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

It Starts with a Name…

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

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

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

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

Choosing Your EverWeb Version

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

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

SEO Matters…

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

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

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

Securing Your Website

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

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

Contact Forms

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

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

Membership Sites…

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

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

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

Reading text based articles on the Internet puts the medium to one of its best uses. We now have the ability to build websites, create blogs, use micro-blogging tools and so on. In such an immediate, online world, often text based articles are mired in poor spelling and grammar. This typically leads to a poor user experience, may deter visitors coming back and may also have reputation consequences in business.

When building your website in EverWeb, you can easily make sure that your spelling and grammar are up to speed at all times. Here are some ways in which you can avoid the the common mistakes that can occur. Including the double ‘the’ we just put in for fun!

Adding and Spell Checking TextBoxes

One of the great things about EverWeb is that you can easily add TextBoxes to the pages of your site. This is great for headlines and sub headings as well as standard ‘body text’. If you have a reasonable amount of text, you may want to just use a TextBox for the purpose. When doing so, you may want to turn on the Edit-> Spelling -> Check Spelling While Typing menu option. In this way you can capture any spelling mistakes on the fly. As you type, if the spell checker thinks it has found a misspelled word, it will underline it with a thick red line so you can then correct it.

You can manually correct your spelling, or use the Spelling and Grammar dialog box from the Edit-> Spelling -> Show Spelling menu option to find the correct spelling of the word that has been misspelled. When using the Check Spelling While Typing function, it is probably best not to have the Show Spelling function running at the same time. The reason for this is that if you are typing and misspell a word, the Spelling and Grammar box will immediately come in to play. The dialog box will expect you to choose a suggested replacement word to correct your spelling mistake, or type in a replacement word yourself. Typically, though, we continue to type ahead even after making a mistake so you could find yourself typing in to the Spelling and Grammar box instead of in the TextBox.

Using The Spelling and Grammar Dialog Box

Our recommendation is to use the Check Spelling While Typing menu option on its own to check your spelling as you type. If you need help correcting a misspelled word, you can then activate the Show Spelling option. Quite often misspelled words are typos more than anything else so this may be the best option for most people.

The other way to spell check your text is to write the text first then spell check it afterwards. Use the Check Document Now option in conjunction with the Show Spelling option. In this way you will have the Spelling and Grammar dialog box visible so you can make your corrections all at one time. Close the Spelling and Grammar dialog box when finished.

Writing and Spell Checking Longer Text Articles

if you already know that you are going to be typing a lot of text, or that you are going to be writing a long blog post, you may find it better, and easier to use a word processing app instead. There are some advantage of using a word processing app when writing larger text articles. A word processor is probably better for organizing and structuring your text. You can take advantage of the words that your word processor has already learnt when spell checking other documents you have created and you can use built in grammar check and you can easily track your changes as you work. In this way you can take advantage of your word processing app’s capabilities then just copy and paste the finished result in to your EverWeb page or blog post.

SEO and Your Text

If SEO is important for your site and business, you should try to get your most important keyword(s) or phrase in to the first or second paragraph of your text if possible and in context. Remember, though, not to sacrifice the readability of your text, or your first paragraph messaging just for the sake of SEO. Your content should always come first over and above SEO.

Proof Reading Your Text

One final thought and that is to proof read your work before publishing it to the Internet. This task is usually best done by someone who is not the author of the text being published. A second pair of eyes on the text to be published can be valuable. If you do not have anyone to proof read your work, if you can, take some time away from the article you have written then look at it later again. This may give you a fresh insight in to what you have written and if it needs any reworking.

Spell checking in EverWeb is easy to do, but think about how you can get the best out of your writing experience as there may be more suitable options open to you.

In the early days of personal computing, the emergence of websites was limited by restrictions in the choice of colors and fonts that you could use. The choice of fonts that you could use in a website was extremely limited. There was also the problem of font compatibility between Mac and Windows PC. Fortunately such days are long past so using fonts in EverWeb to build your site is much easier and simpler. Using fonts in your website can be done in three basic ways as described below:

Web Safe Fonts

The compatibility issue that we mentioned above led to the creation of a set of fonts that are ‘web safe’ i.e. can be used on both Windows and Mac platforms. The fonts were chosen to make sure that websites developed on one platform would look the same on a different platform. The list of fonts include stapes such as Arial, Impact, Times New Roman, Comic Sans and Courier amongst others.

The advantage of using web safe fonts in your website is that they are reliable on Mac and windows and on mobile and desktop. The disadvantage is that there are relatively few fonts to choose from. Fortunately for website developers there are two solutions to this… the first is to use External Fonts and the second is to use Google Fonts…

Custom Fonts Make Web Design More Interesting!

