work properly on publish.
[FIX] Fixes an issues where icons were not showing in the Image Gallery widget.
[FIX] Fixes an issue when exporting TextBoxes that include line breaks.
[FIX] Fonts appear properly when creating a new website.
How To Update EverWeb for Windows
You can easily update EverWeb for Windows by either:
Launching EverWeb then opening a project file. From the Help menu at the top of the screen select ‘Check for Update’ or by
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 EverWeb for macOS
You can easily update EverWeb for macOS by either:
Launching EverWeb then going to the EverWeb menu at the top of the screen and selecting ‘Check for Update’ or by
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 EverWeb disk on the desktop by dragging it to the Trashcan.
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, from your Edit-> Options menu on Window,s or 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.
The expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” is truer today than ever before. Adding the right images to your EverWeb made website can save you time and effort that would be used on crafting text that perhaps, is unnecessary. When you have found the images that you want to use, adding them to your EverWeb website project, is easy, but before you do, there are some important things you may want to check first. Here are some recommendations for preparing your image before you import them in to EverWeb.
Optimizing Image Size
When choosing images to display in your website, always check to see if any of them should be optimized before adding them to your project file. Properly optimized images will display properly on screen and will avoid problems such as dragging on the page’s loading speed in the browser. As most display devices today are ‘retina ready’, i.e. can display high quality, high definition images, you can easily create retina ready images for your site.
Optimized images are those that are of the smallest file size possible, but in the highest quality possible. For example, you may have a photo file that you want to use that is 16MB in size, 4096 pixels wide and has a resolution of 600 dots per inch. This would be a large file to load on a page, and if I had many image files that had the same type of attributes, my page load time would seriously drag. Additionally, the consequence of using such large files would impact your website traffic, your SEO and your website’s server resources.
The first step to optimizing the image is to decide how to scale the image width. In our example, the original width is 4096 pixels. To display this on my website I can reduce the width down to 400 pixels wide. However, as most displays today are retina image, I will make he image 800 pixels wide instead.
Use an image editor, such as Apple’s Preview app on a Mac, or just open the image file in Windows, to adjust the image’s dimensions. When changing the width dimension from 4096 to 800 pixels, remember to check the image editor’s ‘constrain proportions’ option. This will keep the image height in proportion to the image width during the resizing.
In our example, the image is scaled down to 800 pixels wide, and not 400 pixels wide. This is so that it will appear properly on retina quality devices.
Optimizing Image Resolution
Reducing image dimensions can bring down the size of the image file considerably. In addition to this, you can also check the image resolution. In our example, the resolution is set as 600 which is overkill when displaying an image on screen. Typically, this resolution would be used if you were printing the image. So, we can reduce the image resolution from 600 dpi (dots per inch) to, for example, 72 dpi or 144 dpi, which should be more than adequate for displaying the image on your website.
If you are using image editing software, see if the software has an ‘Export for Web’ option. This will optimize the image file when you save it. Remember to save the changed photo as a new file so you do not overwrite your original file as you may need it later.
When saving your changes, you can reduce its file size further if the image is in a PNG file format by saving it as JPG format instead. PNG files are useful if you want to preserve a transparent background, but if this is not necessary then a JPG file type will be preferable for display on the web.
When you use you image on your page in EverWeb. resize it so that it is equal to, or less than, half the original saved size.
Use Image Optimisation Software
Use image optimization apps to further reduce the file size of your images. Many image optimization apps strip away non-essential data from the file without noticeable degradation in image quality. Obviously use such software before importing the image file in to EverWeb.
Using Edited Photos
Image editing software can be very advantageous for enhancing an original image file. When editing such your image, the end result can be a much larger file. Remember to check the file size of an edited file before importing it in to EverWeb. As we mentioned previously, check to see if your app has an ‘Export to Web’ option.
Naming Your Image Files
Giving your image files good descriptive names has advantages. First, they will be easier to locate on your computer or in the cloud. Properly named files will also make it easier for you to find them in EverWeb’s Assets List.In addition, a descriptive file name will benefit your website’s SEO. Where possible name, or rename your image files importing them in to EverWeb. This will maximize your SEO. If you have already imported your images in to EverWeb, you can still rename them in the Assets List. Just double click on the file name in the Assets List to do so. Doing this will still be of benefit to your SEO although renaming the image file before importing it in to EverWeb is more efficient and effective.
