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In our previous blog post about EverWeb Membership Sites, we covered how to set up all of the backend features that you will need for your own membership site in your EverWeb Client Area. In this post, we turn our attention to how to set up your membership site’s frontend features in EverWeb itself.

Before You Begin…

We are going to assume that you have already done the following:

• You are using EverWeb version 4.0 or Higher for macOS or Windows
• You have already signed up EverWeb Membership Sites, either the free or paid for version
• You have already set up your EverWeb Membership Sites Backend in your EverWeb Client Area

Installing EverWeb Membership Sites Widgets

When you sign up to EverWeb Membership Sites, you will receive an email with a link in it to download a set of widgets specifically for use in your membership site.

1. Use the link to download the set of Membership Sites widgets to your computer, for example to your desktop, or your regular downloads area on your computer.
2. Next launch EverWeb and open the project file that you want to build your membership site in.
3. After opening your project file, click on the Widgets tab in the Inspector Window.
4. Drag and drop the Membership Sites set of widgets from their location on your computer on to the widgets in the Widgets tab.
5. The Membership Sites widgets will be installed.

Creating Your Membership Site’s Structure

When you create your membership site in EverWeb, you have two options as to how to begin

• You can create your membership site within an existing EverWeb Project file which is probably how most users will begin.
• Alternatively, you can create your membership site in a new Project file and link it back to your main website Project file. This may be more suitable if your main website is very large, and it would be more manageable to have the membership site as a separate project.

For most users it is probably better to create your membership site within your existing project file which is what we will be doing in the following scenario.

When creating your membership site, we recommend that you create a directory in which to store your membership site’s page. To do this, simply click on the ‘Add Directory’ button in the Toolbar. Select the Theme Template that you want to use, or select the Blank, or Blank Responsive, Home page if you are creating your membership site’s pages from scratch. 

If you are using a blank page to create your membership site’s pages, you may also want to consider creating and using a Master Page which you can attach to your blank page. This will make creating the pages of your membership site much easier, quicker and consistent.

Name the directory appropriately, so that you will easily know it is your membership site’s directory. Remember to store all of your membership site’s pages within this directory.

If you want to change the name of the folder at a later time, all you need to do is either double click on the folder in the Web Page List then rename the folder, or select the folder in the Web Page List and use the File-> Rename menu option to rename the directory.

Creating Your Membership Site’s Pages

You will probably want to start building your membership site’s pages by first creating pages such as the Sign Up or Login pages. With the directory that you have just created still selected, click on the ‘Add Page’ button. Select the Theme Template that you want to use, then press ‘OK’ to create the new page. You should see this page under, and to the right of, your membership site’s directory. Name the page appropriately e.g. Sign Up Page.

Next, drag and drop the widget that is appropriate for the page on to the Editor Window e.g. click on the Widgets tab. If the Membership Sites widgets you have downloaded are not displayed, click on the Categories menu, then choose your membership sites widget category. In this example, we are going to create a Sign Up page, so drag and drop the Membership Sign Up Form widget on to the page from the Widgets tab. 

Common Widget Features and Settings

Set Your Membership License

Once you have placed the widget on the page, you will first of all need to select your Membership Site license in the Widget Settings, if is not already selected. Most of the Membership Sites widgets require you to do this when you first add the widget to the page. Once you have chosen your membership site from the dropdown, the widget’s Widget Settings will be available for you to use.

Membership Site Settings…

The first setting of note is the Membership Site Settings… button which becomes available once you have set your Membership Sites Licence in the widget. This button appears in a number of different Membership Sites widgets. It is used to link together specific pages within your membership site.

When you click on the button, you will see your Membership Sites Account and nine different labels each with a corresponding dropdown menu. Click on the dropdown menu to select the corresponding page of the label. As you create your membership site’s pages, remember to go back to the Membership Sites Settings to complete these settings. e.g. my ‘Sign Up Page’ corresponds to the Sign Up Page label.

There are nine fields that you can complete, but only the first six are mandatory. If you do not want to fill in the other three fields, EverWeb will create an automatic response for you which you can edit in the Client Area Email Templates section. Once you have finished editing your Membership Site Settings, click on the ‘OK’ button.

Success Pages and Other Membership Site Associated Pages…

Success Pages are also a common feature that you will find in many Membership Sites widgets. Just as the name implies, these are pages you create to tell your member that what they have just done has been successful. In this example, I would create a Success Page telling the member that they have successfully signed up to my membership site. When creating a Success Page, remember to include a button to take the member back to your membership site’s Home page, or another relevant page e.g. for the Sign Up Success page, you probably would want the button to take the member to your membership site’s Login page and not the membership site’s Home page.

