Mac SEO Blog

Building your website always involves some trial and error as you work to translate your ideas into reality. Even when using such an easy to use product as EverWeb to build your site, you may find that your original ideas about your website may need adapting. In many ways, this is a great, creative process and ultimately will lead you to building a satisfying and rewarding website. Even after your website design is complete, you may also find that you want to go back to it at a later date to update its content or design.

Your EverWeb Project file is where you collect together the files that you need, for example, images, audio and video. When building your site, you may find that you add such files to your Project file but end up not using them. You may also want to load the files that you want to use in your site in to your Project file before you start building your website’s pages.

Adding assets to your EverWeb Project file is easy to do, but sometimes you may want to perform some maintenance on your Project file to streamline its performance and to make it easier to work with. This is especially true if you are working with a large number of assets in your Project file. In this case you may want to organize them in the Assets List as well.

If you also use very large files in your Project file, these may take longer to load in to your computer’s memory and can also be slower to work with when they have loaded. Large files will also slow down your page loading times in your published website, so should be avoided where possible.

With these factors in mind, here are some ways in which you can save time, effort and space to make your EverWeb project file leaner, and make editing your pages snappier!

Check Your Files Before You Add Them To Your Project File

Performing some simple maintenance tasks on your site is easy, but perhaps what is more difficult to do is some preventative maintenance. This really starts with looking at the files that you want to use before you add them to your Project. For image files, there are two key things: first is the file size and second is the name that you use for the file itself.

If you have many large image files in your Project file, this can start to affect the loading time of your Project. It may also start to affect things such as how quickly you can swap from one page to another in your Project, or on your page editing tasks. The other big issue with large image files is that they will drag down your page loading times in your published your website. Typically, photography websites have slow loading pages as the image files used are unnecessarily large. It’s not needed to have such large files. No one likes slow loading pages!

So the key here is to look at the file size your your images and if they are large, try to optimize them so that they are smaller. For example, a quick win is when you have .PNG files. You can convert these such files in to JPG files and save a lot of file space in doing so. The second way to reduce file size is to reduce the dimensions of the image e.g. if you have an image file that is 2500 x 1800, why more reduce it down to e.g. 800 x 600. This in itself will save you plenty of file size space. The last quick tip here is to use software that strips out unnecessary file data. This can also save you lots of file space.

These steps should be done before you add the files in to EverWeb wherever possible. If you have already imported your image files you can see how large they are by clicking on the Assets tab, then clicking on the ellipses within a circle icon that is between the plus and minus buttons. Select the ‘Show File Info’ option to see details of each file in the Assets List, including their size. You can also sort the Assets List to see where the largest files are so that you can reimport them after using the tips above to reduce their file size.

Remove Unused Assets

As you build your website project, you may find that you have added files to the Assets List that you actually will not be using. You can easily remove theses files from your Project file by searching for unused assets, then deleting the ones you no longer want to keep.

Removing assets from your website’s Project file is easy to do.

1. Start by clicking on the Assets tab
2. Click on the Settings button (the circle with the ellipsis inside it) between the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons.
3. From the menu, select ‘Find Unused Assets’ and click on it.
4. EverWeb will now search the Assets List for any asset that is not currently being used in the pages of your Project file.
5. Once the search has been completed, all unused assets will be highlighted in the Assets List. EverWeb will ask you if you want to delete these files.
6. If you click on Yes, the files will be deleted immediately. If you choose No, then the files will still be highlighted in the Assets List for you to review and manually delete if you want.

Stripping Out Duplicate Assets

One of the great things about EverWeb’s Assets tab is that when you add an asset, such as an image file, to it, you can use it as many times as you want in your project. There is no need to repeatedly add the asset again if you want to use it more than once. If you have accidentally done this, then delete the duplicate assets from the Assets List. Use the original asset that you imported to replace the now deleted duplicate assets on the pages of your website.

Stripping out duplicate assets will help keep your Project file size healthy and it is also easier for you to manage and use your image file assets as well.