Time To Publish…
When you come to publish your site, you can further optimize your images using the project file’s Site Publishing Settings. To access these features, either click on the project file name in the Web Page List or use the File-> Edit Publishing Settings option. Check the option ‘Export Optimized Images’. This will further optimize your project file images but requires EverWeb 4.1 or later.
You can also improve your page loading times when using images, but selecting an image on your page, then using the Shape Options-> Fill -> Lazy Loading option.
Optimizing image for the web is an important consideration when you use images in your website! Make sure that you do your best to make your images lean for the web!
If you have any questions about this post, or anything EverWeb, please let us know in the Comments below!
EverWeb on Social Media
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Over the last 12 months, EverWeb has added numerous features to enhance your website building experience, boost your website’s performance, and make designing your site more flexible than ever! Our releases over the last year included EverWeb version 4.1 in January 2024, EverWeb version 4.2 in June and the maintenance release, version 4.2.1 in July. We are currently wrapping up the testing of the new EverWeb 4.3 for Mac and Windows release which should be available in the next few days. We’ve got some great new features coming in this release together with an all new widget!
We have also been working hard behind the scenes over the last twelve months, laying the foundations for some awesome new features that we will be showcasing in the next twelve months!
In the meantime, here’s a review of what happened in our 11th Anniversary Year!
Your Wish Lists Items Fulfilled!
Adding features to EverWeb that you want to see is always a priority. Your suggestions, via the EverWeb User Forum, are always welcomed and we are always super interested in hearing from you about what you would like to see in future versions of EverWeb. Over the past twelve months a lot of these ‘wish list’ features have been added! This includes the new Draft Page Mode, Lazy Loading Image files and the ability to drag and drop pages between different project files.
There are more wish list features that we are going to fulfil over the next twelve months, starting with the addition of Justified Text in TextBoxes in the upcoming EverWeb version 4.3.
Expanded and Enhanced Shape Options…
It has been a great time over the last two years for EverWeb’s Shape Options Fill options! Firstly, Fill Slideshow debuted as a new Fill option in EverWeb 3.6, followed by new Map Fill and Video Fill options that were introduced with EverWeb 4.2. These new options allow you to add slideshows, maps and videos to most object types and in the case of Map Fill, you have expanded mapping options that go further with Google Maps than EverWeb’s inbuilt Google Maps widget can!
More Video Options Come To EverWeb!
Adding more video related features to EverWeb has also been something that we have wanted to add for you for a while. EverWeb version 4.1 and 4.2 made this a reality with the aforementioned Video Fill on the Shape Options tab and also the arrival of video fill for the Browser Background. Again, we added lots of options for this feature so you can easily get the video background as you want it on your site!
User Interface and User Experience Improvements and Enhancements
Since EverWeb’s 10th Anniversary, we also took time to make EverWeb easier by adding a settings cog to most objects so that you no longer need to mouse over to the Inspector Window. We also introduced a Toolbar for the Responsive Row widget, and enhanced many settings such as new alignment options for Page Background and Shape Option’s Image Fill feature.
In addition, the SEO Check Page addon was updated to include more SEO features, and WebP support also came to EverWeb to help make your pages load even faster in any browser that supports this feature.
All of our updates reflect our ongoing commitment to you to make designing your website easier and more professional. Please let us know your feedback and what you would like to see in future EverWeb updates! And don’t forget EverWeb 4.3 will be available soon!
Thank you as always for your continued support!
# Team EverWeb
EverWeb on Social Media
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In the first part of this blog, How EverWeb Can Keep Visitors Interested in Your Site, we looked at how you should prepare before going live with your EverWeb made website. We also looked at how to create an SEO strategy so that your website’s chances of being found on the Internet are the best that they can be. In this second, concluding part, we look at things that you can do in EverWeb from a design and content approach that will help keep visitors interested in your site.