Our advice is to work your way through the Widget Settings until you have completed the settings. In this way, you will discover the additional pages that you should, or might want to, create e.g. in the Membership Sign Up Form widget, you can also create a Terms of Service page in addition to a Success Page.

We also recommend that when you find that there are extra pages to create, such as those described above, that you add these pages to your membership site immediately as ‘skeleton’ pages, but continue to work on the page your are on, until it is complete. After completing e.g. my Sign Up page, I would then work next on my Sign Up Success page, then on the Terms of Service page.

The Membership Sign Out Button Widget

The other feature that you generally will want to add to most of your membership sites pages is the ‘Membership Sign Out Button’ widget. This typically will appear on all of your pages except for the Sign Up and Sign Up Success Pages.

Next Steps…

Once you have completed one page, and any additional pages that it may link to, create a new page and add one of the other widgets to it. Use the same process as described above to develop the pages that your membership site will need.

Summary

Creating a Membership Site in EverWeb is easy and actually quite intuitive. Just create a page, add one of the Membership Sites widgets then follow the Widget Settings. Style and add text and images to your pages as appropriate.

In a future blog post, we will look at how to use Password Protection to enforce membership levels in your membership site. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this post, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

EverWeb on Social Media

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

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter / X

We’re excited to announce the release of EverWeb 4.1! Our latest release includes WebP support for images so that your pages load faster than ever in browser windows! Plus new draft mode, lazy loading images, Video backgrounds for your browser background and much more! See below for full details!

Which Version of EverWeb is for You?

EverWeb is available in the following versions:

• If you are running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, EverWeb 4.1 is available for you.
• If you are running an Intel Mac running macOS High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura or Sonoma, EverWeb version 4.1 is available for you.
• If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or Sonoma, EverWeb version 4.1 is available for you as a Universal Binary. EverWeb will run natively without the need to use Rosetta 2.
• If you are running OS X 10.10 – macOS 10.12 (OS X Yosemite, OS X El Capitan, macOS Sierra) EverWeb 3.4.2 is for you.
• If you are running OS X 10.7 – 10.9 (Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks) EverWeb version 2.9.1 is available for you.

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

EverWeb 4.1 Includes…

[NEW] Lazy Loading images – Your images load only when they are actually needed.

[NEW] Video Browser Backgrounds from four different sources, such as YouTube and Vimeo.

[NEW} WebP images supported with automatic image optimization to WebP format with correct resizing

[NEW] Draft Mode. Pages set to draft will not be published.

[NEW] Alt Text is now available for images in the Image Gallery Widget.

[NEW] Alt Text is now available for images in the Responsive Image Gallery Widget.

[NEW} Import images from CSV file to bulk load images in to the Responsive Image Gallery Widget.

[NEW[ Tile Vertically or Tile Horizontally for images used as Page Background.

[NEW] Image Scaling available for images used as Browser Background.

[NEW] Fixed Position for images used as Page and Browser Background.

[NEW] Image alignment options for Page and Browser Background.

[NEW] Check Page updated to include new optimization suggestions.

[IMPROVED] Improved export of high-resolution images without relying on java script.

[IMPROVED] Code optimized for better W3C compliance.

[CHANGE] Updated Twitter widget to become the ‘X’ widget.

[CHANGE] Replaced the Twitter button with an ‘X’ button.

[CHANGE] The Google+ Button has been removed from the Insert-> Button menu.

[FIX] Blank Contact Forms Enhanced Addon field in Contact Form Advanced widget.

[FIX] Simple Passwords not being carried over has been fixed.

[FIX] Color settings issue in the responsive navigation bar fixed.

[FIX] Redefined styles from selection bug fixes.

[FIX] Full-width shapes exporting issue resolved.

[FIX] ‘Microsoft Edge Can’t read and write to directory’ Error for some users on Windows fixed

[FIX] Possible crash when using some widgets on ARM based Macs

[FIX] The URL field is properly changed to HTTPS when pressing the Use Secure HTTPS Urls option

[FIX] Fixed a crash when dragging from the Stock Photos on Windows

[FIX] Fixed ‘500 error’ on Preview

[FIX] Fixed crash when double clicking on a blank row in Manage Cache Window

[FIX] Fixed a potential crash on backup

[FIX] Some minor issues with SEO Check Page Fixed

[FIX] Many Improvements and bug fixes for EverWeb for Windows Users

[FIX] Fixes for the Stripe Payments widget

[FIX] Some Issues with Search fields fixed.

How To Update To EverWeb 4.1 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 4.1 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 EverWeb disk on the desktop by dragging it to the Trashcan.

About Your EverWeb Update

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

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

You can easily check your EverWeb update period from your EverWeb-> Preferences… window on macOS, from your Edit-> Options menu on 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.
• The EverWeb Discussion Forum.

