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When EverWeb debuted eight years ago, it came with a number of preinstalled widgets that mirrored those found in Apple’s defunct iWeb product. One of those widgets was the RSS Feed widget.

The acronym RSS has never had one fixed meaning so you may find it referred to as either Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication or Really Straightforward Syndication. What RSS does, though, is clear – it enables you to easily access updates to website contents and display these updates in an uncomplicated way. RSS, therefore, is ideal for frequently updates blogs or news headlines or media that may get frequently updated such as podcasts, audio and video content.

Adoption of RSS in websites grew in the early 2000’s and there are many apps, such as Feedly and FeeddlerRSS, that you can use to subscribe to the RSS Feeds of your choice. These content aggregators make managing multiple RSS Feeds that much easier.

Why Use EverWeb’s RSS Feed Widget?

Using an RSS Feed app to view the latest content from your favourite feeds is a great way to consume content, but you can also add RSS Feeds directly in to your website using the RSS feed widget. This is useful if you want to, for example, let your visitors know that there is a new blog post available on your site. It is also a good way to link to content from other sites that may also be of interest to your visitors.

Adding The RSS Feed Widget To Your Page

EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget is a fixed width widget, so if you are using a Responsive Page Layout in your site, the widget will need to placed inside of a Responsive Row widget. If you need to add a Responsive Row widget to your page, first drag and drop the Responsive Row widget on to the page from the Widgets tab. Once the widget is on the page, you can name the Responsive Row, e.g. “RSS Feed Row” before drag and dropping the RSS Feed Widget on top of the “RSS Feed Row”.

If you are using a Centered or Left Aligned Page Layout, just drag and drop the RSS feed widget directly on to the page.

Finding the Feed URL

Once the widget is in place on the page, the next step is to add the Feed URL you want to the URL field in the Widget Settings. Some external websites publicise their RSS Feed link which makes it easier for you to add it in to your own site. If you cannot find the Feed URL link of the site you want, try one of the following URL formats:

• https://website.com/feed/
• https://website.com/category/feed/
• https://website.com/tag/feed/
• https://website.com/blog/rss.xml

It may take some time to figure out the Feed URL by intelligent guessing. If you have the technical ability you can also look at the target site’s source code to see if you can find the Feed URL, or you could simply ask the Website Owner instead which may be the easiest option!

If you are using your EverWeb blog as the Feed URL, the URL will follow the structure of your website so if the blog is on the top level of the website the Feed URL would be

https://www.website.com/blog/rss.xml

If you are an EverWeb+Hosting customer who has purchased EverWeb Site Shield Addon, you would use HTTPS, otherwise use HTTP at the start of the URL. Also note that the name of the blog is the default name in EverWeb. If you have changed the blog page name, you will need to use your replacement name instead of “blog” in the URL.

Styling The RSS Feed Widget

Once you have entered a valid URL in to the Feed URL field, the widget will update. This may take a few moments. By default five entries will be displayed. Each entry consists of a Title and the first 150 characters of the entry’s text. You can change these values in the Widget Settings as desired.

Styling the contents of the RSS Feed Widget is easy. In fact, styling the widget is done in the same way as you would for the Blog widget in your EverWeb blog’s index and archive pages. Let’s start with the Titles of the entries. By default, the Titles are in a blue color and underlined. This is because the Titles are in fact Hyperlinks to the entries themselves. So to style the Titles, first click on the first title in the Widget. All the Titles will become highlighted. Now go to the Hyperlinks Inspector and change the color and underlines as you want. If you want to change the Title text font and size, click on the Fonts button in the Toolbar, or use the Command+T shortcut key.

To style the text content or the Date (if you have checked the Show Date checkbox in the Widget Settings), click on the text content or one of the dates in the Widget. As with the Titles, all of the text or date entries will become highlighted. Use the Fonts Panel to change the color, font and font size of the selection.

Use the other Widget Settings to select the Style of the Widget itself. You may also want to adjust the refresh rate of the widget. This will depend on how often the RSS Feed content is updated. If the content is frequently updated, use a smaller value in this field. If the content is not updated often use a larger value.

In summary, EverWeb’s RSS Feed widget is a versatile and very handy widget to keep your visitors up to date with the content of your site.

Looking back at November 2013, it seems like it was only yesterday that we released EverWeb 1.0 for the Mac upon the world! With each year since then, we take a look back over the last twelve months and are always surprised at how much we have achieved In the past year, we focused on delivering more features that our customers have been asking for and this is what we delivered…

New EverWeb Product Releases

During the last year we released two major releases, EverWeb 3.4 in October 2020 and EverWeb 3.5 in July 2021, together with three point releases. The last point release EverWeb 3.5.1 was actually a fairly major release, introducing some great new features that we will review below.

As well as our usual product releases, the last year also saw the introduction of EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon. See below for more details!

EverWeb on New Platforms!

