December 2011 News

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

In this festive issue of Website Builder News, December 2011. 

  • Our present to you
  • Christmas Hours
  • How to use Webmail over Holidays
  • New CMS Interface
  • New Website Look and Feel
  • New Blog Features
  • International Domain Name Registration Options
  • New Employee: Scott
  • New APIs - Xero / PayStation / VendHQ / Unleashed 
  • Quick Professional Touchup
  • Training Options
  • Cool Links
  • Social Media Tip
  • SEO Tip of the Month 
  • Free website design for charities offer
  • Start your own website builder business
  • How to help us promote Website Builder and get a 20% rebate
  • Websites of the Month 

Our Present To You

  • 5 goats
  • 10 lambs
  • 5 piglets 
  • 10 piles of poo
  • 30 ducks
  • 5 donkeys
  • 5 flocks of chicks
  • 6 flocks of ducklings
  • 5 baby emergency kits
  • Helping start 20 small businesses
  • And clean drinking water for 3000 people. 

This year we again used http://www.oxfamunwrapped.org.nz to purchase gifts on behalf of our customers, valued at $10000, that will be sent to those in need. 

Christmas Hours

This year we will be closed from 24th December to 3rd January. We will be on reduced staff at other times.

During our closed hours, please only call our emergency phone numbers if you have a real emergency. We hope to be at the beach like you. 

If your website goes offline for non payment, then paying by credit card will automatically bring your website back to life within an hour. But by far the best thing you can do is to pay any overdue invoices before 21st December, or post cheques today.

We would encourage you to avoid changing your email or DNS configuration over the holiday period. Please learn how to use our web mail feature before the holiday period. If you want instruction on using the webmail feature, please login to the CMS.

Make sure you have paid all your bills, and renewed your domain name. Please do not leave these payments to the last minute. Now is always a good time to renew domain names. 

Using Webmail over the Holidays

When you are away from the office or home, and want to check your email, here are some issues to consider.

  • When using outlook or other email clients from your notebook computer, the correct SMTP server might be different depending on the network you connect to. If your computer cannot connect to the "outgoing mail server", and we are your email provider, then change your SMTP server to smtp.cms-tool.net, and tick "use the same username and password as my incoming mail server"
  • When using our webmail service, you will only be able to see "new email", and not mail that was previously downloaded to your home/office computer. If you really require that history, you should consider moving to gmail/yahoo/hotmail type services as a permanent solution.
  • We offer 2 webmail services. Squirel and Horde. We think Squirel is best, but either is ok. You can read the same inbox on both services, but contact lists are not shared.
  • The username for our webmail service is your "whole email address". You cannot use forwarded email addresses, only mail box email addresses.
  • Your password is as per our original instructions to you. You can change your password via our CMS, under domains, then select your domain, then email settings, then click on the email address in question. Note if you change your password, you will need to reconfigure your office computer when you get back to work.
  • There is a limit to the size of our mailboxes. We suggest you delete any spam or emails with large attachements that you don't really need to keep.
  • If you want to setup an auto responder, you can do that via the CMS. under domains, then email.

Web Mail Login

New CMS Interface

We are currently beta testing a very new look and feel for our content management system (CMS), and the link is available from the bottom left of your existing menu. 

The benefits of the new menu include

  • Constantly visible page menu, and category menu
  • Relocation of the left popup menu to the top right of screen
  • Reconfiguration of their contents. 
  • Moving the other websites list under the accounts menu tab

We have been using the new system in house for a few weeks, and are happy that most of the bugs are gone. It took a few days to get used to the new layout, but we believe it is an improvement.

All users will be transititioned to the new menu in late February 2012. But you can enjoy it now if you choose to. 

New Website Look and Feel

In January we will be launching our new website look and feel. If you want a sneak preview, check out the following link.

View - New Look and Feel

New Blog Features

Our blogs are new and improved. We now display a list of archive dates and recent posts in the right column.

There is a new option for a gallery formated blog, great for car clubs or pet clubs.

Multiuser blogs are now possible via 2 new options. 

  • A special type of blog will allow any "authorised member" (being a member with authorised status or higher) to contribute to a collective blog. 
  • OR Your members can now be assigned access to edit "single design pages" and "info/faq/blog/gallery" pages, without being given full access to our CMS. They login via your website, and get reduced administrative access, but enough access that you can delegate responsibility for content updates. Look for the "Member Admins" link in the tooltips of page "options"

See example blog

International and Australian Domain Names

We have now integrated many international domain suffixes to our domain search and registration system. You can now register .au .uk .eu .ca .co .name .mobi etc and many other domain names via our CMS. Save the hassle of using third party registries, and enjoy our competitive domain pricing. Nearly all domain names are only $29+gst per year, and you can pay by online banking or cheque, unlike other international registries.

Australian domain names do require that you answer special questions, which typically requires that you have an Australian Tax Number or ABN. They can also only be registered for 2 years only. 