Link To Your Media Rather Than Embed

If you have large media assets in your Project file, such as video content, you may find that it is better to offload this media on to another platform, e.g. YouTube or Vimeo, and then link back to your media from within EverWeb. There are already YouTube and Vimeo video Widgets available directly within EverWeb to make this easy for you to do. You will also find that services such as YouTube and Vimeo will also compress your video files to make them load quicker.

The upside for your EverWeb Project file is that you can remove the video files from the Assets List altogether which will save space and improve your Project file’s loading time and editing response time.

Managing the files in your Assets List with a little maintenance once in a while can help you with faster Project loading times, snappier Project file editing and faster page loading times when publishing your website!

If you have a question for us about EverWeb, please let us know in the Comments section below.

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.

One of the most useful tools to use to improve your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Heading Tags. These ‘tags’ help search engines find titles and subheadings on your pages that you want them to crawl. Before EverWeb 3.9, you would use the Headings Tag widget to define the headings and subheadings in your pages that you wanted crawlers to look for. The introduction of EverWeb 3.9 makes this task easier by including the widget’s feature within the Text Inspector.

More Than Just Headings Tags…

If you are familiar with the Headings Tag widget, you may also know that Headings tags are sometimes known as ‘Header’ tags. Either way, the function of these ‘tags’ are the same. In EverWeb 3.9, or later, you can find these tags listed under the heading ‘HTML Tag’ in the Text inspector. The heading encompasses the existing Headings Tags as well as adding in a paragraph tag. We wil look at these definitions and in detail below.

So What Are Headings Tags and How Do They Work?

The Headings Tag widget and the Text Inspector’s new HTML Tags both allow you to specify up to six levels of heading from ‘h1’ down to ‘h6’. The ‘h1’ tag is the most important with the ‘h6’ tag being the least important. Typically you will probably only need to use tags ‘h1’ to ‘h3’, and possibly ‘h4’ on occasion.

Using headings tags is straightforward. You will typically apply the h1 tag to the most important heading on your page, usually the page;’s title or main heading. Next in the hierarchy, h2, is usually applied to sub-headings on your page and h3 tags to sub-sub headings and so on down. to h6.

When applying heading tags to your page, just highlight the text that you want to ‘tag’ then use the HTML Tags dropdown to select the tag that you want to apply.. That is all you need to do!

If you currently use the Headings Tag widget, you can replace the widget with the inline tagging instead.

Web crawlers will now be able to target the text that you want them too more easily to help improve your SEO page rankings when people search the web for your business or products and services that you sell. Remember here, though, that SEO is run by search engines such as Google and Microsoft and involves many factors.

When To Use, and Not Use, HTML Tags

When you use headings tags on your pages, there are some general rules which website developers usually follow:

• Use only one h1 headings tag per page. If possible, try to include your primary SEO keyword or phrase but only if it is appropriate to do so. As usual, prioritize making good content over the desire for better SEO rankings.
• Use one or more h2 tags in your page if you are using subheadings that you want web crawlers to take notice of. If possible try to include your secondary SEO keyword or phase if it is appropriate to do so.
• It is possible that your secondary keyword or phrase is in you page title. If this is the case then make this your h1 heading. Always remember that the quality of your content is more important than SEO rankings.
• You can format the text that you are using for heading tags in the same was as you would any other text on the page. Using the inline HTML tags should be easier to style and format then using the Headings Tag widget.
• You do not have to use heading tags on all of your pages. Focus your efforts on to the pages where you want your SEO to count. such as your site’s landing page. You do not have to apply heading tags to pages such as Contact and About pages. Most sites have these types of pages so it does not win you anything by apply heading tags or SEO techniques to these such pages.
• If you previously used EverWeb’s Headings Tag widget you can keep them in the pages where you added them, or replace them with the new inline tags.
• Headings tags are only one part of your SEO strategy. There are a number of other tools that can be used to help improve your page ranking results. Check out the SEO for EverWeb Video Course for full details.