Create and Maintain a Dynamic Landing Page
Perhaps the most important page of your website is the Landing page, also known as your site’s Home page. This page, typically, will be the first page which new and returning visitors will access. So, it is important to keep it up to date. For example, anything that is time sensitive should only be on the landing page whilst it is relevant. If you have, for example, an event on your page that is three years old, chances are that your visitors will think that your site is no longer active and may stop visiting you!
New Content Creation Is Important for SEO
Adding new, fresh content to your website is an important ingredient in keeping visitors coming back to your website. Use the Home page of your site to highlight what is new and trending. Updating at least the Home page of your website on a regular basis is a simple, effective way of telling your visitors that your site is active and alive and kicking! How many websites do you know of that are not updated for years? If you are selling goods and services on your site, this is doubly important.
When creating content for the Home page of your site, make sure your message is clear and simple, typically with only one objective in the message. Clear and simple is always best. Avoid just updating your Home page just for the sake of it, and whilst using SEO Keywords on your Home page is great, do not sacrifice your content for the sake of SEO.
Blogging – Is It For You and Your Audience?
One great way to add new content is to add a blog to your site. This can become a tool that will hook your visitors on your site if you add content that is fresh, relevant and interesting to your audience. A regular blog is something of an investment and it is not for everyone but if it is right for your audience then it is worth trialling.
Remember To Keep EverWeb Up To Date!
One other vital factor in keeping visitors interested in your site is to keep EverWeb up to date. In addition to maintenance and stability releases, major point version releases of EverWeb will bring new features, or enhanced existing features, for you to use. EverWeb usually gets three to four major point releases throughout the year so don’t get left behind!
Consider Revamping Your Site From Time To Time
Sometimes keeping your visitors interested in your site can just come down to revamping your site from time to time. Changes in colors, fonts and layout can have a huge impact – both positive and negative – so figuring out what works for your target market is important. When it comes to design in EverWeb, remember to use Paragraph Styles in all of your pages. We also recommend that you assign Document Colors to your site as well. When it comes to revamping your site, you only need to update your Paragraph Style and Document Color defaults which will then ripple throughout your site, saving you lots of time and effort!
Spreading the Word About Your Website
One of the best ways of getting more traction to your website is by spreading the word through social media such as Facebook pages, Instagram, Pinterest, LnkedIn and other social media platforms that are appropriate to your business, or interest group. Linking your website’s content to social media is a good way of keeping visitors and customers informed and up to date about your site and business.
Remember as well that social media is not for everyone either, again think of what best suits your audience. For example, including an email newsletter sign up Contact Form in your website. Creating a regular newsletter may be a better alternative to social media and blogging for some audiences. If you choose to go the newsletter route, you can use EverWeb’s Contact Form Enhanced addon to manage the contact forms that are submitted to you from the Contact Form Advanced widget.
Keeping Visitors Interested: Final Take Aways…
There are a number of different tools within EverWeb that you can use to help keep your website live and fresh to your current visitors as well as potential new visitors. If you run a business over the Internet, remember that your website is your calling card so needs attention!
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When you build your website in EverWeb it’s a great feeling to finally publish it to the Internet for the whole world to see. All those hours of effort you put in to designing and building your site are rewarded when you ‘Go Live’. So does this mean that it is now time to sit back and let your site do the work that you intended it to do? It’s a tempting thought, but the reality is that going live is only really the start of the journey…
Is Your Website Achieving Its Objectives?
Anyone who builds a website is doing so for a purpose. Behind the purpose will be one or more specific goals or objectives that the website should meet, both now and in the future. Once your website has gone live, you should check if its goals are being met, or if they need to be modified, on a regular basis. It is also important to think about how your website will need adapt in the future to meet ongoing changes in business, or personal, goals and objectives.
Fix Issues Before They Become Problems
After going live, the most immediate task for any website developer will be to fix any issues that may have come to light after go live, as quickly as possible. The best test of how any website is going to work is when it goes live on the Internet. Obviously, it is important to test your site as thoroughly as possible before go live as this should help iron out most, if not all, potential issues or problems.
Prior to going live, your testing phase is also a good time to double check your site’s workflow. Is your site easy to use and to navigate? This is an important part of your site’s development. If your site is difficult to navigate you will probably lose you visitors once it has gone live. Remember as well to check all of the links in your pages and navigation menus.
