New Features
2009-03-12 23:39:38
We’ve made a few improvements to the look and some of the functionality of the site. Not all of these changes are live for you yet but the main highlights are; the new site settings section in the management console and an update to the layout to the statistics pages.
- In the site settings section you can now alter the title of your site. This appears in the browsers title bar. In addition search engines usually use this as the listing header. Try not to cram this full of words though. Google limit the length of this headers and it’s better to be concise for the human reader.
- Meta description lets you alter the text that some search engines use under the header of your listing. Google does use it, but not always. If it finds better text from the main content of your site it will use that. Think of the site title getting the attention of a potential visitor, the description should sell yourself in a few well chosen words.
- Meta keywords are pretty much useless nowadays with regard to increasing your search rank. Some people have requested this so here it is. Remember to comma separate each keyword or key phrase.
- Header text is normally your site’s slogan text. We try to make this editable for you but sometimes if you request it to be in a fancy font this is not possible. If it’s blank, probably best to leave it blank, if not you can play around with it but make sure you check how it looks on your site ensuring it doesn’t move from where it should normally sit. Generally keeping it the same length will avoid such problems.
- Contact Line is much the same as header text; if blank it’s not been used so putting text here will result in something ugly happening to your site’s design.
If you have any feedback about these changes please do let us know. Also suggestions are always welcome. Contact Us
Add Links In Your Text
2009-03-31 14:37:21
You may sometimes want to add links to other sites or other places on your site within a block of text. You can do this by using the following structure:
[ name=address ]
e.g.
[ BBC News=http://news.bbc.co.uk ]
will create a link to BBC News
[ Great Websites=http://www.101PoundWebite.com ]
will create a link to 101PoundWebsite.com
(please note not to leave a space between the square brackets. This is only done here to prevent links from being formed.)
A Few More Stats
2009-01-10 19:06:20
If you have purchased the statistics upgrade you can now see your website’s traffic for each day of the month.
To access this data simply go to your statistics page in the management console and click on the month name. This will bring up another page with a day by day breakdown.
If you would like to add statistics to your website you can purchase it by going to upgrades when logged into your site.
Contact Form Security
2008-12-18 14:04:41
Following feedback we have received from you we have added a security question to the bottom of most contact forms. This was necessary to reduce the number of junk mail messaged being received.
You will notice a short sequence of numbers and letters that must be entered when sending from your website’s contact form. It works because only a human could understand the text and correctly enter the right sequence of numbers and letters.
This change should drastically reduce the number of junk emails you receive from your site. Do let us know if the problem persists.
Formatting Your Website’s Text
2008-12-10 11:45:15
We have introduced some easier to use formatting methods for your website.
You can still use HTML tags but the new formatting switches are easier to use and less prone to errors.
Bold:
To make something bold add '*' before and after the text. E.g. This text will be bold
Italics:
To make something italics add '_' before and after the text E.g. This will be italic
Strikethrough:
Strikethrough text with '–' E.g. This text will be stuck though
Lists:
To make a bullet point lists put '>' before each item. Each item must be on its own line.
E.g.
- Dog
- Cat
- Mouse
Maintaining your Website Now Less of a Drag
2008-10-08 23:51:20
Title perhaps a little misleading as in fact we’ve made it more of a drag, or more precisely more draggable. You can now change the order of your pages and gallery images by simply clicking and dragging it to its new place in the list.
Give it a try! When you release your mouse button the change is applied to your site instantly. No need to click update.
Anti-Junk Mail Measures
2008-10-02 16:15:33
Junk mail is a problem for everyone but if you have a website, your email address is published and much easier for junk mail senders to find and exploit. To help reduce this problem we have introduced two measures.
Email Transformation Script
Firstly your contact pages usually have your email address on. We have put together a special script which will alter your email address so as that junk mail senders cannot read it so easily but your visitors can use it with no problems. You may notice that when your contact page loads, for a few seconds until the page is fully loaded the email address appears as:
you [at] youraddress [dot] co [dot] uk
This is the script in action. After a few moment the address will appear correctly. Automated junk mail scripts find it hard to recognise emails when they are written like this.
Grey Listing
The second change effects you if you have POP3 email with us. The change basically involves adding a delay in delivery for email from new senders to you, or more specifically new sender’s email servers. This delay of five minutes only happens once for new senders and emails sent next time will arrive immediately.
How does this help? Junk mail servers send millions of emails out at one time, lots of these emails are sent to non-existent email addresses. As a result junk mail servers are often configured to not bother trying again to send an email if first time it fails as its likely to be a non-existent account. Genuine servers are set up to make multiple attempts to send the email. Because of this difference, junk mail server’s emails more often than not do not get sent. You can see the difference in our mail traffic since this measure was employed above (last cm or so).
Resizable Text Boxes
2008-09-25 15:42:33
If you find you're running out of typing space when adding text to your site, or you don't want to scroll up and down to see what you have typed, you can now resize the text box by dragging the gip along the Resizable Text Box
Improvements to Images
2008-09-22 12:31:31
We've made some improvements to the image handling.
You can now upload tif, png, gif, jpg and bmp files to your site. If you would like us to add any others please email us as they can be added fairly easily.