One of the biggest events for EverWeb in the the last year was that it became a Universal Binary app with the release of EverWeb 3.4. This means that you can now run EverWeb natively on Apple Macs that use Apple Silicon as well as those using Intel processors.

If you are running a version of EverWeb prior to version 3.4, you can still run the app on an Apple Silicon machine through the Rosetta 2 app.

As well as running on Apple Silicon and Intel chips, we also asked the question of our community… Would you be infestered in a Window version of EverWeb? Now, this may sound like a strange question for a Mac based community, but many people actually run dual Mac and Windows environments. If a Windows version of EverWeb would be of interest to you, let us know in the Comments Section below!

Let’s also not forget the Mac’s operating systems as EverWeb is, as you would expect, fully compatible with macOS Big Sur and the recently released macOS Monterey operating systems.

Website Search

Adding website search capability to EverWeb was one of the highlights of the last year. We added two new widgets to EverWeb 3.5, the Search Field and Search Results widgets. the Search Field widget is the powerhouse of search and also lets you customize how your search results display as either a pop up window, dropdown menu, or using the Search Results widget displaying results on their own dedicated page.

The new website search is fully customizable in that you can add your own key search words, customize the search bar and the results set display.

Parallax Scrolling

One of the most requested feature requests has been for the addition of Parallax Scrolling in EverWeb. Parallax Scrolling lets you add a background image to an object, such as a Responsive Row widget. The ‘background’ image scrolls at a slower rate than the content that sits above it, creating a 3D like motion effect. You can find this feature in the Shape Options tab together with the new Overlay Color feature. Use this feature when you want to add a color tint to an image. You can select the color and degree of tint that you require, so you no longer need to add a colored semi-transparent shape on top of an image to get a tinted image!

EverWeb SEO Power Up

As you may know already, EverWeb’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is baked in to the product, saving you time and effort. With the release of EverWeb 3.4 we expanded the scope of SEO customization with the introduction of EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon.

SEO Power Up lets you your own SEO Keywords on a page by page basis. You can also set the priority of your pages and the frequency with which you want web crawlers to crawl your pages. In addition, the latest version of EverWeb also adds these features to your blog posts as well. Customizing your pages for SEO is a great way to focus and target your pages more precisely than ever! Find out more in our video all about EverWeb SEO Power Up.

In addition to SEO Power Up, we also added more SEO oriented features to EverWeb with the inclusion of Short Summaries to blog posts and Open Graph tags.

Workflow Improvements

One of the core goals of EverWeb is to make technically complex features as simple to use and implement as possible.We are always looking for ways to give you time back by making things such as your workflow simpler and easier.

Over the last twelve months, we have added the ability to update multiple widgets of the same type simultaneously. For example, if you wanted to add a custom button to all of the PayPal widgets on a page in your site, you can now update them all at the same time.

In addition, you can now also update multiple asset list items within a single widget all at the same time as well e.g. if you are using the FlexBox widget, you may have multiple Embedded Objects with a maximum with of 250 pixels. If you want to change this value to 280 pixels for all of the Embedded Objects, this is now a one step operation!

More About Assets…

There was even more good news about assets in your EverWeb Project File over the last year as we Quick Look returned! Just select an asset in EverWeb’s Assets List, then press spacebar to get a Quick Look preview of the image asset. Use the up and down arrows to view the previous and next image assets. In addition to the return of this feature, we have also expanded it to widgets as well, so for example, you can now use the same technique in the Image Gallery and Responsive Image Gallery widgets.

These are just some of the highlights of the last twelve months. There are many, many, other feature adds and improvements to enjoy as well as additional features to many of EverWeb’s default widgets. We have a lot more planned for this coming year and are already working hard on EverWeb 3.6!

What would you like to see coming to EverWeb over the next year? Let us know in the Comments Section below.

Time is a precious commodity and even more so in this day and age where we all seemingly have to work harder and faster! Working smarter, though, will help claw some of that precious time back for you and EverWeb has a few great shortcuts that will save you both time and effort.

Widget Asset List Selection

One of the major highlights of the recently released EverWeb 3.5.1 is the inclusion of the ability to change the settings of multiple items in a Widget’s Assets List at the same time. This is an incredible boon for when you suddenly realise, for example, that you need to change all of the Minimum Width values of your Embedded Objects in the FlexBox widget. Prior to EverWeb 3.5.1, you would have to select each Embedded Object, change the value, in my case Minimum Width, then move on to the next Embedded Object until you were finished. Now all you need to do is to highlight all of the objects in the Embedded Objects list, then change the value just once. All the selected Embedded Objects will be updated immediately.

You can select whichever objects you want to update all at the same time. For example, if you have five objects in the list and want to select all of them, you would select the first object in the list, then Shift+Click the on last object in the list. If you wanted to select only the first, third and fifth objects, you would again click on the first object then hold down the Command key and click on the third and fifth objects. In the second example, you can click on the first, third and fifth objects in any order you like, as long as you keep the Command key down whilst doing so.