It became quickly apparent that there was a desire for web pages to be presented in fonts other than the limited set of web safe fonts and this led to the development of more fonts for the web. These fonts would have to be loaded on a server so that they could be downloaded for use on a visitor’s browser as needed. Such custom fonts can also be used in your EverWeb website. When using custom fonts, make sure that you have the rights to do so before installing and using them online.

Fonts on a Mac are usually either True Type Fonts (rtf) or Open Type Format (oft). Your system fonts are located in the following system (not user) folder:

/Library/Fonts/

1. Add the .ttf and or .otf fonts that you want to use in to your /Library/Fonts/ folder.
2. To install your custom fonts, drag and drop your .ttf and/or .otf font files into the Assets List of your EverWeb Project. The fonts will be listed in the External Files section at the bottom of the Assets List.
3. Next create a TextBox on a page in EverWeb, then use the open open the Fonts panel either using the Toolbar, or by using the Cmd+T shortcut key.
4. Select your custom font. Remember that you must have your font installed on your computer for this to work.
5. Make a note of the Font name as it is listed in Font Panel. You will use this name in the code you will be entering in the step below.
6. Apply the custom font from the Font Panel to your TextBox.
7. The final step is to make sure that EverWeb publishes your website with the custom font file(s). Click on your Project file name in the Web List or use the File-> Edit Publishing Settings menuto go to your Site Publishing Settings.
8. Go to the Head Code field and enter the following code:

<style>

@font-face {

font-family: “FONTNAME”;

src:  url(“FONTFILE”);

}

</style>

Replace the word FONTNAME with the Font name that you made a note of in the Font Panel. It must be exactly the same in the code as it is in Font Panel.

Replace the word FONTFILE with a reference to the actual font file in the Assets List. To do this, go to the Assets List. Right click on the Font file in the External Files section. From the dropdown menu, select ‘Copy Relative Path’.

Now go back to the FONTFILE reference in your Site Publishing Settings and replace FONTFILE with the reference you copied to the Clipboard. For example your code may look something like this…

<style>

@font-face {

font-family: “Tribeca”;

src:  url(“{!-ASSETSPATH-!}External%20Files/Tribeca.ttf”);

}

</style>

Publish your site to test.

Using Google Fonts

The final type of custom font comes from Google in the form of Google Fonts. Google provides hundreds of free to use fonts that do not require installation on your website’s server in order for them to work. For many website developers this is makes adding custom fonts to their websites easy.

1. Start by going to the Google Fonts website at www.fonts.google.com
2. If you know which Google Font you want to use, simply search for it in the search box. 
3. Alternatively, browse the fonts and choose those you want to use in your website. 
4. One you have found the font I want to use e.g. Open Sans, click on the font, click on the Download Family button to download the Open Sans font family to your computer.
5. The downloaded fonts will be in a .ZIP file format.
6. Once the fonts have been downloaded, go to your Downloads folder on your computer and click on the ZIPfile. A finder window will open showing you the .ttf and/or .otf font files.
7. Next, I will click on the arrow on the right hand side, to download the fonts. In the popup window that appears, I will click on the .zip file to download these fonts.
8. To install the fonts locally, just double click on the .ttf file, then click on the Install Font button on the popup window appears. Repeat this process for all the fonts you want to install 

Once the fonts have been installed, you can use them in EverWeb as you would any other font.

Adding fonts to customize your EverWeb site is easy to do, and you have great choices to suit your needs, internal fonts, custom fonts or Google Fonts!

For the last few years, responsive web design has been the must have feature for website designers and EverWeb introduced this feature back in version 2.8. The goal of responsive web design is that you only have one page design which automatically adapts, or responds, to whatever device the page is displayed upon. Since its inception, responsive web design has become the standard for designing websites, but this does not mean that it is suitable for everyone’s needs…

Challenge, Complexity and Simplicity

Responsive Web Design successfully solves the challenge of the ‘one page fits all’ design challenge, but does so at a cost. The most cited cost is that it is more complex conceptually and also in implementation. It is certainly a different design paradigm that can lead to a frustrating design experience. Over the years, however, software developers have improved the tools that they create to help website designers build responsive websites. For EverWeb, the goal was to find a way to implement responsive web design in a way that you could still use EverWeb in the same way as you would building a center aligned page. The result is what you see in EverWeb today – the same experience whatever page design you choose to use.

If you have been an EverWeb user for a while, you may also have noticed that the tools used for creating Responsive pages in EverWeb have also evolved over time. Widgets have gained new and enhanced features to help making designing responsive pages easier, and other features have gained responsive capabilities. This is a continuously evolving and exciting process.