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

Adding a membership site to your EverWeb made website can be the perfect way to retain customers and grow your business. In our recent post, 12 Reasons Why You Need an EverWeb Membership Site, we discussed the benefits of having your own membership site. In this post, we take a detailed look at how you can easily set up your EverWeb Membership Site’s backend.

The backend of EverWeb Membership Sites is where you set up all of the features that will be available for the frontend, which you develop in EverWeb itself. For example, you will use the backend for membership account administration, payments setup and administration, administering membership levels, creating coupon codes and so on. In a future post, we will look at setting up your membership site’s frontend in EverWeb itself.

Before We Begin…

To be able to create your own Membership Site with EverWeb, you will need to make sure that you are running EverWeb 4.0 or higher, for Mac or Windows. It does not matter whether you host with EverWeb or have your own hosting provider, you can still build your membership site!

You can also start your own EverWeb Membership Site for free! Just go to the EverWeb Membership Sites Pricing page to sign up for the free plan. There are also paid for Membership Sites plans which you can sign up to, or upgrade to, as your membership site’s need develop.

Membership Sites Overview

If you are new to Membership Sites, our Membership Sites Overview video is the ideal place to start! Check out the video at the top of this post for general orientation information.

6 Steps to Setting Up Your EverWeb Membership Sites Backend

Setting up your EverWeb Membership Sites backend is easy to do. Start by logging in to your EverWeb Client Area. Once logged in, scroll down the page until you see the Membership Sites section on the left hand side of the page. Click on ‘Manage All’. You will be taken to your Membership Sites Summary page. Down the left hand side, under ‘Manage All’ you have the options below. We recommend following each in the order presented below.

Membership Sites Setup

Begin to build your Membership Sites Backend by clicking the Setup button. In this section you will set up the basic administrative requirements for your membership site.

Membership Levels

After completing the basic Setup tasks for your membership site, next move on to setting up your Membership Levels. You can have free and paid for membership levels, although this does depend on whether you have a free or paid for EverWeb Membership Sites plan.

Membership Setup

EverWeb allows you to manually import existing members from external sources, or manually create and administer members. You can also perform various administrative functions such as suspending members, editing membership details (e.g. entering new address details) and you can search your membership on specific fields e.g. if you want to know how many members used a particular coupon code.

Email Templates

EverWeb includes a range of default email templates that are used in membership sites. These templates can be edited so that you can create customized responses to your membership.

Coupon Codes

If you want to offer potential members a discount for joining your membership site, coupons are the perfect way to do this. You can also make your coupons limited time offers only if you want.

Cancellations, Logs and Mail History

The last three Membership Sites menu options are helpful if you need to track cancellations and actions to do with members accessing your Membership Site as well as email correspondence.

Next Steps…

Once you have completed the setup of your membership site backend in your EverWeb Client Area, the next step is to create the pages that you need for your membership site in EverWeb itself. We will be covering this important topic very soon in a follow up blog post.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about purchasing, setting up or using a Membership Site with EverWeb, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

EverWeb on Social Media

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

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter / X

One of the premier features of the new EverWeb 4.0 release is the introduction of Paragraph Styles. You can now easily set up different text styles to suit all your website’s needs. Paragraph Styles can also be modified later on, for example, if you want to update, or refresh, the style of your website.

Setting Up Your Paragraph Styles

When you first create your website in EverWeb, it is an ideal time to create default Paragraph Styles. In this way, all your styling choices will be applied as your create the text for the pages of your site. It also means that you will have less work to do, both now and in the future, if your design needs change later on.

Hopefully you will already have an idea about which fonts you want to use, but if not, here are some recommendations:

• Use two fonts at most. Choose one font style for headlines and titles (e.g. Montserrat Bold) and one for your site’s body text. Checkout Google Fonts, which is great for font pairings and is EverWeb compatible!
• Often websites have the heading font as a Sans Serif font, and the body text font as a Serif font. This is not a hard and fast rule though. The main point is that the fonts you use in your site should be easy on the eye and easy to read.
• When thinking about your Paragraph Styles you will likely need to define styles for headings, sub-headings and maybe even sub sub-headings. For example, your main title heading could be a Montserrat 36 point bold font, your sub-heading a Montserrat 30 point bold font, and your sub sub-heading a Montserrat 24 point bold font. Note that the styles used are based on the main heading font chosen. Again, this method of styling is advisory, not mandatory.
• When defining your Paragraph Styles also remember that the color of the font, the font weight (e.g. bold, light, thin etc.) and the size of the font are also important. Use colors that are easy to read against your page background color. Bear in mind as well, that some people may have some form of color blindness, so be careful when mixing e.g. green and red, or blue and yellow, colors.
• Your text font size should be large enough to be easily read on a screen or mobile phone e.g. 16 point. Use smaller a font size only for ‘small print’ items on your page, such as terms and conditions or for legal information.