You be aware that widget Asset Lists often go by a variety of different names, depending on their function in the widget. As you can see above, the FlexBox widget has an Embedded Objects list, the Contact Form Advanced widget uses a Form Controls list and so on…

Updating Multiple Widgets of the Same Type

EverWeb also allows you to update multiple widgets of the same type, all at one time, if they are on the same page. This is especially useful if, for example, you are using the PayPal widget and want to change the default Buy Now button to a button image of your own. You used to have to update each widget one by one, but since EverWeb 3.4 you can now do this all at one time. Just select all of the PayPal widgets on the page, then click on the Widget Settings button in the Inspector Window. Now check the the ‘Use Custom PayPal Button Image’ Checkbox and select your Custom Image file. All of the selected PayPal widgets will be automatically updated!

One thing to note when using this feature is that once you have finished updating all of your PayPal widgets, de-select the widgets immediately. This will stop you inadvertently updating all the selected widgets when you may just want to update one.

Replace Asset

Replace Asset is another boon for those of you who need to have placeholder images in your page. For example, you want to have an image on your home page that is also used on other pages of your site. You may want to change the image every month e.g. if you are in retail and need to update your website for seasonality. Since EverWeb 3.4, you can now easily do with a one click operation. Start by going to the Assets Tab and then secondary click on the image you want to replace (e.g. last month’s cover) with an updated image (this month’s cover). From the Submenu, select Replace Asset… and choose the updated image. That’s all you need to do! The new image will replace the old wherever it is used in your site!

Swapping Master and Regular Pages

When developing your site, you may find that you make a page that would be perfect as a Master Page. You can easily copy your page without having to create a new Master Page from scratch, just drag and drop your page in to the Master Page area! It’s that simple. And the great thing is that it works the other way round too, so if you accidentally create a regular page in the Master Page area, just drag and drop it in to the regular page section.

Moving Page Content Quickly and Easily

If you have ever wanted to open up a gap in the middle of your page this tip is for you! You can use a keyboard short cut to move objects either up or down the page without disrupting your page layout. This is really useful when you want to, for example, insert a widget between two TextBox paragraphs. e.g. you may want to insert an Image Slider or YouTube Video widget in to the middle of your page.

to start, go to the place on the page where you want to insert your object. Choose an object in this area of the page that you want to move down the page. Select the object, but hold down the Cmd+Shift keys down at the same time. Keep the keys pressed down and drag the object down the page. You will see that the selected object and everything under it move down the page! When you have the gap you want, release the mouse and keyboard keys.

Note that it’s the selected object and those below it that get moved down. If you have other objects on the same (horizontal) level as the selected object, they will not move down.

Use Secondary (Right) Click

Using a two finger tap on your mouse or trackpad is a great way to access some commonly used EverWeb feature without having to go up to EverWeb’s menu bar. The list of options has also expanded over time which makes this feature even more useful, especially when using the Responsive Row widget which recently added a ‘Remove from Responsive Row’ option so you can easily divorce objects from the Responsive Row so that the object becomes a full width object in the Editor Window. We are also hoping to add some more functionality in EverWeb 3.6 to this submenu, so stay tuned!

All of the above features can be found in EverWeb 3.5.1 and above. If you are using an earlier version of EverWeb you may need to update your copy to be able to access all of these features.

You may have noticed when using EverWeb, that there are quite a few places where you see the words ‘Alt Text’ displayed in the Inspector Window. You may also see that some widgets also include ‘Alt Text’ in their options. But what is Alt Text, what does it do, should you be using it in your site and if so, how can you get the best out of using it? Let’s find out…

What Is Alt Text?

Alt Text stands for Alternative Text. It is the ‘alternative’ to using an image. Alt Text replaces an image when the image itself cannot be loaded and viewed on screen. In addition, the other original intention of Alt Text was for it to be used to help visually impaired people who used special equipment that would read the contents of the screen back to them.

Alt Text and SEO

Adding Alt Text to an image in your EverWeb Project can also benefit to your site’s SEO as Alt Text allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website. All in all, adding Alt Text to the images in your website will make for a positive experience for your potential and existing visitors.

Adding Alt Text To An Image

There are a few places in EverWeb where you add Alt Text to your images. If you have standalone images anywhere on your page, just select the image you want then go to the Shape Options tab. In the ‘Fill’ section you will see there is an Alt Text field. Just enter in the text that you want to use. It’s that simple. If you use an image more than once in your site from the Assets List in the Assets Tab, you will need to add Alt Text to the image each time you use it. If you copy the image whilst it is on the Editor Window, using Copy and Paste, the Alt Text attribute will be preserved.

Remember that when adding Alt Text that it should be a brief description of what the image is, in less than 125 characters. A brief description is important because of the points made earlier in this post about the Alt Text being used for the visually impaired and also its role in replacing the image if it cannot be loaded in to the browser.