One of EverWeb’s own goals is to make designing the site that you want as easy as possible. So with that in mind, here are some tips to get you more comfortable about designing your first responsive website!

Rethinking Page Width

When you choose a theme template with a responsive page layout, you will notice that the ‘Content Width’ setting in the Page Layout Section of the Page Settings tab is greyed out. This is because a responsive page always takes up 100% of the width of the device it is being displayed upon.

There may be times, however, where you will want to limit to how wide an object can be on your page. You can use the Maximum Width setting in the Metrics Inspector to limit how wide an object can be.

You will probably also want to set a left and right margin on your page, which you can easily do, again using the Metrics Inspector’s Left and Right Margin settings in the ‘Size’ section.

Why There Is No Header on the Page

You may also have noticed that there is no Header section on the page and that the ‘Minimum Header Height’ section in the Page Layout section of the Page Settings tab is also greyed out. In responsive pages the header is just another full width object on the page, just placed at the top of the page, so it does not need to be treated in any special way.

Getting to Know Full Width and Fixed Objects

If you are new to Responsive website design, you may get thrown straight away when you add your first object to the page. For example, if you add a TextBox to the page, you will find that it takes up the full width of the page, which may, or may not, be what you wanted… A full width TextBox is probably great for a title, heading, or subheading on your page. Just add left and right margins from the Metrics Inspector and style your title text and you are finished! The same technique can then be applied to the body text of your page as well.

There might be instances where this may not be the solution you want, especially if you want to combine text with images, shapes, buttons and other media or objects. In this case, you should experiment with using widgets that easily let you combine such objects e.g. the Responsive Row, Text Section or FlexBox widgets.

Horizontal, Vertical and Freeform Perspectives

One thing that is very obvious with responsive websites is that all content is laid out horizontally in rows. Even if you see content displayed vertically in a column, this type of content will actually be structured within a row. Responsive website design is a structured approach which is needed so that the objects on your page can scale, and fit, properly at any page width.

If you are used to a more freeform approach in web design that is offered by EverWeb’s Center Aligned page layout, you may find responsive design restrictive. In reality, responsive web design is just structured as opposed to freeform. You can build a responsive website with a lot of flexibility and flair, it is only the design approach that is different, Designing successful responsive websites usually requires rethinking the way in which you design your site as well as using EverWeb’s responsive widgets which will help you creatively.

Keeping Everything In The Box

One of the keys to working successfully with responsive design is to remember that everything needs to fit inside ‘the box’ at all times. The box is the web page your are viewing. It is a flexible box so that you can easily change its height and width, which is exactly what you do when resizing your browser window.

Each row in your page is also a box which takes up the whole width of the page. As you change the browser with, each row will dynamically resize itself to suit the new outer box size. These rows can contain content (such as text, shapes or images), or may also contain boxes within themselves, for example, the FlexBox widget or Responsive Row. These boxes will, again, typically hold content.

So Responsive Web Design is analogous to working with flexible boxes within boxes within boxes. The main problem with this comes when page designs create boxes which are too large for the box they are wrapped in. If you create such a design then your page may at times, be too wide for the device it is being displayed upon. If you find yourself in this situation, check out our Solving Horizontal Page Drift video which explains how to easily fix the problem.

Conclusion

Working in a responsive web design environment may mean that you have to ‘think different’ and is a learning process too. It may not suit everyone’s needs but it is the best way to create a scalable site easily.

If you have a question about building a responsive website in EverWeb please let us know in the Comments Section below. We would love to hear about your experiences!

Once you have established your EverWeb website, you may start to think about the possible ways in which to expand its scope, possibilities and reach. For example, starting a blog, adding a storefront page or even monetizing your site through advertising on your website’s pages. In this post, we will take a look at whether you should be running advertisements in your EverWeb website. We begin with a question…

Is Advertising On My Site Going To Pay?

This is the first question you need to ask yourself. To answer this question you need to look at your site’s metrics. Is your website getting enough visitors to make placing advertisements on your site viable and profitable? Typically, website publishers get paid for placing advertisements by impressions and/or by advertisements being clicked upon by your visitors.

Two metrics are important to look at, the first is the amount of content that your website contains. You should only consider placing advertisements on your site if you have around 50 or more quality blog posts on your site. The second metric to look at is whether your site receives more than 100 organic visits to your site per day on average over a period of a few weeks.

If you meet the above criteria hosting advertisements on your site could be worthwhile. The next step is to look at the actual pros and cons of advertising on your site.