Once you have defined the Paragraph Styles that you want to use, you can implement them using the Format-> Default Styles… menu option. There are also other alternative ways in which to set up, and manage, Paragraph Styles which we will cover later on in this post.

Creating and Modifying Paragraph Styles in Default Styles

After accessing the Default Styles dialog box, click on the plus (+) button in the bottom right hand corner of the Paragraph Styles section to create a new Paragraph Style. Enter the name of the new style, then press Enter. You can then add the Paragraph Styles attributes you want using the Fonts section to the right of the Paragraph Styles section. Furthermore, you can also set up a Backup Font in case there are times your main font cannot be displayed in a browser. The font you use for the backup font should be a web safe font.

When you have created your Paragraph Style, click on the ‘Save’ button to finish. The Paragraph Style will now be available to use in the Text Inspector.

Modifying a Paragraph Style works in the same way in the Default Styles dialog box. Just click on the Paragraph Style you want to modify in the list of Paragraph Styles, then use the Fonts section and Back up Fonts sections as required. Click on ‘Save’ when you have completed your changes.

Paragraph Styles In The Redesigned Text Inspector

The second way in which to add, and manage, Paragraph Styles is through the Text Inspector. In EverWeb 4.0 the Text Inspector got a big redesign, so it is now easy to choose fonts for your site rather than having to use the Fonts Panel all the time. When you click on the Text Inspector button, you will immediately see at the top the paragraph style in use if any text is selected.

Applying a Paragraph Style

You can easily apply a Paragraph Style to text within a TextBox. Just select the text you want to apply a Paragraph Style to, then choose the Paragraph Style you want to use from the dropdown list at the top of the Text Inspector. In this example, we have selected the ‘Body’ Paragraph Style for our selected text.

Changing an Existing Paragraph Style

In the above example, we applied the ‘Body’ Paragraph Style to some text in a TextBox. This Paragraph Style is used throughout my site for all body text. Currently, its font size is 12 point which is a bit smal. As my text is already selected an now uses the ‘Body’ Paragraph Style, I can now change the font size on the fly to 16 point in the Text inspector. I can see the text size change in the Editor Window immediately. In the Text Inspector I can now see that next to the ‘Body’ Paragraph Style name, is an ‘Update’ button. If I click on this button, all text that uses this Paragraph Style will be updated to 16 point.

Using this method it is quick and easy to make global changes to your text all at once just with a mouse click! It is a great time saver! If you only wanted to apply the font size change to the selected text and not to the Paragraph Style, do not click on the Update button.

Renaming a Paragraph Style

To rename a Paragraph Style, just open the Paragraph Style list, then highlight the Paragraph Style that you went to change the name of. To the right of the style you will see either a Settings button, or a Down Arrow button depending on your version of EverWeb. Click on this button/arrow and a sub menu will appear. Choose ‘Rename Style’ to rename the Paragraph Style. Press Enter when done.

If you want to change the name of the Paragraph Style in the Default Styles dialog box, just double click on the name of the Paragraph Style that you want to change to be able to edit it. Once you have change the name, press Enter, then click on the Save button to save your changes.

Deleting a Paragraph Style

If you want to delete a Paragraph Style, simply highlight the Paragraph Style that you want to delete from the Paragraph Styles dropdown list, click on the Settings/Down Arrow button and then select Delete Style from the submenu. If the Paragraph Style is in use already in your site, you will be asked to select an exisitng Paragraph Style as a substitute for the one you are deleting.

If you are using the Default Styles dialog box instead, you can delete your Paragraph Style by simply highlighting the style, then pressing the minus (-) button to remove it from your site. Again, you will be asked to substitute a Paragraph Style for the one you are removing.

Paragraph Styles offer you a great way to add easy, consistent text styling to your website. Updating the styles you use in your site is now also quick and simple to do, saving you much time and effort!

If you have any questions on this great new feature, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

The biggest single new feature of EverWeb 4.0 is the introduction of the all new EverWeb Membership Sites. Any EverWeb user can now, on either Mac or Windows, start their own membership site absolutely free. And as your Membership Site grows and develops, there are additional plans available to suit all of your membership site’s needs.

The new EverWeb Membership Sites provides an easy, yet flexible, way to create a membership site that suits your business and integrates seamlessly with your website. You can create membership levels and coupon codes at the touch of a button, administer your membership with ease and generate the reports you want in next to no time.