Many of EverWeb’s widgets also contain Alt Text fields e.g. the FlexBox and Text Section widgets. For the Image Gallery widgets, you can use a Caption to inform the visitor of what the image is if it cannot be displayed on screen.

Using Alt Text To Its Best Advantage

When you add a Alt Text description to an image, remember two things: First, be descriptive and do not use just a collection of keywords as your description, and second, bring out the detail and specifics of the image wherever you can e.g. if you have an image of a boat you might want to say, ‘The new 30 meter yacht, Princeton, launching from Dover Harbour, England.’ A third point is to remember the context of the photo in your site. In the example just sited, the context is easy as there is reference to both an event and a place. If your image is a generic one, for example, from a stock photo site, you should add Alt Text for the image that applies context to it within the page. As an example, I may want to use a stock photo with the word ‘SEO’ in it on my page. For the image’s Alt Text I could add some context relevant to my site by using this description: ‘EverWeb’s SEO Video Course is available on YouTube.’

Images in Your Project File

When using images in your Project file, it is always a good idea to name the image file descriptively before you grand and drop the file in to your EverWeb Project. This method is the best way for website crawlers to discover your image and use it when ranking your site. If you have already imported your image with a non-descriptive file name, you can still rename it in EverWeb. Just double click on the image in the Assets List and rename the file. In terms of SEO, this is OK, but is second best to renaming the file before importing it into EverWeb.

Alt Text is a great way to add accessibility to your site, it creates a more positive experience for your visitors and it can help boost your SEO. Use it only on the images that are important to your site. As with everything SEO, you do not need to add Alt Text to images that do not need it. Focus on what is important in terms of your site’s SEO.

More information on EverWeb and SEO can be found on the EverWeb website.

We are happy to announce the immediate availability of EverWeb version 3.5.1. This is a maintenance and stability release for the recently released EverWeb 3.5 which introduced Website Search to EverWeb. In addition to the usual fixes, the new version of EverWeb includes some additional new and enhanced features detailed below and in our E erWeb 3.5.1 release video.

Please let us know in the Comments Section below if you have any questions.

EverWeb 3.5.1 Includes…

• NEW For widgets that have an Assets List, you can now select multiple rows and the adjust settings for all of the selected Assets rather than having to go through each Asset individually to adjust its settings.
• NEW: Quick Look works for Assets Lists in widgets.
• NEW: You can now secondary (right) click on an object in a Responsive Row widget and remove it from the Responsive Row.
• NEW: Double clicking an object that is from a Master Page will show a warning that you have to edit it from the Master Page.
• NEW: If a crash report cannot be sent because EverWeb has to Force Quit, the next time EverWeb is launched you will see the crash report.
• NEW: The FlexBox widget now includes Button border styles.
• NEW: The FlexBox widget now includes a ‘max width’ property option for the button.
• NEW: The FlexBox widget now includes a transparency option for the mouse hover color.
• NEW: You can now paste a list of keywords separated by a comma in one row of the Keywords list in the SEO Section of the Page Settings tab and in the Keywords section of a Blog Post. EverWeb will automatically parse the list into individual rows.
• NEW: Added the video for the Search Bar to the Help ‘?” in the Site Search section of the Page Settings tab.
• NEW: TheSearch video has been added to Site Search widget.
• NEW: Site Search now uses Page Names if there is no title in the Web Page Description field in the Page Settings tab.
• NEW: Site Publishing Settings has a new ‘Add Domain’ button to easily register a new domain or to add a domain as an add-on.
• NEW: New Font Size variable for widgets.
• NEW: When using Disqus as the Comment Engine in Blog Posts, if you change a blog post title, you can now have Disqus use the new post title in place of the old title.
• IMPROVED: Copy and pasting text in to the Blog Post Editor.
• IMPROVED: The FTP Timeout window now shows the error along with the automatic reconnection/republish feature.
• IMPROVED: Changing the Navigation Menu Display Name for a page not in the Navigation Menu widget will not mark the pages with a Navigation Menu widget to be re-published.
• IMPROVED: Some settings in a widget’s Assets List that do not affect the EverWeb UI will not cause the widget to update itself.
• IMPROVED: Better error checking when an image cannot be published.
• IMPROVED: Removed the ‘Show Title’ checkbox in the YouTube widget as the setting is no longer valid.
• IMPROVED: Better error checking enhanced popup menu.
• IMPROVED: Error checking when replacing an image asset with a non-image file.
• IMPROVED: Responsive Rows with just one object in them cannot be moved around and dragged out of the Responsive Row.
• IMPROVED: Improved language localizations, especially Dutch.
• FIXED: Fix for shapes with ‘No Fill’ and a border not being published properly.
• FIXED: Spelling corrections in the Search Results widget.
• FIXED: Fixed blog updating issues on macOS 10.16.
• FIXED: Fixed blog cover image not appearing on macOS 10.16.
• FIXED: When using Quick View to Preview an asset in the Assets List, the down arrow now works correctly by previewing the next asset in the Assets List.
• FIXED: Better error checking/messaging when trying to preview a site without any pages.
• FIXED: Some buttons did not properly auto resize when using different languages if the text in that language did not fit the button.
• FIXED: Fixes to how EverWeb gets the preview for certain widgets within the Editor Window.
• FIXED: Min value for widget text fields could be set to a negative value.
• FIXED: Fixes for the Image Gallery widget when pressing the Pagination Buttons within the Editor Window.
• FIXED: File links work again in widgets using the Styled Text Editor.
• FIXED: Insert Date features works for non English systems.
• FIXED: Spelling mistake in Search Results widget Inspector fixed.
• FIXED: Fixed potential crash when using very large images with the scaling features for object backgrounds.
• FIXED: Fixed widget previews when replacing an image asset that the Widget is using.
• FIXED: Replacing an image asset with a different file extension will adjust the file extension in the Assets List.
• FIXED: Fix for FTP publishing for servers that require TLS for data and control connections.
• FIX: Widgets will properly preview when adjusting settings quickly, such as background color using the color window sliders.
• FIX: Widgets will now respect default hyperlink styles set under the Default Styles Window.
• FIXED: Fixes to full width shapes placed in Responsive Rows.
• FIXED: Fixed some labels in message boxes that were cut off.
• FIXED: Filenames that used non-English characters are no longer converted into their English equivalent.