The Pros and Cons of Placing Ads on Your Site

Once you have decided that placing advertisements on your site is viable, you should then consider the pros and cons of placing advertisements on your site. Here is a fast summary…

Pros of Placing Advertisements on Your Website

• Advertisements can be monetized.
• Advertising can help fund your website.
• Advertisements are not limited to time slots.
• The Internet is a unique way to advertize and your site can be seen on all platforms.
• Advertisements run on your web pages 7×24.
• You can track the results of your advertisement placments.
• You can leverage your site’s existing SEO or build out your site’s SEO.
• You quickly see results, unlike SEO which can take time.

Cons of Placing Advertisements on Your Website

• You need to have enough good quality content (e.g at least 50-100 blog posts).
• You need to have enough hits on your site to make advertising viable (at least 100 per day).
• There are a lot of spammers offering ad placements.
• You might find that you are paying more for hosting advertisements than you earn from advertising.
• The time, effort and cost in maintaining and adjusting your advertising may make it prohibitive.

Choosing Your Advertising Partner

If you decide that placing ads on your website is still good to go, then you will probably be looking at Google as your provider. Most businesses go with Google as it is relatively easy to setup and work with. It is also a well known brand. Advertisers and website publishers also find it to be the most successful way of placing ads. Using Google also gives you the reassurance that you will not be working with a trusted parter and not a spammer or fraudulent business.

Google offers two products in this area: Google Ads and Google AdSense. Whilst the two products offer a lot that is the same as each other, there are differences as outlined below.

Google Ads versus Google AdSense – Which To Use?

First of all it is important to define what Google Ads and AdSense are…

Google Ads: You use this service if for advertisers who wants to promote their products and services on Google Search, YouTube, and other sites on the Internet.

AdSense: This product is for website publishers who want to earn money by placing ads on their website.

Whilst the two services Google Ads and AdSense have many similarities, you can see that they aim for two different audiences. As a website publisher, you would probably choose Google’s AdSense product.

Before You Start To Use Google AdSense

Before you start to use Google AdSense, make sure that you familiarize yourself with how it works and what the terms and conditions are for placing advertisements on your site. There are many things that you can and cannot do when placing an advertisement so make sure that you read up on it before starting to place advertisements on your pages.

Using Google AdSense on Your Website

When using Google’s AdSense you will use the following process:

• Make sure you have enough space on your pages to display advertisements: AdSense works by generating a code snippet that contains code that displays the advertiser’s advertisement.in EverWeb, you would add the HTML Snippet widget on to your page, then paste in thecae that y0u have copied to the clipboard from AdsSense into the ‘Code’ box. Press apply to finish. You would then move the advertisement displayed in the Editor Window to where you want it placed. ou will need to decide where you want to place the code.
• The advertisers’ bidding process: Advertisers bid in a real-time auction to be able to show their advertisements on a website publisher’s website. The advertiser with the highest bid will have their advertisements displayed on the website publisher’s website.
• The Website Publisher is Paid: Google manages and pays the website publisher directly for the advertisements placed.

Conclusion

Adding advertisements to your website can help you monitize your site, but there are caveats to doing so. Placing advertisements on your site may actually cost you rather than earn you money if your daily site traffic is low and if you do not already have good SEO practices and good content already in place. You should also make sure that you build out SEO for website so that it is as visible as possible to potential visitors. This in itself may be better, more efficient goal as it will get more visitors to your site. Playing advertisements that are only visible to a few visitors per day will not monitize your site, so build out your content on your site first, add SEO and see what effect this has on visits to your site over a few weeks. If all of that gives you confidence that you have the metrics you need to succeed with advertisements then why not give it a try.

Integrating Internet Marketplaces, such as eBay, Shopify, Facebook or Etsy amongst others, within your EverWeb website is something that can be desirable as it helps extend your sales reach as far as possible. As a seller of goods and/or services you will want to reach as many potential buyers as possible.

Extending Your Sales Reach

As a seller, you will want to maximise your sales reach with the minimum of effort. Your website may, in fact, be your primary sales driver, as it is probably the main place where your customer base will come to first for your goods and services. Your website is a great place to attract an audience that fits your market niche. It is also where you can easily apply SEO focus and if you want to rune your SEO then there is also EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp addon to help with fine tuning.

Using an Internet Marketplace might be a great way to give your sales a lift. Sites, such as eBay, probably have a far bigger customer base than you can achieve with your own website. Tapping in to this may be advantageous as it is a quick and easy way to broaden your potential customer reach. The downside to this, though, is that you will have to set up and maintain your goods and services again, You will also probably be subject to seller fees as well.