How A Membership Site Can Benefit Your Business

If you are wondering how a Membership Site can help your business, or fund your website, here are some key benefits for starting your Membership Site…

1. Recurring Revenue: Membership sites will offer either free, paid for, or a combination of free and paid for subscriptions. Paid for subscriptions can help provide your business with a steady, predictable income stream. This can be more sustainable than relying solely on one-time sales or advertising revenue.
2. Monetization of Expertise: If you have valuable knowledge, skills, or expertise, a membership site allows you to monetize that expertise by offering exclusive content, tutorials, or resources to your members.
3. Community Building: A membership site can foster a sense of community among your audience. Members may engage with each other, share experiences, and form connections around common interests.
4. Exclusive Content: You can provide members with exclusive access to premium content, resources, or services. This exclusivity can incentivize people to join and remain subscribed.
5. Enhanced User Engagement: Features like forums, discussion boards, or member-only events can boost user engagement, creating a more interactive and dynamic online community.
6. Personalized Experiences: With a membership site, you can personalize the user experience based on member preferences, history, and interactions, leading to a more tailored and engaging platform.
7. Upselling Opportunities: Beyond subscription fees, you can explore upselling opportunities within your membership site, such as offering additional premium content, merchandise, or access to special events.
8. Data Collection and Analysis: Running a membership site allows you to collect valuable data about your audience. Analyzing this data can help you better understand your members, refine your content strategy, and improve user experience.
9. Brand Loyalty: By offering a valuable and exclusive experience, you can build strong relationships with your audience, fostering brand loyalty and encouraging long-term commitment from your members.
10. Controlled Access: A membership model provides you with control over who accesses your content or community, allowing you to create a focused and targeted space for specific audiences.
11. Flexible Content Delivery: You can experiment with different types of content delivery, such as online courses, webinars, or downloadable resources, catering to the preferences and needs of your audience. Your membership site can help you experiment safely with new ideas to see what works best for your audience.
12. Niche Focus: Membership sites are great for target specific niches within your market or industry, allowing you to serve a more defined audience and become a go-to resource in your chosen field.

More About EverWeb Membership Sites…

You can easily find out more about EverWeb Membership Sites by

• Checking out our introduction video at the top of the page or

• By checking out our dedicated Membership Sites Information page for a text summary of Membership Sites main features or

• By accessing the EverWeb User Manual which has detailed information about all Membership Sites plans and how to set up your own membership site or by

• Accessing our EverWeb Membership Sites videos on the EverWeb website or on our YouTube Channel

Please remember that you will need EverWeb 4.0 or higher, for Mac or Windows, to be able to start your own Membership Site.

If you have any questions on this great new feature, or on anything to do with EverWeb, please let us know in the Comments Section below.

The latest EverWeb release – version 4.0 – introduces a couple of great new form controls, columns and dividers, to help you create even more stylised contact forms when using the Contact Forms Advanced widget.

The Contact Form Advanced Widget is a fully fledged form design tool that lets you create an infinite variety of different form types and styles to suit any website you may be creating.

Forms in your website can serve multiple purposes:

1. Contact Forms: Allow visitors to get in touch with you by filling out a form with their name, email, and message. This is a basic form used on many websites for general inquiries.
2. Feedback Forms: Collect feedback from your site’s visitors about their experience of your site, your products, and/or your services. This can help you improve your business and tackle any issues.
3. Registration Forms: Visitors can sign up for an account, newsletter or to an event.
4. Order Forms: Facilitate online purchases by creating forms for customers to select products or services, provide shipping details, and make payments.
5. Surveys and Polls: Conduct market research or gather opinions with surveys or polls. This is useful for understanding your customer’s preferences, needs, and for spotting future trends.
6. Job Application Forms: You might want to allow job seekers to submit resumes and relevant information through an online form.
7. Newsletter Signup Forms: Capture email addresses from visitors interested in receiving updates, newsletters, or promotional materials from your website.
8. Event Registration Forms: Manage event registrations by collecting attendee details, preferences, and any special requirements.
9. Support Request Forms: Provide a structured way for your visitors to submit support or technical assistance requests. Include relevant details to help support teams address issues efficiently.
10. Payment Forms: Facilitate transactions by integrating payment processing into your forms. This is common for accepting donations, selling products, or offering services.
11. Appointment Booking Forms: Allow clients or customers to schedule appointments or reserve time slots for services.
12. Membership Forms: Manage memberships or subscriptions by collecting information and preferences from users who want to join your community or access exclusive content.
13. Content Submission Forms: If your website involves user-generated content, create forms for users to submit articles, images, or other contributions.
14. Quiz and Assessment Forms: Engage users with interactive content by creating quizzes or assessments. Collect responses and provide feedback based on user input.
15. Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Measure and analyze customer satisfaction by creating surveys that assess their experience with your products or services.