Yes we will offer .xxx domains in the near future. But no, you should not register them if you are not in that sort of business. There are hundreds of potential domain suffixes. Just concentrate on the most important ones for your business, being .com if international, or .nz .au .uk .ca if you operate in those specific countries.

Search and register a domain

New Employee: Scott

Scott is our new programmer and is quickly developing some of our long overdue API integrations. We are glad to have this new addition to our team. 

About Us

New APIs - Xero / PayStation / VendHQ / Unleashed

Scott our new programmer has made alot of progress on implementing new APIs for Xero and some other great online accounting or stock inventory tools.

Xero API2 is now live, and you should upgrade your shopping cart before end of January or otherwise Xero will stop accept your data. It is easy to integrate the API2, just go to our shopping setup area, select accounting APIs, then Xero, then follow instructions.

All Paystation users were automatically upgraded to their API2. 

http://www.vendhq.com/ is a great option for those who want to mix point of sale (POS) with their shopping cart. We hope to have some beta testing of this by March next year.

http://www.unleashedsoftware.com/ is a great option for those who need more control over their inventory. We hope to have this feature available for testing by May next year.

If there is a specific API that you know of that we should integrate our shopping cart or CRM with, please let us know. 

Accounting Package Integration

Quick Professional Touch Up

Do you want one of our professional web designers to give your website a quick once over and clean up the rough edges. Contact us for a quote, our professional designers can do plenty of magic in just 1 hour (100+gst per hour),

Discount Tip: If you purchase 6 or more hours, you will only be charged $90 per hour! Saving 10%. 

Web Design Options

Training Options

We have all new training videos to help you setup your website, or shopping cart, or payment options.

/Video-Tutorials.html

We also have a collection of excellent tutorials on our  FAQ 

If you require personalised training, we can provide this training to you over the phone, or in person at our offices in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Training costs $100 per hour by either method. Minimum time is 30 minutes. 

Book personalised training here

Cool Links

Social Media Tips

Paid social media advertising is powerful and efficient. You can control the timing, the target audience, and all clicks are made by real people who are logged in. 

Imagine targeting your adverts to just people who live in your city, between the ages of 20-30, who are female, and who recently got engaged to be married. You might only get 10 matching people, but they would be just the people you want to target. You might consider paying $2 per click to get in front of just the "right people". Direct targeting advertising is the key online success.

Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/webwgt

Or tweet about us @webwgt

Or share/like/link/follow/connected or what ever takes your fancy

Search Engine Optimisation Tip of the Month 

  1. Identify your different keyphrases with a keyword tool
  2. Search for your different keyphrases on google and other search engines. 
  3. Maintain a spreadsheet of your current rankings for each keyphrase
  4. Focus new blogs or content or adword campaigns or link building only on phrases you are failing on.

More SEO tips and keyword tools here

Free Websites For Charity

There are 2 new hosting plans, FREE for very charitable websites serving the greater good helping those less fortunate, or $150/year for other community groups and sports teams. Existing customers may retrospectively request these plans.

All charities must comply with our special terms and conditions, primarily that they must not have any paid staff or income apart from donations. Free websites will include an advert promoting website builder services.

Learn More: - Learn more about free websites here

 

Start your Own Website Builder Business - Discounts of 30%+

Our reseller program enables you to setup and sell websites under your own brand. Web Widgets provides you with all the tools and services you need to do this. Web Widgets remain at arms length. Only your contact details and brand are shown to your customer. They won't know anything about web widgets nor free website builder. This program is perfect for website designers, or sales people looking for new opportunities. The reseller program does have a $1000 setup fee, but you immediately get 30% discount on our hosting fees and can purchase domains for only $22/year. We also give you full administrative access to our system, and special training. Alternatively consider our affiliate scheme below.

Learn more about reseller program

 

Help us promote our Website Builder (earn 20% commission ongoing)

Anyone who refers friends to our service, or sets up a 2nd or subsequent website gets a 20% discount off their web hosting fees. Refer 5 friends, and you pay nothing for your website hosting. Refer more than 5 friends, and we will start paying you.  

Terms - live websites only, based on equivalent hosting plans, payouts subject to minimums.

How to promote

  • Ask your friends to include your login email address on the form when they signup
  • Create a trial for your friends, using their email address, but put your login email in the referred by area.
  • Contact us to tell us who you have referred (after they have created their trial)
  • Create an affiliate link, refer top right within the CMS, then copy and paste into your page
  • Add a page, on the right under tooltips, see "Website Creation Affiliate Link"

More information about affiliates and reselling here

 

 

Websites of the Month

Here's a selection of some of our recent DIY Go Lives.  

                                And a few of our recent professionally designed / upgraded websites, or websites that received some professional help.

                                 

                                Do you want a more professional look and feel for your website? A more professional look will instill greater trust in your customers, and encourage them to stay longer on your website or make a purchase. Please use our online quote or contact us.

                                Do you have any feedback on our newsletter or CMS products? Please let us know.

                                Best regards,
                                Reuben Jackson (CEO)
                                Web Widgets - Free Website Builder

                                www.websitebuilder.co.nz

                                Posted: Tue 13 Dec 2011

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