The solution to duplicating work is to offer your products and services through your Internet Marketplace and linking them back to your website. This will save you time and effort when adding, removing and updating your products and services.

What Is Important For Internet Marketplaces…

Many Internet Marketplace vendors used to offer ways in which you could directly integrate the goods and services sold on their sites directly in to your own website. This provided an effective way for sellers to easily link to their marketplace vendors.

Times have changed, though, as many such integration tools offered by Internet Marketplaces have either been stopped altogether, are offered as a premium product to purchase by sellers, offered as part of a marketplace ‘developers’ kit or have been replaced by third party solutions. 

Making linking to your website more difficult helps Internet Marketplaces retain potential buyers in their website and ecosystem. It also ties in sellers too, as many Internet Marketplaces vie to be a ‘one stop shop’ for both buyers and sellers.

Integrating Your Internet Marketplace In EverWeb

As it becomes more difficult to easily link your website in to your Internet Marketplaces, you could spend a lot of time and effort looking for a solution . Here are some options that may help you reduce the time and effort on finding an integration solution…

1. Check out the EverWeb Addon Resources Page: You may find the solution to integrating your Internet Marketplace with EverWeb from EverWeb’s Addons page. For example, EverWeb integrates with platforms such as Shopify, Etsy, SoundCloud and so on. Check out the Resources -> EverWeb Addons page in the EverWeb website to see if your vendor is already supported.
2. Checkout EverWeb’s Videos on YouTube: EverWeb’s YouTube channel includes a lot of integration videos to other products including Internet Marketplaces. You can quickly search YouTube to discover if the integration you require is already there.
3. Check out EverWeb’s Blog Posts: Search our blog posts for the Internet Marketplace vendor you are wanting to integrate with. Also check out third party blog posts too such as All About iWeb.
4. Third Party Widgets: Another good source for integration is to check to see if any of EverWeb’s Third Party Widget vendors have created a widget to link to the products and services in your Internet Marketplace. Some third party vendors may even offer to build a widget for you although this may be chargeable. Check out the EverWeb Addons page for a list of Third Party Widget vendors.
5. Check out Your Internet Marketplace’s Resources: Sometimes using your marketplace’s forum is the quickest way to find out if integration with your website is possible. It may be that this information is easy and upfront to find, but be aware that sometimes this information is buried deep in the vendor’s website, or in their developer resources. You may find that integration is easy or requires coding knowledge. You may also find a lot of information is out of date. If there is no information easily available, then the chances of easy integration is likely to be less. The best option here is to ask immediately if integration is possible before wading your way through your forum.
6. Legacy Resources: Sometimes vendors have, in the past, offered integration tools to link your market place to your website. However, many vendors have now stopped this practice. These such resources may, or may not, still be available for use. If a resource is still available, it may now work with limitations. Our advice is to use your vendor’s user forum to ask if there is any way to integrate your market place in to your website and what possible problems and limitations using a legacy solution may bring up.
7. Use EverWeb’s HTML Snippet Widget: One of the easiest ways to integrate your Marketplace in to EverWeb is usually by using the HTML Snippet widget. Here, your marketplace vendor creates a piece of code which can be used to link e.g. one of your products or services, in to your website. In EverWeb you would add the HTML Snippet widget to your page then paste in your vendor’s code in to the ‘HTML Code’ section of the Widget Settings then press the ‘Apply’ button to save the changes.
8. Ask EverWeb!: If you cannot find an integration that works for you, you can always ask EverWeb Support of use the EverWeb Discussion Forum to ask if integration is possible.
9. Use Hyperlinking. If your Marketplace vendor does not have a way to integrate in to your website, or if the cost of doing so is prohibitive, then often the only way left to integrate is by hyperlinking the products or services from your website to the corresponding Marketplace product or service pages. The disadvantage of this approach is that you may not land directly on the desired product or service in your Marketplace if you can only link to a ‘sales’ page. Also, your visitor will leave your website and will now be in your Internet Marketplace’s site. At least your visitor will be on your Marketplace page even if not in your own website.

Linking the products and services that you have in an Internet Marketplace such as eBay, Shopify or Etsy is usually possible, as long as you find out upfront the best way in which it can be achieved.

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

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of EverWeb 3.9.6 for macOS and MS Windows. This is a maintenance and support release focusing mainly on fixes and improvements for EverWeb for Windows. The update is, however, recommended for both Windows and macOS EverWeb users. 

EverWeb 3.9.6 is a free update for EverWeb + Hosting users and users with an active EverWeb Standalone Update & Support plan. 

Which Version of EverWeb Is For You?