Contact Form Advanced Widget and the Contact Forms Enhanced Addon

Many of the above form types can be created just by using only the Contact Form Advanced widget. The widget itself includes all of the features that you will usually need to create a robust form. In addition, security measures are available to help protect your form from being spammed through reCAPTCHA.

Sometimes though, you may need more from your form, either in terms of the features that you want to include in it, or that you may have specific requirements, for example, you may want to store form responses in a database, or have your form respondents upload files to you. EverWeb’s Contact Forms Enhanced Addon meets such needs as it allows you to:

1. Review all form submissions in one place.
2. Search and manage all form submissions online.
3. Select the data you want to use quickly and easily.
4. Export form submission data in CSV ?le format.
5. Let you website visitors upload ?les in your contact form to a safe, secure area in your EverWeb Client Area.
6. Download ?les that your visitors have sent you from your contact forms.
7. Send mass, personalized emails to anyone who has submitted a form to you
8. Use dedicated Contact Form Enhanced addon form controls such as the Date and Time controls.

You can purchase Contact Forms Enhanced Addon directly from your EverWeb Client Area starting from just $29.95USD/Year.

The New Form Controls in EverWeb 4.0

The new EverWeb 4.0 release brings a new Column Form Control to your contact form so that you can easily organise form controls on your form. For example, you may want to have a first name and last name field on the same line in your form. Place these Form Controls one after another in your Form Controls list. Next, add another form control which will be for the columns. Place this control above the first and last name fields. Set the Form Control type to Column, then set the number of columns to 2 and the spacing between the fields to what you prefer in the Option List. This will create the look that you want!

The same principle applies to the new Dividers Form Control that lets you add solid, dashed or dotted line separators to your form. In the above example, you may want a separator line after your first and last name fields. Add a new Form Control and make the Form Control Type ‘Divider’. Move the newly added form to under the Last Name field in your Form Controls list. Next, use the Options List to choose the Style of line that you want (solid, dashed or dotted) and the color and thickness.

EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget makes building the form that you want easy, flexible and fully featured. In future posts, we will be looking at how you can build some of the form types that we described above so stay tuned for some Contact Form Enhanced tutorials and videos coming soon!

In our new EverWeb 4.0 release we introduced a small but important feature – Minimum Font Size – to the Text Inspector. This new feature allows you to easily seamlessly scale your text to suit whichever device you are displaying your page upon. You can apply this feature to TextBoxes, the Styled Text Editor and to blog posts in the Blog Post Editor.

To be able to use this feature, you will need to be using EverWeb 4.0 or higher. Prior to EverWeb 4.0, you could make text scaleable using a combination of EverWeb’s Show on Device feature and different sized TextBoxes or Widgets that used the Styled Text Editor, such as the FlexBox and Text Section widgets. You can find out more on how to mimic scaleable text in in older versions of EverWeb in our blog post Scaleable Text in EverWeb.

In EverWeb 4.0 the whole process of setting up, and using, scaleable text is incredibly simple.

‘On The Fly’ Scaleable Fonts

You can make any text in a TextBox scaleable instantly. Simply highlight the text you want to scale, then go to the Text Inspector if it is not already displayed. You will see the font size of your selected text displayed in the default font size field, for example, 36 point. Further down the Fonts section of the Text Inspector, is the ‘Minimum Font Size’ field. If the field is set at zero, there is no text scaling. In this example, the default font size is 36 point, so you could set the minimum font size to 18 point.

Once you have set the default and minimum font size, you can test out the scaleable text by reducing the right hand side of the EverWeb app. You should see the text size reduce down from 36 to 18 point. Reset the width of the EverWeb app back to its original width.

Setting Up Default Scaleable Text Defaults

In some instances, it is useful to just have a scaleable font as and when you need it. There may be other times however, when you want to set up you scaleable font as a default. Again, that is easy to do in EverWeb. If, in the above example, the text you selected was linked to a Paragraph Style, you can update the Paragraph Style with the Minimum Font Size value that you input. To do this, simply click on the blue Update button to the right of the Paragraph Style.

If your text does not have a Paragraph Style associated with it, you can either create a new Paragraph Style using the current font settings, or change an existing unused Paragraph Style. If you choose the latter option, use the settings button to the right of the Paragraph Style (this will either be an ellipse in a circle icon, or a down arrow icon) and select the option to ‘Redefine Style from Selection’.

The third way to make your Minimum Font Size a default for a Paragraph Style is to update the Paragraph Style in the Format-> Default Styles… dialog box. In the Paragraph Styles section, select the Paragraph Style you want to update. Enter the Minimum Font Size value that you want to use for the Paragraph Style, then press Save when finished. Done!