If Search Engine Optimization is important to you, then EverWeb’s SEO Power Up could be a great addition to your EverWeb purchase. SEO Power Up Addon extends the range of EverWeb’s already built in capabilities by submitting your website to search engines from Google, Bing, Yahoo and Alexa.

EverWeb SEO Power Up also contains a variety of features so that you can more specifically optimize your website’s pages to get the best advantage when search engines crawl your site. You can change the priority of the page and the frequency in which the page is crawled by search engines.

Whilst EverWeb’s new add on debuted in version 3.4, it’s been improved in EverWeb 3.5 with the addition of Open Graph Tags.

What are Open Graph Tags?

The Open Graph Tag Protocol was originally developed by Facebook. Open Graph Tags are code snippets that determine how URL’s will be displayed in Social Media. What the Open Graph Tag does is to create the best feature rich preview of the URL possible.

How Does The Open Graph Tag Work?

The Open Graph Tag will look at the data and information that comes with the URL and will build a preview based on this e.g. the page title, page description and so on. Whilst apps generally try to create the best preview possible on their own, the Open Graphs Tag helps to provide richer previews so that your content stands out more in Social Media.

What are the Advantages of the Open Graph Tag?

The advantages of Open Graph Tags are that they:

1. Create the best feature rich previews for shared media links.
2. Help your content to stand out amongst other content.
3. EverWeb’s SEO Power Up addon adds Open Graph tags automatically.
4. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter are some examples of apps that take advantage of Open Graph Tags.

What Do I Need To Do in EverWeb?

As Open Graph Tags are part of the EverWeb SEO Power Up addon, there’s nothing you need to do as EverWeb will apply the tags to URLs automatically for your website. If you share URL’s on Social Media, they will be automatically used if the app takes advantage of the Open Graph Tags Protocol.

What About Open Graph Tags and SEO?

Open Graph Tags are meta tags and so will have an indirect influence and impact on your SEO. The advantage of Open Graph Tags is that they should improve the performance of your links in Social Media, which is a plus in itself. You may like to think of the Open Graph Tag as an optimization for the URL link when used in Social Media.

As always, we aim to make life easier for you when developing your website! And now with Open Graph Tags in EverWeb SEO Power Up, you get better, richer Social Media previews for your website URL’s without having to do anything!

Our latest EverWeb release, version 3.5, is focused on its new website search feature. If you use EverWeb for your blog, the website search features are also there for you!

Website Search in Blogs

EverWeb uses full text search in its website search feature so this means that your blog and its posts will be automatically included in any website search. This means that you don’t have to do any configuration work at all for website search to work.

However, if you want to customize your blog for search and also help boost your website’s SEO at the same time, EverWeb allows you to do this as well.

EverWeb 3.5 introduces two new features to blooging: Blog Post Short Summary and Blog Post Keywords. Let’s start with a closer look at Short Summaries.

Why You Should Use Short Summaries

A Short Summary is just that – it is a brief description of the blog post. When you search the Internet for something, the list of search results that you see are in the form of a web page title that links to a web page followed by the first words of the linked page displayed below it.

You may find that the first words of a your blog post that are displayed in search results do not convey what the whole blog post is actually about. A Short Summary can be used to replace this default text with your own descriptive text summarising what your post is actually about. This description has the advantage in that you can it as a ‘hook’ to entice potential visitors to click on the associated link.