EverWeb is available in the following versions:

• If you are running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, EverWeb 3.9.6 is available for you.
• If you are running an Intel Mac running OS X 10.10, macOS Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura, EverWeb version 3.9.6 is available for you.
• If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Ventura, Monterey or Big Sur, EverWeb version 3.9.6 is available for you as a Universal Binary. EverWeb will run natively without the need to use Rosetta 2.
• If you are running OS X 10.7 – 10.9 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks) EverWeb version 2.9.1 is available for you.
• If you are running OS X 10.6 EverWeb version 2.5.2 is available for you.

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

New, Fixed and Improved In EverWeb 3.9.6

EverWeb version 3.9.6 includes the following:

[NEW] Easier to install Widgets on windows by draggging and dropping them into the Widgets list

[FIX] Widget preview updates on Windows did not always work correctly

[FIX] Fixed issues with duplicating Responsive Rows

[FIX] Fixed linking to external pages in some Widgets

[FIX] nofollow settings for links in Widgets works properly now

[FIX] Fixed some issues with importing iWeb galleries

[FIX] Improvements to message dialogs on Windows

[FIX] Some Image Slider Widget fixes on responsive pages

[FIX] Fixed typing issues in Styled Text Editor for Widgets on Windows

[CHG] Improvements to publishing with FTP and issues with time out errors

How To Update To EverWeb for Windows

You can easily update EverWeb for Windows by either:

1. Launching EverWeb then opening a project file. From the Help menu at the top of the screen select ‘Check for Update’ or by
2. Downloading EverWeb from the EverWeb website.

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

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

How To Update To EverWeb for macOS

You can easily update EverWeb for macOS by either:

1. Launching EverWeb then going to the EverWeb menu at the top of the screen and selecting ‘Check for Update’ or by
2. Downloading EverWeb from the EverWeb website.

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

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

About Your EverWeb Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Information About EverWeb

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

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

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

EverWeb on Social Media

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

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

In our previous post we looked at how to use EverWeb‘s Show on Device feature so that you could use one page in your website to create content that is tailored to the device it is being displayed upon. In this post, we will look at some of the useful tools built in to EverWeb to make designing your page as easy as possible.

When to Design a Page Using Show On Device

The Show on Device feature is designed to be used on responsive pages. Whilst you can use Show on Device on a center aligned page, there is not much milage ion doing so. As the center aligned page is fixed in width,. for this type of design style you would create a mobile page version of the desktop page and then link them together in the Inspector Window using the Mobile Settings section of the Page Settings tab.

Responsive pages are typically more suitable for using Show on Device, as the page type is designed to scale at any width. Designing responsive pages using Show on Device can, however, become quite complex, both visually and technically. If your page uses Show on Device for each page device type on a page, you could have four times the objects than if you did not use Show on Device at all.

For most website designers, using Show on Device will be on a ‘case by case’ basis. Typically the widgets that you use on the page, such as the Responsive Row, FlexBox and Text Section widgets will cater for most website designers needs. If you do think that you need to use Show on Device for specific needs then here are some hints and tips to help you develop our website’s pages more easily…

EverWeb’s Scaleable Editor Window

It is easy to forget that if you change the size of the EverWeb app on your computer, you will also affect the size of the Editor Window. This is the simplest and quickest way in which to view how your page will look at different pixel widths.

Use EverWeb’s Rulers To Assist in Your Page Design

If you are using EverWeb 2.9 or later, you turn on the option to show a ruler along the top and down the left hand side of the Editor Window. Use the Window_> Show Rulers menu option to toggle this feature on or off. Using rulers can help you guide the width of your objects as you design you page. In this way you can better see how the page will look at any pixel width

Use ‘Show Breakpoints’ to See Device Widths

In addition to seeing how your objects can look at different device widths within the Editor Window, you may also find it useful to use the Window-> Show Breakpoints menu option to see the demarcation line between different device types.

Decluttering Your View

The most probable cause of most frustration when using Show on Device is that your Editor Window can be come very cluttered. This can make editing a more difficult task. However there are some things that you can do to help…