Using Minimum Font Size in the Styled Text Editor and Blog Post Editor

You can also take advantage of minimum font size in the Styled Text Editor which is used in the FlexBox, Text Section and PayPal widgets. To use the minimum font size feature you will have to associate your piece of text with a Paragraph Style. To do this, just select the text you want, then select the Paragraph Style from the dropdown menu at the top of the Styled Text Editor. If you ever want to change the Minimum Font Size value, you will need to do this either via the Format-> Default Styles… menu option or via the Text Inspector.

The same principle also applies when using the Blog Post Editor as with the Styled Text Editor. Simply highlight the text in the Blog Post Editor that you want to scale, then click on the Paragraph Style button in the Blog Post Editor’s Toolbar. Select the Paragraph Style you want to use. Again, to change the Minimum Font Size, you will need to use either the Format-> Default Styles… menu option or the Text Inspector.

EverWeb’s Minimum Font Size option brings scaleable text to your website and makes it super easy to set up and use!

We can hardly believe it ourselves that EverWeb is 10 years old this week! It’s been an amazing journey, as some of you who have been with us from day one will know! So we would like to extend a very big Thank You! to the whole EverWeb community for all your support over the last 10 year! We couldn’t do this without you!

When EverWeb launched, it aimed at providing an alternative to Apple’s iWeb website building product which has been discontinued a couple of years earlier. But our goal was also to do more – to give website creators features that iWeb never had and that they always wanted. And the rest, as they say, is history!

So as we start our eleventh year, here’s a look back at what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months!

EverWeb Releases

A year ago this week, we introduced EverWeb 3.9 to the world and a year later, we are now at EverWeb 4.0.1. Here is a list of what we released in the year to end of October 2023…

EverWeb 3.9 – November 2022 – New Stripe Widget, New Dividers Feature

EverWeb 3.9.1 – December 2022 – EverWeb for Windows Launches! Maintenance and Stability Release

EverWeb 3.9.2 – December 2022 – Stability and Maintenance Release Plus Audio and Video Embedding in Blog Posts

EverWeb 3.9.5 – March 2023: Maintenance and Stability Release Plus Drag and Drop Images Into Widgets

EverWeb 3.9.6 – May 2023: Maintenance and Stability Release

EverWeb 4.0 – October 2023 – Membership Sites, Global Styles, Contact Form Addon Updates, Check Pages for SEO PowerUp

EverWeb 4.0.1 – October 2023: Maintentance and Stability Release for macOS and Windows

One of the great things about the maintenance releases over the last year is that we have been able to add in additional, user requested features as well as getting bug fixes out. One of the most useful features was adding the ability to easily add video or audio files in to a blog post in EverWeb 3.9.2.

Anniversary Highlight 1: EverWeb For Windows Launches!

One of the biggest events in the last year was the release of EverWeb for Windows to the world! Our thanks to everyone who took the time to test the pre-release version of EverWeb for Windows. The feedback we received was valuable and helped us hone the official release!

Officially, EverWeb for Windows launched with the release of EverWeb 4.0, but we did soft-launch the Windows product with EverWeb 3.9.1 just in case there were any teething problems. Fortunately, there were very few!

If you run in a mixed environment of Mac and Windows, you will be able to use EverWeb for Windows and EverWeb for Mac with ease. Both products have almost totally the same UI structure and Project Files are interchangeable. To find out more check out our post on Running EverWeb for Windows and Mac. For more information about running both EverWeb on Windows and Mac, please check out the EverWeb User Manual, or login to your EverWeb Client Area, then go to the Services-> My Services menu option. Select ‘Manage Product’ then choose ‘Upgrade/Downgrade Options’. Select the option from the dropdown list that suits your requirements.

Anniversary Highlight 2: Membership Sites Come To EverWeb

In addition to EverWeb for Windows being released, EverWeb 4.0 also launched with the much anticipated Membership Sites feature! Now any EverWeb user can create a membership site of their own within their website! Share free and paid for content with your signups as well as offering promotions and discounts.

A membership site is a great way to monetize your website as well as engaging with your customers and growing your business! And as you would expect, EverWeb makes it all easy to set up and manage!

Anniversary Highlight 3: Dividers for More Design Flair

One of the best new styling features that was added to EverWeb over the last year was the introduction of Dividers in EverWeb 3.9. Dividers can be used on most object types in EverWeb but are perhaps most useful in separating out content sections in Responsive websites. You have 16 different types of divider to choose from and each divider style is fully customizable to match the style of your site.