The Short Summary is also a good place to add SEO Keywords or phrases. If you are interested in finding out more, check out our SEO for EverWeb Video Course. If you just want to find out how to get the most SEO effective Keywords or phrases for your website, take a look at the course’s Keyword Research video.

Tips on Creating a Short Summary

When creating a Short Summary in EverWeb remember:

1. Keep the Short Summary brief and to the point. You may want to do this by listing the key points of the blog, linking them together by simple, short sentences.
2. Include your SEO Keywords in the Short Summary if it is appropriate to do so. As we always remind you, do not sacrifice a great blog post description just for the sake of adding SEO keywords. It is actually counterproductive to do so.
3. Your Blog Post Title and Short Summary should clearly state to your potential visitor what the post is about. If the post title, or summary, does not reflect the actual content, visitors will probably not return to your site in future.
4. The Blog Post Title should also use SEO or Search Keywords if it is appropriate to do so.
5. The Short Summary will be displayed in the blog main and archive pages in place of the beginning text of the blog post. If you do not include a Short Summary, the beginning text of the post will be used instead.

Creating a Short Summary

Creating a Short Summary is easy:

1. First click on the Posts Page in the Web Page List of your EverWeb Project file.
2. Next click on the blog post that you want to add the Short Summary to.
3. Click on the Settings Cog and select ‘Edit…’ from the dropdown menu.
4. Enter the text that you want to use for the Short Summary in the Short Summary field,
5. Click OK to finish.

Using Keywords In Your Blog Post

As well as adding Short Summaries to your blog posts, EverWeb also lets you explicitly add ‘Keywords’ to your blog posts that you want to be available for search.

Enter the Keywords that you want associated with your blog post using the same dialog box as you use for Short Summaries. When adding keywords to your blog post, follow the same rules that you would use when adding SEO Keywords to the other pages of your site. 

Click on the Add button then enter the keywords or phrases that you want to include. Press enter to finish.

To edit the Keywords just double click on the keywords in the list, then edit the words you want to change.

To delete any Keywords, click once on the Keywords in the list that you want to remove, then press the Backspace key on your keyboard. The Keywords will be deleted.

When you have finished using the dialog box, press OK. Publish your site to implement the Short Summaries and Keywords.

Ordered Lists

The final new feature in blogging in EverWeb 3.5 is a minor one with the addition of more Ordered List types in the Blog Post Editor Window’s Toolbar.

EverWeb version 3.5 adds site wide search as its major new feature using the all new Search Field widget. This widget can be used to display your search results in a dropdown list or popup window. There is also a third option which links to the Search Results widget where you can choose to display search results on a dedicated page in either a scrollable or static results set. 

How Search Works in EverWeb

EverWeb automatically use certain fields in your project file as well as the text content of its pages as the basis for site wide search. EverWeb takes care of everything so you don’t need to do any work to set up search.  

However, if you want to, you can refine and customize your site’s Search Criteria when setting up your website search in order to refine search criteria and also to help boost SEO. It can also be useful to do a little work on your Search Criteria as there may be, for example, pages in your site that you do not want to include in your search results. For example you probably would not want to include placeholder directory pages that are blank but are used as dropdown menu headings in the Navigation Menu widget in your search results.

SEO and Search Criteria

Customizing your Search Criteria can be of benefit to your SEO, especially if you use your SEO Keywords or phrases. If you have followed the SEO for EverWeb Video Course, you will probably have already added keywords or phrases to your pages’ text and also to certain fields in EverWeb’s Inspector window to help boost your SEO. You should also find some useful SEO tips in the rest of this blog to help further boost the SEO potential of your website. Check out our SEO for EverWeb Video Course for more information.

What is Automatically Included in EverWeb’s Search Criteria?

EverWeb’s Search feature automatically uses the following search criteria:

• Full Text Search: The text content of your pages is included when performing a search. When including text in your pages, the words that you want people to search upon should be included in your page. 
  
  The text that you enter in to fields such as captions, or in the Styled Text Editor when using Widgets, is also used in Search.
  
  Remember that where possible, and appropriate, include your SEO Keywords or terms in your text. If possible position these keywords or terms in the first (or second) paragraph of your page’s text. You may even find that your search words and SEO keywords are often the same. Also remember, though, not to sacrifice the readability of your text just for the prospect of better SEO. This is counterproductive as your website’s visitors are less likely to return to your website if the text is not well written.
  
• Filename: In addition to the text content of your pages, EverWeb uses the Filename field in the Web Page List in site searches. Therefore, if you can, give your page’s filename a good descriptive name if at all possible. The additional benefit here is that a good Filename can also help your SEO!
  
• Web Page Title: Search takes in to account the Web Page Title field of your page in Search. You should aim to have a good descriptive title and include SEO keywords if it is appropriate to do so. As always please do not sacrifice your Web Page Title just for the sake of SEO.
  