1. Use Pick Layer to Choose the Object You Want: When using Show on Device, you may find that you have objects appearing on top of other objects as your design now has more ‘layers’. If you find that you now have difficulty in selecting the right object, you will find Pick Layer indispensable. Just right or secondary mouse click on the object you want to select. You should now see a submenu from which you can choose ‘Pick Layer’. Select the object that you want to select.
2. Where to Embed Your Objects: When adding objects to suit all the different device types, you may find that sometimes you have added an object to the wrong Responsive Row. You can move misplaced objects by first using Pick Layer to select the object you want to move. Then right click again on the selected object and use the ‘Embed In’ menu option and place the object in the correct Responsive Row widget.
3. Name Your Responsive Rows: This is another simple, but useful, tip. When you are designing for up to four different device types all on the same page, naming each Responsive Row widget properly so you can easily see whether it relates to a Large Desktop, Desktop, Tablet or Mobile becomes becomes more important. To do this, just select the Responsive Row that you want to name, then go to its Widget Settings and enter an appropriate name in the ‘Responsive Row Name’ field.
4. Use Show Hidden Objects: When using the ‘Show on Device’ feature, when an object is not viewable at the pixel width the EverWeb app is currently set to, the object will be greyed out with an ‘X’ through it. Only when the Editor Window is at the right pixel width will the object be visible. To be able to see the contents of objects that are not currently visible, use the Window-> Show Hidden Objects menu option. The object contents will appear under the greyed out object. This menu option can be toggled on or off as required.
5. Using Show Layout: There may be times where you want to view the contents of the Editor Window without seeing the layout. This is useful when you want to get an idea of how your page will look without having to preview. use the Window-> Hide Layout menu option. Again you can toggle this command to show the layout again as needed. If your hidden objects are still visible, toggle the Window-> Show Hidden Objects menu option.

Working with Show on Device can really make your website more dynamic. Once you get used to how the feature can be applied, and by using the tips above, you will be able to take your website to a new level!

Building a Responsive website in EverWeb takes away the hassle of having to design both desktop and mobile versions of the pages in your site. Whilst responsive website design means that you only have one page design to deal with, it does mean that you have to be more aware of the state of the page at every pixel width. This can mean that pages are inherently more complex to design than the traditional desktop-mobile design paradigm.

Designing responsive pages may also mean that you want to display different content at different pixel widths. For example, you may want super detailed text content when viewing a page on a desktop or large desktop device, but on a mobile device you may want more images and a text summary instead. At any point inbetween these two devices types you might want the content to ‘scale’ accordingly…

Structuring a responsive page to suit all device type typically relies on just a few of EverWeb’s widgets. Typically you will be working a lot with the Responsive Row, Text Section and FlexBox widgets as these help you to scale your page easily at all pixel widths. You may also want to use TextBoxes, images, shapes and perhaps video or audio as well in your page design.

Things get complex, however, when you want to change the content as the page width changes. Whilst the aforementioned widgets enable you to structure your content at any pixel width, they won’t add or remove content along the way. So how can you achieve this? The answer lies with EverWeb’s ‘Show on Device’ feature.

Show On Device

The concept of EverWeb’s Show on Device feature is a simple one: to display an object only for the selected device type(s). Usually an object is displayed on all device types, but Show on Device, located in the Responsive section of the Metrics Inspector, allows you to display the selected object on any combination of mobile, tablet, desktop and large desktop device. This feature is used in a Responsive website design using fixed width objects within a Responsive Row widget.

To use Show on Device, place the objects you want to use in to a Responsive Row widget. This widget is used as a container for the widgets placed within it. Also make sure that the objects that you place in the Responsive Row widget are set as fixed width objects i.e. the ‘Full Width’ checkbox in the Metrics Inspector is unchecked for objects inside of the Responsive Row widget.

You may want to start creating your device specific Responsive Row using a large desktop scenario. This is perhaps easiest to start with as you can put all of the content (text, images, video, shapes etc.) that you want in to your objects within the Responsive Row. You can later duplicate this and remove content for other device types later.

When creating the first Responsive Row set the title of the Responsive Row in the Widget Settings to something along the lines of ‘Large Desktop Row’ so you can easily identify the row. If using widgets, such as the FlexBox or Text Section widget, check the Widget Settings to make sure that they conform to settings appropriate with a large desktop e.g. image size, maximum width settings, objects width settings within the Responsive Row widget. If you are using TextBoxes, shapes or images, check in the Metrics Inspector that the width of these objects is, again, suitable for being displayed on large desktop devices.

Once you have completed filling the Responsive Row widget with the content you want, uncheck the Show on Desktop, Tablet and Mobile options in the Responsive section of the Metrics Inspector for the all of the objects within the Responsive Row. To test that the Responsive Row works properly, you can use the Preview button and then reduce the width of your browser until the objects disappear. You can also do this in EverWeb. As you reduce the width of the app, you will see the objects in the Responsive Row being replaced with boxes with an ‘X’ through them. This denotes that the object would no longer be visible at that screen width when previewed or published.

Once you have tested that all works properly, duplicate the Responsive Row widget and its contents so you have two copies of the Responsive Row and the objects it contains. In the Metrics Inspector, check ‘Show on Desktop’. Uncheck ‘Show on Large Desktop’ for all the objects in the duplicated Responsive Row.