Anniversary Highlight 4: Global Styling and Paragraph Styling

One of the important goals for us when developing EverWeb is to make developing your website as easy and simple as possible. With this in mind, the new global styling introduced in EverWeb 4.0 lets you set up text styling throughout your whole site. By defining your own paragraph styles, you can easily create text defaults for titles, subheadings, body text and so on. If you want to change your style later on, your changes will update everywhere on your site that uses the style you updated.

EverWeb 4.0 also lets you choose the color palette swatches that you want for your site so you have instant control of both color and text styling at your fingertips!

Anniversary Highlights 5: EverWeb’s NEW Stripe Widget

Stripe has gained a lot of traction over the last few years as an alternative payment method to PayPal. EverWeb’s new Stripe Payment widget makes it very easy to integrate your Stipe account in to the pages of your website. If you don’t have a Stripe account, you can create one directly from within the widget. If you do have a Stripe account you can add new products to your Stripe account directly from within the widget.

EverWeb’s 10th year has been another busy one for us. We hope that you are enjoying all of the new products, features and services that we have delivered over the last twelve months. We have a lot more new and exciting features coming in the next year as you would expect, but what would you like to see in the future for EverWeb? Let us know in the Comments Section below.

If SEO is important for your website and you are using EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp Addon, then EverWeb 4.0 will make things even easier for you! Our new EverWeb release includes the new, powerful, SEO Check Page feature. Check Page scans your site’s pages then suggests how you can improve the page’s SEO. Check Page is also context sensitive, making implementing suggestions and changes super easy.

EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon Gets Even Better!

EverWeb’s SEO Power Up Addon already includes the following great SEO related features:

And now EverWeb 4.0 adds new SEO Check Page functionality!

EverWeb SEO PowerUp’s Check Page Feature

EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp addon’s Check Page feature is a one click tool that checks how SEO friendly your website pages are. Check Pages also gives you SEO suggestions and actions that can be applied to the pages of your site.

To use Check Page, first select the page you want to check. It is recommended to only check the pages in your website that you want to apply SEO to. Pages such as Contact and About Us type pages will probably not require SEO, so do not need to be checked. Checking pages such as the Home page of your site, though, is a good idea. 

Click on the Check Page button in the Toolbar to scan the page. A window containing Web Page Suggestions will appear when the scan is complete. Note that after the scan you will be returned to the Page Settings tab in the Inspector Window if you are currently on a different Inspector window.

The Web Page Suggestions will list all SEO relevant suggestions. You may have already successfully completed some of the suggestions on the list. For the items that still need completion, click on a suggestion that requires attention. 

A second dialog box will appear at the place on the page where you should enter SEO applicable information. The second dialog box contains helpful information to guide you in completing the field successfully. 

In addition, you can go to the Previous or Next suggestion directly or just Close the information dialog box.

You can re-run the scan at any time to see updated results as you enter your SEO information.

Please note that you may have some suggestions that you do not want to, or have to, complete e.g. entering a business location may not be needed or relevant to you. Remember, that Check Page lists recommended suggestions for you to improve your SEO. It is not mandatory to follow any suggestions if it is not appropriate for your situation to do so.

Using Check Pages For Your Blog Posts

You can also use the Check Page feature in your blog posts. Simply select the post you are interested in checking then press the Check Page button to start the scan. Remember for blog posts that Keywords and Short Summaries are available to complete from the Settings Cog underneath the list of blog posts, on the left hand side. Select the Post Options… menu option to access the Keywords and Short Summaries for the selected post.

Once you have finished updating your SEO for your pages, publish your site. Remember that SEO changes take time to implement across the web so you may have to wait a while before seeing the results of your changes.

How To Purchase EverWeb SEO PowerUp

EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon is:

• Available to all EverWeb customers, whether you host with us or with your own hosting provider
• EverWeb SEO Power Up is FREE if you have an EverWeb + Hosting 10GB or higher plan
• Available for just $29.95 USD / Year if you have an EverWeb + Hosting 2GB plan or EverWeb Standalone

You can purchase EverWeb SEO Power Up Addon safely and securely from the EverWeb Client Area. Select the Services -> View Available Addons menu option, then choose the Product Addons option.

More About Using SEO in EverWeb

You can easily find out more about using SEO in EverWeb through our SEO for EverWeb Video Course. Alternatively there is also a chapter on SEO in EverWeb in the EverWeb User Manual.

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

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

Which Version of EverWeb Is For You?

EverWeb is available in the following versions:

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

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

Fixed and Improved In EverWeb 4.0.1

EverWeb version 4.0.1 includes the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

How To Update To EverWeb for Windows

You can easily update EverWeb for Windows by either:

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

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

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

How To Update To EverWeb for macOS

You can easily update EverWeb for macOS by either:

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

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

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

About Your EverWeb Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Information About EverWeb

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

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

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