  The Web Page Title is also important to include as it is used as the Page Title in the search results list. If you leave this field blank, the page title will be listed as ‘No title’ which is not helpful to anyone who is searching your site.
  
• Web Page Description: The Web Page Description field is found in the Search Engine Optimization section of the Page Settings tab if you are using EverWeb 3.5.
  
  Add the words, or phrases, that you want to be searched upon as part of your page description. Make sure that this field describes the page, and is not just a list of SEO or search related words. This field is important as it is used for both your website search results set within your website itself and for Internet searches where it is used to describe your page to the outside world.
  
  Again, it is better to have a good page description, even if it means having to exclude SEO Keywords or search words.

Excluding Pages from Search

EverWeb allows you to easily exclude any page that you do not want to be searched upon from the site search. Simply uncheck the ‘Include in Site Search’ box in the Site Search Section of the Page Settings tab of the Inspector Window to remove the page from the website search.

Excluding pages is appropriate if, for example, you have directory pages that redirect to child pages. If such a page is found in a search result, it will be empty as it is a blank page, so you should exclude pages such as these from your search criteria.Typically you use these directory pages as the main heading of dropdown menu lists in the Navigation Menu widget.

You will probably also want to exclude pages such as your ‘404 Page not found’ page from any search and if you have a dedicated Results Page that uses the Search Results widget, you may also want to exclude this too. Other examples include ‘Thank You’ and ‘Cancelled Order’ type pages that you might set up for use with PayPal widget.

SEO Power Up Addon and Search

If you have EverWeb’s SEO Power Up Addon, you can also explicitly add words that you want to be available for search, by entering them in to the ‘Keywords’ section of the Search Engine Optimization section of the Page Settings tab. This will also, of course, be advantageous for your SEO as well. To activate this field, check the box ‘Include page in search engines’. 

EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon users can also add keywords in to blog posts as described in the next section.

Search Criteria and Blogging

If you have your own blog for your website, Search also includes your blog posts in search results. Use the same methods as described above to add search terms to your blog main and archive pages.

When creating your blog posts, EverWeb will the blog post’s text and post title as search criteria, so again apply the same tips as described above for adding keywords and phrases in to your blog post.

EverWeb 3.5 has also added a couple of new features to blogging which will help you with search and SEO. You can now add specific search criteria to your blog posts. First select the blog post you want, then click on the settings cog on the left hand side underneath the list of blog posts. A dialog box will appear. Use the ‘Short Summary’ field to enter in a description of the blog post in the same way in which you would for a regular page using the Web Page Description field.

If you have purchased EverWeb’s SEO Power Up addon you can also add keywords to any post you want, which will then be used in Search and will also benefit your SEO.

Add the Keywords or phrases that you want to be available for search and SEO in the Keywords section of the dialog box. When adding keywords or phrases use the same methods as you would if you were adding Keywords or phrases to a regular page.

Setting up Search Criteria in EverWeb is super customizable so that you can define and refine your search criteria, and boost your SEO, simply and quickly.

The new website search feature recently introduced in EverWeb 3.5 uses the Search Field widget for the creation of a search bar in your site and for how you want website search results displayed. You can choose from one of three search results display options: dropdown menu, popup window or ‘One of My Pages’. When using the last option, EverWeb’s Search Results widget is used to display the website search results created from the Search Field widget in a dedicated page.

The Search Results widget is always used in conjunction with the Search Field widget so cannot be used on its own.

Before Using the Search Results Widget…

To create a website search that displays search results in a dedicated ‘Search Results page’, you will first need to make sure that you have added the Search Field widget to your website. Drag and drop the Search Field widget from the Widgets Tab on to your page. Preferably, add the widget in to a Master Page so that you only need to add the widget to your site once.

Adding the Search Field widget to your page will enable the search bar as well as giving you the three search results display options mentioned above.

Position the widget on the page then customize it as you want. Check out our post on installing and customizing the Search Field widget for more infromation.

Adding the Search Results Widget

Once you have added the Search Field widget to your page you can create the Search Results page in your site which will include the Search Results Widget. This can be a page that you have already created, or even the page that contains the Search Field widget if you want.

If creating a new page for your Search Results widget, you can use the Add button in the Toolbar to create a new page. Uncheck the ‘Include page in navigation’ option as you probably will not want a dedicated search results page to be included in the navigation menu. 

You may also want the page itself not to be included in any Search Results either. To remove the page from any Search Results, go to the Page Settings tab and open the Site Search section and uncheck the ‘Include in Site Search’ checkbox.

Once you have created and named the Search Results page, drag and drop the Search Results widget on to it. Size and position the widget as required. 

The widget displays five ‘place holder’ results on screen. Each place holder includes Page Title, Page Link and page description.

Customizing The Search Results Widget

Customize and style the Search Results widget using the Widget Settings.