In addition to looking at your site’s workflow, also make sure that you include a ‘404 Page Not Found‘ page to your site’s pages. The 404 page appears if a visitor clicks on a link to a page that does not exist or cannot be found. Using a 404 page in your site helps keep the visitor within your site and helps you direct them back to another page within your site e.g. your 404 page could include a button to take the visitor back to your Home page. In EverWeb, add your 404 page to your site in the Site Publishing Settings page which can be accessed from the File-> Edit Publishing Settings menu option.
When it comes to rooting out potential problems before you go live, often developers publish the site to a ‘test’ area on Internet until all issues have been resolved. This is as close to a Go Live as you can get. Once any problems have been resolved, the site can then be published to its true URL for Go Live.
The final way of checking for any potential issues on your site is to test it once it has gone live and to look out for any feedback from the site’s visitors about things that do not work, or work in unexpected ways. It may be possible that you cannot test some features using a test setup and Go Live is the only way to try out some of your sites features. In this case, whenever possible, fix any such problems as soon as possible. This will add credibility and professionalism to your site. If a visitor to your site posts an issue on social media, respond quickly, courteously and positively as possible. Also remember to update those who flagged the issues as to the progress in fixing the problem they highlighted. This approach is good PR for you even though if it is hard work at the time.
Get Your Website’s Stats!
Once your site is up and running, you can find out how interested visitors are in it by analyzing your visitor statistics. If you have an EverWeb+Hosting account, you can access your site stats through your EverWeb Client Area. If you use your own Hosting Provider, please contact them for more information on getting your stats.
Using your visitor statistics, over time, will detail how your site traffic is holding up. It is also useful to check your stats after you have made any major changes to your site as this may indicate whether the changes you have made have been successful or not. Site statistics can also be affected by your site’s SEO in relationship to Google, Microsoft Bing, Alexa and other search engines algorithms.
Is Your SEO Strategy Working?
Often you will attract visitors by having your site found in internet searches. Your site’s visitor statistics is a good indicator as to whether your site’s SEO strategy is working. If your SEO strategy is working properly your chances of being found in an Internet search will be better.
SEO can be tricky to evaluate, as any changes that Google (or other search engine providers) search algorithms may affect your site’s traffic. As such, monitoring traffic on a regular basis may provide you with valuable insights in to whether your SEO is on target or not.
For more information about SEO in EverWeb, either follow our SEO for EverWeb Video Course or check out the chapter on SEO in the EverWeb User Manual. Additionally, you can also fine tune your SEO using EverWeb’s SEO Power Up Addon.
Keeping Your Visitors Interested: Initial Take Aways…
Keeping visitors interested in your site is a constant task that needs attending to. If you fail to do so, over time you will find that the number of visitors to your site will decline. In addition, you should also review at your SEO strategy on a regular basis to make sure that you are still in synch with search engine algorithms and that you are targeting your market audience properly.
In the next post we will be focusing on website design and content as ways to keep your visitors interested in your site. Hooking visitors to your site is key to retaining and growing your site’s traffic and your business!
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The new global styles feature that debuted with the release of EverWeb 4.0 makes setting up default font styles and color palettes for your site easy and flexible. You can now define all of the text styles that you want to use in your EverWeb project file in one place as well as define the color pallete that you want to use for your site.
We recommend setting up your global styles as one of the first things you do when you create a new website project file. If you already have a project file, that is also no problem as you can apply global styles to any existing pages of your site.
In this post we are going to look at how to create global text styling and document colors.
Accessing Global Styles…
To access a project file’s global styles you will need to be using EverWeb 4.0 or higher, for Windows or Mac. Once you have opened your project file, go to the Format-> Default Styles menu option. The default styles dialog box will appear.
About Default Settings…
In the top left hand corner of the dialog box are the project file’s Default Settings. These settings are found in all versions of EverWeb and they set default the site’s default font family, font size and color for TextBoxes. It is also where you set up the defaults that you want to use for Shape Objects and Hyperlinks.
Note that if you change these settings they will be applied to any new TextBoxes, Shapes and so forth, but will not affect any existing objects.