Additional Features of the HTML Tags Feature

Whilst EverWeb’s Headings Tag widget allows you to set six heading levels (h1 – h6), the HTML Tag dropdown menu in the Text Inspector has a couple of additional features:

• Auto: As the name suggests, this setting leaves it up to EverWeb to decide the importance of the text for website crawlers when you publish your site. Generally, most of your text will not need to be included in a heading tag at all.
• p for Paragraph: The other new setting is ‘<p>’ for paragraph. Use this option when you explicitly want to let web crawlers know that this is an important paragraph on your page. Typically, you would use this for introductory paragraphs or summary paragraphs in your page. These paragraphs are usually important as they either tell your visitors what the rest of the page is about or provide a conclusion or summary of the content at the end of the page. Again this should be used sparingly and only when appropriate.

Heading tags are an incredibly useful tool to help improve your sites SEO and should be best used in conjunction with the other SEO tools that are available in EverWeb.

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

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

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

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

2. Aim For a More Secure Website in 2023!

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

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

3. Give Your Site’s SEO a Higher Priority

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

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

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

4. Spreading Your Word with a Blog

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

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

5. Creative, Consistent Content!

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

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

6. Work Smarter, Not Harder…

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

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

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

Happy New Year EverWebbers!

Our latest EverWeb release, version 3.8, has three great new major features: a gorgeous new User Interface if you are running macOS Big Sur or later, an easy way to group assets on a page by page basis, and the new Mass Mailing feature for the Contact Forms Enhanced Addon. As always, though, we have added a lot of often requested minor features and tweaks to EverWeb to make your website building experience even better. Here is a rundown of those smaller features that you may have missed…

Blogging Posts Are More Customizable!

Good news if you use EverWeb’s blogging feature as EverWeb 3.8 introduced two new feature additions to help you with formatting your blog pos: Blog Post Header alignment and Blog Post Date Alignment. Alignment can be wither left, right or centered.

The other really useful feature to come in this release is the inclusion of Image Padding for your Blog Post’s Cover Image. As you increase the padding, the vertical and horizontal spacing increases between the Post’s Cover Image and the Blog Post Header and Date fields. The effect is most noticeable when the Post Cover Image is left aligned. If the image is center aligned, you will see vertical padding only, and you may not notice any effect is the image is right aligned as, in this case, the Blog Post Header and Date fields will be left aligned so will not ‘interact’ with the image.

New “Instant” Preview Feature

Over the last few years, we have aimed to improve the speed of previewing your site and with EverWeb 3.8 we are happy to announce the arrival of Instant Preview. This new feature does just what it says as it instantly show you a preview of your page when you either hit the Preview button and select the browser of your choice.

The new Instant Preview takes only one step to set up. First go to the EverWeb-> Preferences-> General tab. In this dialog box make sure that the ‘Preview Server’ checkbox is ticked. That is all you need to do to get ‘instant’ previews!

More Context Sensitive Help

We started adding more context sensitive Help dialog boxes to EverWeb in version 3.7 and have expanded these in EverWeb 3.8. if you find any Help dialog box intrusive, just tick on the ‘Don’t Show Again’ checkbox so it does not appear again. if you do want to restore the Help dialog boxes, go to the EverWeb-> Preferences-> General tab and click on the “Reset ‘Don’t Show Again’ Dialogs” button. Note that doing this action will restore all of the dialog box help messages.

We have also tweaked the Section headings that display when you move an object towards another section of the page, based on customer feedback to its implementation in EverWeb 3.7.

Photos and Captions

Photos contain a lot of information in the structure of the file, such as date and time created, location, aperture and focal length settings and so on. In EverWeb 3.8 EverWeb will try to retrieve the caption of a photo if there is one in the file information. Id the caption is found, when you import the file into EverWeb, it will replace the filename with the caption information instead e.g. if I have a photo with a file name of ‘P1000450.jpg’ on my desktop with a caption ‘Blue Sailing Ship’ included as the file’s description, when I drag and drop the file in to EverWeb, the file will be renamed as ‘Blue Sailing Ship.jpg’. The original file on the desktop remains unaffected and still has its original file name.