File uploads can be much bigger now so if your digital camera outputs massive files they should be ok to upload now. The site will automatically convert them to more internet friendly formats and sizes.
Simple image manipulations are now available under your image once uploaded. You can flip, rotate and make images black and white. Note that once you have made an image black and white you would have to upload your image again to restore colour.
Any feedback, problems let us know.
A Few Improvements Roundup
2008-09-20 18:14:25
We’ve made a few minor changes to the management console both behind the scenes and in front.
The first change has been to widen the page editor section to make better use of the screen space. We decided that the band along the side which used to be occupied with a template layout image was of little use and so it got the chop.
You can now upload images in tiff format in most places on the site. It was a real head ache for us having to covert tiffs in to another format to use on the site so we have completely rewritten the image processing system and now it accepts tiffs and soon will accept even more.
You may notice when uploading images to your galleries or single images there is now an extra box asking you for a text description. This is to improve the accessibility of your sites to people who use screen readers for example. All you have to do is provide a short description of the image when you upload it. A little bit more effort for you but a massive benefit for people with disabilities.
Final note on images, soon we will be adding some extra functionality which will allow you to perform basic modifications on uploaded images e.g. rotate, flip and make black and white so look out for these soon.
You can now have videos on your website. It is an upgrade so if you would like to be able to upload a video to your site then go to the upgrades section and sign up.
Statistics were getting a little slow to load because of the mass of data now stored in our stats database. We’ve rewritten the code for the stats engine and it seems to run a lot faster now. We will be looking closer into this shortly to try to make things run even better, perhaps splitting the stats up into different sections so they don’t all have to load at once.
If you have any views on these changes or any suggestions please feel free to email me at matthew@webfactore.co.uk.
Add Video on Your Site
2008-09-23 10:56:53
We’ve just launched a new add-on which allows you to publish a video to your website. Maybe you want to show your visitors around your hotel, inside your vehicles or a short clip so you can personally introduce yourself and your company. Having a video on your site has been proven to increase the success of communicating a message.
When you add the video upgrade to your package we will create a new video page to your site, or if you wish we can place the video on an existing pages. Once this has been done, just like with any other part of your site you are free to upload and change the video as much as you like from your management console.
You can add the video upgrade when you sign up or from the upgrades section when you log into your existing site. Once your order has been processed we will add the new page within 48hours.
Note: You can upload video up to 140mb in AVI, MPEG, MPG, FLV, MOV formats.
If you want us to upload your video or your video is not in the formats shown above we can convert and upload your video for you for £20. If you require this service send your video to Webfactore Ltd, 57b Colcot Road, Barry, CF62 8HL with your site web address. Cheques made payable to Web Factore Ltd. Please not we cannot process videos not in digital format e.g. Video cassette
New Annual Hosting Packages
2008-10-21 23:35:52
As a response to customer feedback we now offer annual hosting plans. Customers have told us that they would rather just one payment coming out of their accounts.
This offer is available to all new customers and if you are an existing customer then you can change to the new annual plan too, just let us know by emailing accounts@webfactore.co.uk.
Newsletter Add-On
2008-06-26 11:45:09
Do you ever wish you could tell your customers about your latest offers or a new product or service you have launched. With the newsletter add-on you can do just that.
Get you customers to sign up to your newsletter though your site and you can then easily send them regular updates direct to their inboxes.
This upgrade is discounted to only £15 one-off payment for a limited introductory period.
To sign up just click on site upgrades when logged in.
Site Upgrades and Add-Ons
2008-06-21 15:31:38
We’re slowly launching some site upgrades and add-ons which you can easily add to your web design package when you sign up or from your management console.
These upgrades include site re-designs and a web shop add-on which allows you to sell up to 100 products though your website. Watch our news feed for information on up and coming upgrades such as a stats upgrade which will give you information about the locations of the people who visit your site.
If you have any requests please do email us.
You can find a link to the current upgrades on the menu in your management console.
RSS Your Visitors
2008-04-28 13:34:13
If you have a news page on your site your visitors can now subscribe to RSS feeds of your news.
A RSS feed is a structured version of your news which your visitors can subscribe to allowing them to receive automatically any news updates you post.
You don’t have to do anything to enable this feature. It now automatically appears at the top of your news pages.
If you would like a news page on your website, please send us an email to sales@101poundwebsite.com
How Much Are Your Friends Worth?
2008-04-25 11:07:00
We have increased the reward for referring your friends to 101PoundWebsite.com. For every new customer you refer to us, we'll pay you £30 in Amazon vouchers! You must be an exisiting customer to take part in this scheme.
Content Management System Upgrade
2008-04-25 11:06:08
We've made some changes to the website and the management console. Here are some of the highlights.
Improvements to Statistics
We have made some improvements behind the scenes to the statistics engine. Previously in some circumstances visits from search engines and other automated site crawlers would show up on your site stats. We have taken measures to significantly reduce this in future and have also corrected past records. As a result you may notice that some of your sites stats have altered some what.
No More Pop-Ups
The new improved management console no longer used pop-ups when uploading images and files. Instead you can directly upload images from the page editor. This change has been made as a result of user feedback.
Larger Image Uploads
We had reports of people having problems uploading large image files to their sites. We have increased the size of file that you can upload to 20Mbs. This should eliminate problems with uploading large files.