When finished changing your Default Settings, click on Save. Your changes will be applied to any new object or hyperlink that you create.
Preferred Fonts
To the right of the Default Settings is the Preferred Fonts column. Preferred Fonts are used by everWeb’s Styled Text Editor that is found in widgets such as the Text Section, FlexBox and PayPal widgets. By default this column is filled with nine web safe fonts. You can add fonts to the list by selecting the font and font style you want from the dropdown menus below the list of fonts, then clicking on the Add button.
As with all list boxes in EverWeb you can move the fonts in the list simply by dragging the font you want to move from its current location and dropping it where you want it in the list.
To delete fonts from the list, first select the font you want to delete then press the backspace key. If you have used a font that you have deleted, the text will default back to Arial.
When finished with your changes click on Save.
Paragraph Styles
In the second row of settings you will find the defaults for your Project’s Paragraph Styles. You can apply paragraph styling to any text in a TextBox, text used in the Styled Text Editor in some of EverWeb’s widgets, or text within Blog Posts in the Blog Post Editor. By default there are eight predefined Paragraph Styles. To change the name of a Paragraph Style, double click on the name of the Paragraph Style you want to change, edit the name, then press Enter to finish.
Click once on the Paragraph Style to manage its properties. For example, click on ‘Secondary Body’ to select it. Use the Font Settings in the middle column to change the styling of the selected Paragraph Style.
One of the great new additions to EverWeb 4.0 is the addition of scalable text for TextBoxes. In the Default Settings dialog box, set the Minimum Font Size that you want the Paragraph Style to have e.g. 16 point. Next, set the maximum font size for the Paragraph Style using the Font Size field to the right of the Font Style dropdown e.g. 24 point. Now you have set up the Paragraph Style to automatically scale the text between 16 and 24 point depending on the device the text is being displayed upon.
Click Save when finished with your changes. When you apply the Paragraph Style to your text, it will automatically scale if needed. in a nice and smooth way.
When you set up your Paragraph Styles you also have the option to use a Back Up Font if your main Paragraph Style font is not available. We recommend setting this up, preferably using either Web Safe Fonts or Google Fonts.
If you want to add a new Paragraph Style simply click on the ‘+’ button below the Paragraph Styles section. To delete a Paragraph Style, click on the Paragraph Style, then click on the ‘-‘ button. If the Paragraph Style being deleted is used in your site, you will be asked to select another Paragraph Style to replace the one you are deleting.
When finished with your changes, click on Save. Your changes will be applied to any text in your site that uses the Paragraph Style that you have change.
Document Colors
In addition to setting defaults for text, EverWeb 4.0 and higher also lets you define settings for the colors that you use in your site’s pages. The Document Colors section is where you define your site’s color palette. If, for example, you want to set the Page Background color of a page in your site, you can choose a color to use by clicking on the color swatch in the Page Background section of the Page Settings tab. You will see a selection of color swatches to choose from. In this example, I am going to choose the blue color at the top of the first column.
The color swatches you see in the color swatch are the ones defined in the Document Colors section of Default Styles. In my example, I have a blue background for my page, but I can change this default to something else if I want. The blue color swatch is at the top of the Document Colors list. To change the color, click on the color and adjust it using the Color Picker. When finished, close the Color Picker and click on Save. Wherever the blue swatch was used in your site, it will now be changed to the new color.
It may be useful to note the hex number of the default color before you change it in case you change your mind later on and want to revert to the original default color.
EverWeb’s Global Styles feature allows you to easily set up default font styles and document color palettes for your site. If you change any of these defaults in Document Styles, the changes will be applied to any object that uses the global style making updating your site super easy!
If you have any questions about this post, about EverWeb 4.0, or EverWeb in general, please let us know in the Comments Section below.
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if you are a Mac user, you are no doubt aware of Apple’s recent release of macOS 15, also known as macOS Sequoia. In our testing of the current version of EverWeb – version 4.2.1, we have not found any issues when running on this new operating system.
We are already testing the next release of EverWeb against macOS Sequoia to ensure that it is fully compatible with Apple’s latest OS release.
If you have any questions about EverWeb and Operating System compatibility, please let us know in the Comments section.
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