Faster Widget Generation for Apple Silicon Users

Although apps on Apple’s Intel based and Apple Silicon Macs in theory should run the same and without problem, there are some differences between the two. Typically this usually means that Apple Silicon users have found some speed issues in the past that need to be addressed, even though the app is ‘dual binary’. Although we have tweaked EverWeb to remove these issues, a bit more work in the area of widget generation in the Editor Window has been done just to keep this running at the speed they should – nice and smooth!

EverWeb 3.8.1 Is Now Available!

…and finally, the maintenance version of EverWeb 3.8, version 3.8.1, is now available for download. This update is recommended as it fixes some issues found in the recent 3.8 release. If you have ‘Automatically Check for Updates’ set on in the EverWeb-> Preferences-> General menu option, you will be notified of this updated when you next log in to EverWeb. Alternatively you can use the EverWeb-> Check for Updates… menu option, or download the latest version from the EverWeb website.

Do you have a feature that you would like to see in EverWeb? Or perhaps a feature that you would like enhanced or expanded upon? Let us know in the Comments Section below!

If you are designing a responsive website in EverWeb, you are most likely to have used the Responsive Row widget at some time in your page design. This venerable widget debuted in EverWeb 2.8 when we launched responsive website design capability. The Responsive Row widget came along with the FlexBox, Text Section and Responsive Image Gallery widgets providing core functionality to EverWeb’s responsive page design feature.

The Responsive Row widget is a unique in that it is the only widget that you can contain another widget and this is also its main purpose. When designing a responsive website, there may be times where you might want to use a fixed width widget, for example, the PayPal or FaceBook Like widget. The fixed width nature of these widgets means, however, that they cannot be used on their own and so need to be placed within a container – the Responsive Row widget.

This is not to say though that the Responsive Row widget is limited to use with fixed width widgets. You can add any widget in to it e.g. you might want to group FlexBox, or Text Section, widgets together in a row. Furthermore, the widget is great for full width background images, spacing objects and for padding when using widgets that do not have their own top and bottom margins options. You can even create slide shows too using the recently introduced Fill Slideshow option.

Remember, though, that there are also plenty of times where using a Responsive Row widget can be complete overkill. Check out our blog ‘Responsive Row: To Use or Not To Use’ to find out how to work smart with the widget!

Responsive Row Gets Visual!

One of the goals for EverWeb 3.7 was to make the Responsive Row widget easier to use so that you could better see the objects that you were moving around within a Responsive Row or if you were moving objects from one Responsive Row to another.

With this in mind, EverWeb 3.7 now displays the object you are moving as you move it. If you select more than one object in the Responsive Row to move to a different location within the Responsive Row, you will now see that the selected objects are visually stacked as you move them ‘en-masse’. This makes dragging and dropping objects much easier and intuitive to do than previously. The same principle applies if you are moving on or more objects between one Responsive Row and another.

Secondary Clicking Options

The second goal improving the Responsive Row widget in EverWeb 3.7 was to make it easier to remove objects from a Responsive Row. As you ma know already, you can right click on objects in a Responsive Row widget to select, and move, them to other Responsive Row widgets. In EverWeb 3.7 you can now detach an object from a Responsive Row by secondary (right) clicking on the object you want to remove from the Repsonsive Row, then selecting the ‘Remove from Responsive Row’ option. The object will now be ‘detached’ from the Responsive Row and will become a free floating object.

More Help and Tips!

The final goal third goal for the Responsive Row, and EverWeb in general, with version 3.7 was to improve context sensitive help. You may also have noticed that generally in EverWeb 3.7 there are more context sensitive help dialog boxes. Most of these dialog boxes can be checkboxed so that you do not see them again if you don’t want them visible again. If you change your mind later on, you can reverse this by going to the EverWeb-> Preferences-> General menu option and click on the “Reset ‘Don’t Show Again’ Dialogs” button which is also new EverWeb 3.7 feature.

The wider use of context sensitive messages in EverWeb 3.7 also extends to the Responsive Row widget! We also added a new message box for when you add a Responsive page to your site. You now see a brief description of what a responsive site it and that you can use the Responsive Row widget within your responsive page design if you need to.