You can now use the duplicated version of the Responsive Row to build a version for desktop devices. For this version, first change the title of the Responsive Row to e.g. ‘Desktop Row’. You may want to trim some of the text content from the objects or even remove some objects altogether from the Responsive Row. You may also need to adjust the maximum width of objects within the Responsive Row to suit the maximum width of a desktop device. Once you have completed your work on the desktop version of the Responsive Row, again test. After testing is completed, duplicate the Destop Row and its contents, this time for use on a tablet. Repeat the process and once complete do the same procedure for Mobile devices.

At the end you should have four Responsive Rows, one for each device type. As you expand or reduce the width of the EverWeb app or browser window, you should see each version of the Responsive Row displayed. You may find that you may not need some device types or that you can use on Responsive Row for two device types e.g. the Desktop Responsive Row may be fine to sue for both Desktop and Large Desktop device types. In this example, you would delete the Large Desktop Responsive Row and check ‘Show on Large Desktop’ and ‘Show on Desktop’ for the Desktop Responsive Row instead.

Show on Device is a very useful design feature, but can require some thought and finesse when using it.

Using this feature will complicate your page design when editing your page in EverWeb, so take it slowly and test your page design regularly. Check out our video walkthrough above for extra information on this useful EverWeb feature!

In our next blog we will look at some hints and tips for getting the most out of Show on Device! If you have a question about this feature, or anything about EverWeb, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

Google has recently announced the rollout of its Core Algorithm update which has already started earlier in March 2023. If SEO is key for your EverWeb made website, this Google update should be of interest to you. The rollout of the new Core Algorithm may affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which in turn may affect your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings.

When Google rolls out such updates, it is never certain how much it will impact a site’s SEO page rankings, so if SEO is key to your business, you may need to monitor the impact of this update on your site over the coming few weeks. The rollout of the Core Algorithm update itself can take weeks to complete as it has to replicate around the globe, be reindexed and re-crawled, so you may find that your SEO rankings may fluctuate over this period.

Why Google Updates Its Core Algorithm

Google periodically updates the Core Algorithm that it uses so that it can better understand the content of web pages. Armed with this knowledge, Google should be able to rank web pages more intelligently and accurately when a person initiates a search in their browser. Google’s ultimate aim, therefore, is to give its users better quality results sets when performing searches on the Internet.

What You Can Do For Your EverWeb Website

This is a tough question to answer as everyone’s situation is different. Some may benefit from the update, some may see no difference and some may see worsening rankings. Here are some pointers to help you:

1. Keep abreast of the Core Algorithm update situation over the next few weeks. Until the rollout of the update is complete SEO rankings may be in flux. It will not be until a while after the update is compete, when things settle down and reindexing is complete, that you will be able to see if the rollout impacts your site’s traffic or not. So for the moment, watch, wait and monitor your site traffic to see if there is any potential positive or negative impact.
2. Keep producing high quality content! No matter what happens with the update, your site should always be producing high quality content on its pages and in its blogs. This lead SEO concept is at the heart of Google’s strategy with Core Algorithm updates and its SEO strategy in general. High quality, creative, unique content is the formula you should be aiming to make with your site.
3. Review your SEO in EverWeb. When doing this, remember that Google has a ‘mobile first’ strategy to SEO so make sure your site is either responsive or includes mobile designed pages if you are using a fixed width (centre aligned) page layout. Also check your page loading speeds as performance is also something Google will take in to account. Finally, review your SEO keywords and key terms that you use in your pages and in fields such as the Web Page Title and Web Page Description. Are these keywords and key terms still valid? Should they be updated or changed? For more information, check out our SEO for EverWeb Video Course. It’s a time effective way to help you get started with SEO in EverWeb or to refresh your knowledge if you have already applied SEO techniques to your site.
4. Consider using EverWeb SEO PowerUp Addon if SEO is important to your site and business. Whilst EverWeb comes with SEO ‘baked in’ to the product, there are lots of additional extra features that EverWeb SEO PowerUp addon includes that can help you focus your SEO and audience targeting. Check out our SEO Power Up video for a walkthrough of how EverWeb SEO PowerUp can help your business stay SEO competitive.

Conclusion

Google periodically updates its Core Algorithm so this should be something all those concerned with SEO should be aware of. It is also a call to action to maintain and update your site with quality content. Remember to keep an eye on your site’s stats to act upon any changes that may lower your rankings. SEO is an ever changing game, but keeping core concepts of quality content putting your website’s audience front and center at all times should keep you on target whenever Google updates its Core Algorithm.