• Language: Set the language that you want search related messages to be displayed in e.g. the message shown when no search results are found. You have nine different languages to choose from: English, Dutch, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish.
• Open Link in New Window: Use this Check box to open a clicked upon search result in a new browser window.
• Insert Margins: This field adds vertical and horizontal padding to the search results set. 
• Spacing Between Results: This field is used to add vertical padding between each result in the search results set.
• Content: Search results can be displayed one of two ways: As a scrollable set or as a results set that adjusts the results content height as needed. When using the Scrollable option, the results only scroll when there are enough search results found that go beyond the height set for the widget. 
• Use Page Description Text for Summary: When this box is checked, the text from the Page Description field in the Page Settings tab will be used as the text summary in the search results. Note that if the Page Description is short, text from the results page itself may also be added to the description in the search results.

In addition to the Widget Settings, you can customize the widget using other settings in EverWeb:

• To change the color of the links in the search results, go to the Hyperlinks Inspector and change the colors of the Normal, Rollover and Visited options are desired.
• You can add your own background color, gradient or image to the Search Results widget using the Shape Options tab in the Inspector. You can even add Parallax Scrolling if you want!

Linking the Search Field and Search Results Widgets Together

Once you have finished customizing the Search Results widget, go back to the page that contains the Search Field widget. Select the widget, then set the Search Results field to ‘One of my pages’. A little bit further down in the Widget Settings, set the ‘Search Results Page’ as the page on which you have added the Search Results widget. EverWeb will check that the Search Results widget is included on the page you select. If it is not present you will receive an error message.

Preview your website, then enter search words in the Search box to test. In our next blog post, we will look at search criteria in detail!

The recently released EverWeb 3.5 includes two built in widgets that allow your website visitors to search your site: The Search Field widget and the Search Results widget.

The Search Field widget can be used either on its own or together with the Search Results widget. The Search Results widget, however, can only used in conjunction with the Search Field widget. It cannot be used on its own. Both widgets can be used in either a fixed width page layout (e.g. a centered layout) or in a responsive page layout.

Adding the Search Field Widget to The Page

Use the Search Field widget to add a website search bar to your website. For example, the perfect place would be in a Master Page so that the widget is accessible on all the pages attached to the Master Page.

In this example, I am going to use a Responsive Page Layout.  Add the Search Field widget by going to the Widgets tab then drag and drop the widget on to the page. You can position the widget as you want to be on the page or do this step later if your page is not complete.

Customizing The Search Field Widget Settings

As you have just added the Search Field widget to the page you should see its Widget Settings in the Inspector Window. We will use these to customize and style the widget.

First, set the language that you want search related messages to be displayed in using the Language field e.g. the message that you want to display if no search results are found.

Next, choose how you want to see the search results using the Search Results field. You have three options: Drop Down Menu, Popup Window or One of My Pages.

When using the Drop Down Menu or Popup Window to display your search results, you can use all of the options except for ‘Search Results Page’ which is used only by the ‘One of My Pages’ option. Customize the settings as you want.

If you check the ‘Use Page Description Text for Summary’ box, the text from the Page Description field in the Page Settings tab will be used as the text summary in the search results. Note that if the Page Description is short, text from the page itself may be added to the description in the search results.

If you have chosen the ‘One of my pages’ option, you will need to use a page in your website to display the search results. This page must include the Search Results widget. 

Use the remainder of the options in the Search Field Widget Settings to style the search bar, the search button and the search button when it is moused over.

If you are using the ‘One of my pages’ option, style the Search Results widget using its own Widget Settings options in your search results page.

Setting Up The Pages to Be Used in Search

Once you have finished customizing the Search Field widget, you will need to define the pages that you want to be included in your search results. You will then need set up the words and phrases in your website’s pages that will be used for searching upon. 

By default, all pages in your site are included in Search, however, you may want specific pages to be excluded from search results, e.g. directory level pages that are used in navigation menus or 404 Page Not Found pages. To exclude a page from being displayed in the search results, uncheck the ‘Include in Site Search’ option in the Site Search section of the Page Settings tab. 

Adding Words To Be Included in Search

Once you have deselected the pages you do not want to include in search, you can add search words or phrases to the pages that you want to be available for search. Use these methods: 

1. Add Keywords to the Search Engine Optimization section in the Page Settings tab of your page. 
2. Add Keywords to a blog post by selecting the blog post, then clicking on the Settings Cog. Select ‘Edit’ from the menu then add your Keywords in to the Keywords section.
3. Add a Web Page Description for the page. 
4. In blog posts, use the Short Summary field to enter a description of the post.
5. Add your search words in to the text of the page, or blog post.

Add a Web Page Title To Your Page

Make sure to complete the Web Page Title in the Page Settings tab as this is used as the title if the page is found in the search results. If you have search results that have no Web Page Title, these will be displayed with a title of ‘No Title’.

Once you have finished, preview or publish your site to test out your website search!