We hope that the changes to the Responsive Row widget and the addition of more context sensitive help makes working on responsive pages even easier than before. Let us know what you think in the Comments Section below!

In the first part of this blog post, we looked at the various ways in which you can add text to a responsive page in EverWeb and the effect of doing so on the page on different devices.

In this second part we look at how you create scaleable text in your web pages.

Creating Scalable Text in a Responsive Page Layout

If you want your text to scale according to the device that it is displayed upon, you will need to use EverWeb’s ‘Show on Device’ feature which you can find in the ‘Responsive section’ of the Metrics Inspector. Usually this section will be greyed out unless you click on an object in a Responsive Row, then the settings will become active. There are four options: Show on Mobile, Tablet, Desktop and Wide Desktop. By default all of these options are ticked.

We can use these options to create scaleable text. For each device type, we can create a TextBox that specifically suits that device. So for a mobile device you may want smaller text, slightly larger text for a Tablet, your ‘standard’ size text for a desktop and maybe a little larger text for wide desktops.

1. First of all, add a Responsive page to your site or select a responsive page that already exists in your site.
2. Next drag and drop a Responsive Row widget from the Widgets tab on to your page, or select a Responsive Row that already exists in the page, that you want to add scaleable text to.
3. Make sure that the Responsive Row widget is selected.
4. Now add a TextBox to the page using the TextBox button in the Toolbar. As the Responsive Row widget was already selected, the TextBox should be created as an object within the Responsive Row. The TextBox will appear as a fixed width object so will appear as a square TextBox within the Responsive Row. If you want to check, go to the Metrics Inspector where you will see the ‘Full Width’ box is not checked.
5. If you have accidentally added a TextBox outside of the Responsive Row widget, it will appear as a full width object on the page. You can add this object back in to the Responsive Row by secondary (right) clicking on it, then selecting the ‘Embed In’ option. Choose the Responsive Row that you want. Note that the TextBox will still be full width, so to make it fixed width, go to the Metrics Inspector tab and uncheck the Full Width checkbox, then resize the TextBox to the size you want within the Responsive Row if you need to.
6. Once you have added the TextBox in to the Responsive Row, add the text that you want to it. Style the text as you desire using the Fonts Panel which you can access from the Toolbar or by using the Cmd+T shortcut key.
7. When setting the text size, set the size as you would if the text were to be displayed on a desktop device. This will give you a ‘baseline’ text size e.g. 18 point.
8. Now that you havre established a baseline font size, it is also a good time to think about text sizes on other device types. You may want use the same text size on a tablet device. On a wide desktop, though, you may want a larger text size e.g. 20 point and on a mobile device you may want a smaller text size e.g. 14-16 point. You may also want to consider how to size text that’s used for page and section titles at this stage. Make sure that your text sizing scheme is consistent across all the pages you are using scaleable text on.
9. Consider also the text itself that you have added to the TextBox. Do you want all of the text displayed on a mobile device or will you want to have less ‘detail’ and more ‘headline’ text only? Also for a wide desktop, maybe you have some additional text that you would like to add but did not have the space for on a desktop device. Again, we will come back to this soon.
10. Now that you have your ‘baseline’ TextBox, make sure it is selected then use Cmd+D to duplicate it three times. You now have four TextBoxes, one for each device type.
11. Set the Text font size for each TextBox and also remove or add text to the TextBoxes as appropriate for each device. For example, you could choose the TextBox on the far left of the Responsive Row to be the one for your mobile device. In this case, I might want to cut the amount of text down and set the font size for the TextBox title to be 18 point with the body text set to 14 point. The next TextBox to the right would then be for tablets, having e.g. title font size of 20 and body text size at 16 point with my ‘default’ amount of text. Continue the same way for the Desktop and Wide Desktop TextBoxes.
12. Finally, select the TextBox you want to use for Wide Desktop. In the Metrics Inspector, go to the Responsive section and uncheck Desktop, Tablet and Mobile. Next select Desktop and uncheck Wide Desktop, Tablet and Mobile. For the Tablet TextBox uncheck Mobile, Desktop and Wide Desktop and finally for the Mobile TextBox uncheck Tablet, Desktop and Wide Desktop. You should see one TextBox on screen.
13. Now either resize the EverWeb app, or Preview and resize the browser to see the text scaling up and down as you in increase and decrease the width of the browser or app window.
14. For more information, check out our video on Show on Device.

Working with Text and Images

In the third part of this post, we will look at how you can work creatively with Text and other objects, such as images in a responsive page.

If you have any questions about this post, or about EverWeb in general, please let us know in the Comments Section below!

We are incredibly excited to announce the release of EverWeb 3.6! Two big new features are the highlights of this release! Fill: Slide Show gives you the ability to add a slide show to a TextBox, rectangle shape, image and the Responsive Row widget! It’s an incredibly powerful new feature!

Our second new feature also brings ups the power of EverWeb, in this case with enhanced security features added to EverWeb Site Shield Addon! Your website’s security can be taken to a new level with EverWeb’s easy to implement settings! Click and go for the most secure website you can get!

These features and more are available now! Check out the full feature list below and let us know if you have any questions, issues or wishes!

Which Version of EverWeb is For You?

EverWeb is available in the following versions:

• If you are running an Intel Mac running OS X 10.10, macOS Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur or Monterey EverWeb version 3.6 is available for you.
• If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Monterey or Big Sur, EverWeb version 3.6 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.

EverWeb 3.6 Includes…

[NEW] New Security Features for EverWeb Site Shield Addon.

[NEW] The Shape Options Tab gains a new Fill: Side Show feature.

[NEW] Blog Post Cover Image includes Alt Text.

[IMPROVED] Improved speed in the Editor Window.

[IMPROVED] Speed improvements for pages with lots of widgets on them.

[IMPROVED} English (British) and Dutch localization improvements

[IMPROVED] Adjustments made to the Site Publishing Settings screen 

[FIX] Improved stability of Blog Post Editor.

[FIX] Blog posts in some instances were not updating properly.

[FIX] Fixed adjusting popup window dimensions for links in blog posts.

[FIX] Improved error checking for FTP publishing.

[FIX] Borders on full width object when exporting websites.

[FIX] Issue with selecting a file for a link in the Inspector’s Styled Text Editor.

[FIX] Fixed possible layout issue with Text Section widget.

[FIX] Facebook Like Widget improvements.

[FIX] Images get properly exported as transparent PNGs when using rotation.

[FIX] Vertical alignment of text in shapes with borders (now align middle and bottom properly.)

[FIX] Some CSS issues with blog posts and blog post images when the images are very large.

[FIX] Image Slider widget did not fade properly.

[FIX]The RSS Feed widget Hyperlink Widget Settings for Rollover and Visited did not work.

[FIX] When used together, the Image Gallery Widget and Blog Main widget would create issues when previewed or published.

[FIX] Fixed issues with full width shapes on fixed width layouts that use margins.

[FIX] Fixed alignment of vertical text in shapes with borders which now align to middle and bottom properly.

[FIX] Fixed transparency, shadows and flip settings for shapes.

[FIX] Fixed reflection of rotated shapes.

[FIX] Inspector not being able to scroll properly when you scroll with one shape then select another shape.

[FIX] Changing blog post settings in Inspector will update it properly.

[FIX] A potential crash when dropping an image on a shape set to image fill.

[FIX] Fixed an issue with RSS feeds exporting blog post content.

[FIX] Fixed an issue with RSS feeds not having the correct path to post image.

[FIX] Fixed previewing of very large blog posts.

[FIX] Fixed issues with blogs that had an image file and were full width being set to fixed width when publishing.

[FIX] Popup window links in blog posts.

[FIX] Full width navigation bars in FlexBox will work when using Parallax Scrolling.

[FIX] Facebook Like Widget fixes.

[FIX] Alignment of search button in search widget when using borders.

How To Update To EverWeb 3.6

You can easily update EverWeb 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 EverWeb disk on the desktop by dragging it to the Trashcan.

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 Standalone free update period from EverWeb’s Preferences window 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 it’s new blogging section
• New EverWeb videos on YouTube
• The EverWeb User Manual in EverWeb’s Help-> User Manual menu
• The EverWeb Discussion Forum

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

EverWeb on Social Media

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

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

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.

When you start to build your first website you may or may not, already know about SEO. It may be something that is extremely important to you. It may be something that you have no idea at all about. It may be something that you think might be important to you but it is shrouded in mystery that it seems almost magical or mind bogglingly confusing.

In this post, we are going to demystify SEO and explain what it is and why it can be important for you to implement it in your EverWeb created website.

What Exactly is SEO Anyway?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a method by which you tune, or optimize, your website to its best advantage to Search Engines, such as Google, Bing and Alexa. The better you optimize your website, the better the chances are that your site will appear higher up in search engine results rankings.

When you enter a search term in to your browser’s search box, the search engine behind it (e.g. Google) will present you with a set of ranked results based on your search criteria. Simply put, you use SEO to improve your chances of ranking higher up in these such search results. As such, SEO can also be thought of as a process that is applied to your website. SEO is not hardware. SEO is not software. SEO is a methodology that you apply to your website.

Should Everyone Use SEO in Their Website?

Typically, you will want to apply SEO to your website if you run any form of business. Equally, you will probably want to apply SEO to your site if you just want it to be more visible on the Internet. On the other hand, you may not want to apply SEO at all to your site e.g. you may have a site just for personal reasons so it is not important for you to try to reach as many people as possible with your site.

Reasons to Apply SEO to Your Website

1. Potentially higher rankings in Search Engine Results Pages. When done correctly, SEO will improve your rankings.
2. Your Audience will be able to find you more easily! SEO is good to use as you can target the words that you think visitors will search on. If done correctly, your (potential) audience will find you more easily!
3. Customer Reach: SEO can be a great way for potential new customers to find you!
4. Better Customer Reach translates to more traffic to your site.
5. SEO Is Free! You do not have to pay anything to apply SEO to your site. You should not have to pay anyone to apply SEO to your site!
6. Improves Brand Awareness. Even if someone does not click on your website link in a search results set, the fact that you are visible may bring them back later to your site.
7. The effect of SEO can also be measured from your site’s statistics so you can adjust you SEO to see what works and what does not work.

Investing in SEO in Your Website

Just like building a great looking website, SEO is an Investment – and it should be thought of as a long term investment. As your business grows and develops over time, so your SEO should be in step with your business at the same time.

As part of the SEO process you will use Keywords, or phrases, in your website to help search engines focus on what you think is important. These Keywords may need to change over time as your business changes. It is, therefore, always important to remember that your website is a dynamic tool and your SEO should be too.

SEO As a Dynamic Concept

Your business will probably change over time due to internal and external factors. The same is also true of SEO which is not static concept but a dynamic, evolving concept. Changes in SEO usually relate to changes made by search engines as they adapt to our ever changing browsing habits. For example, a few years ago, Google decided to prioritize searches made on mobile devices over those made on desktop devices. It seems obvious now that the priority for search has changed with the growth in mobile device usage over the last ten years.

EverWeb is always looking out for changes in the way the search engine giants change the dynamic around search. One such change, for example, comes in the upcoming EverWeb 3.5 which will automatically add Open Graph Tags if you have purchased EverWeb SEO Power Up addon.

How to Begin with Your SEO Journey…

SEO in EverWeb has always been baked in to the product which means that you usually do not need to focus on it if you do not want to. If you do want to apply SEO to its best effect in your site, the best way forward is to use our SEO for EverWeb Video Course. This concise course guides you through how to apply SEO to your site’s best advantage.

EverWeb gives you most of the tools that you need to implement SEO but you can go further using our SEO Power Up addon. This addon allows you more customization options than ever so that you can prioritize what you think is important for your site’s SEO. The addon also provides more information to search engines about your site’s pages, their importance and priority. Check out the link above for more details.

Using SEO in your site can be advantageous to your business if used in the right way and if you invest in it for the medium to long term. There is no mystery around SEO either, just some easy knowledge building and experience to find out what works best for your site!