We are changing our back-end interfaces to make it even easier and faster for you to update your website. New features have also been added to our Image Gallery and Members Area tools that can benefit both designers and business users.
Business-building tips
Revamped back-end interfaces allow for easier and faster website updates
It's not just the colour scheme that has changed dramatically – it's lighter, simpler and more pleasing to the eye. The new back-end interface is also much faster and makes better use of the screen real estate. It's also easier to use.
We’re being careful to keep the same functionality that you're already familiar with, so there’s nothing new to learn. More improvements will follow over the next few days, along with new front-end features for the websites in terms of design and SEO.
Also, we have optimized several aspects of Your Web Department’s back-end code. The result is increased performance in many operations, particularly user and group management as well as other interfaces in the Tools section.
As usual we'll keep you posted, of course.
Directing members to a landing page upon login
If your website package includes the Members Area tool (which lets you create password-protected areas of your website) you now have the option of redirecting a group of users to a specific page after they login. The option can be found in Tools / Members Area / Groups and allows you to select any page of the website for that particular group of members.
New design features
'Auto-centre images' option for image galleries
Image galleries are an effective method to display multiple images. You create and manage image galleries in Your Web Department in the Tools section of your website, and then add them to any page as a content block.
YWD offers many different display styles for galleries, and you can now choose whether you’d like to centre the images or not (the default is to have them centered).
These display styles now include the Auto-centre images option:
Lightbox, launched by initial image
Lightbox, launched by initial image, with autoplay
Lightbox, launched by thumbnails
Lightbox, launched by thumbnails, with autoplay
Slideshow in place
Slideshow in place with captions
Slideshow, fancy transitions
Slideshow, fancy transitions, no navigation
Carousel, top thumbnails
Carousel, top thumbnails
Carousel, bottom thumbnails
For more information on the Image Gallery tool, please refer to this Help section.
Overriding the default social bookmarking settings for pages with blogs
If you choose to display horizontal social bookmarking buttons at the bottom of your pages, by default YWD will hide them from any pages that contain a blog. That's because blog posts can include their own social bookmarking buttons, and YWD automatically prevents that redundancy.
However, there may be specific instances where you'd like to override that. For example, the Home page of this YWD website includes summaries in its right column, but the client still wanted to include the social bookmarking buttons – which are present throughout the rest of the website – on the Home page as well. And for design reasons, they should be displayed in the main column, not beneath the blog in the right column (where YWD would place them).
A new option that allows you to do that has been added to Design / Tools / Blog / Comments & social media. By switching the Page bookmarking buttons on page with blog settings to "Yes", we were able to achieve that.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Many more of our clients now have a mobile version of their YWD website, which they either created on their own or with our help. Interested? Then read on. We've also introduced another feature for mobile, as well as a useful option for one popular Content Slider tool.
We love mobile
We think that mobile is so important to all businesses that it is something we regularly blog about. Check out the mobile category of the YWD blog for tips and tricks on how best to use the features and see examples of how other YWD clients are using mobile.
Although you can choose whether you’d like to position the labels to the left or above the input fields of forms when they’re viewed on computers -- in Design / Tools / Forms manager / Layout -- Your Web Department will now automatically place the labels above the fields when the form is viewed on mobile phones.
This way the small mobile viewport real estate is preserved, without the need to create a separate form just for smartphones.
Auto-centre option for content sliders
YWD's Content Slider tool allows you to create simple "presentations" containing multiple Word Processor "slides" displayed within the same area of the page. You create and manage slides and presentations in Tools / Content Slider and then add the presentation as a content block to a page.
In the past, in order to centre the slides within the content slider, you had to put the content of each slide into a table and centre it. But there's now an "Auto-centre" option available for you in the content block that will automatically centre the slides.
The new option will be set to 'Yes' by default for all new content slider blocks, and applies only to the "Regular" display style. Please keep in mind that in order for the automatic centering to happen, you must specify a width for the slides (another option at the content block level).
For more information on the Content Slider tool, please refer to this Help section.
Functionality tweaks
Fixed: page properties issue on slow connections
Editing the page properties might not work properly in some circumstances if the YWD back-end was being accessed from a slow Internet connection. This issue has now been fixed. If your connection is slow, you may now see an animated spinner for a brief moment until the Page Properties form finishes loading.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Sometimes people ask us about the differences between a website management system like Your Web Department and non-integrated approaches like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. There’s no one better than a designer that’s familiar with both YWD and WordPress to answer that, and she did so by providing the Top Ten reasons why YWD is a better option.
Business-building tips
10 Reasons why YWD is better than WordPress or Joomla or Drupal
We like to think that Your Web Department is a better a solution than WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, but it is even better when our clients think so too. This great Top 10 list was created by one of our long time clients and partners, Monica Yother.
A few tips for designers transitioning from print to the Web
Some of the most prolific people utilizing our website management platform are designers who previously had little or no experience creating websites. If you’re a print designer and in the past avoided accepting Web work, we think you should reconsider.
Your Web Department now provides 3 easy methods for you to display your Twitter feed on any page of your website, including a new "Plain list" option. It's a great way to connect with your audience while at the same time growing your number of Twitter followers and therefore your social media reach.
As you know, Your Web Department offers the most flexible mobile website option out there. Whether you build your mobile website yourself or we do it for you, you can define pages and even content blocks that will only be displayed on computers or mobile.
However, there are cases where you’ll want to allow a “computer-only” page to be displayed on mobile. For instance, you may launch an email campaign with a link to a page that is a sub-page of another that has been defined as "computer-only". Or the page itself may be "computer-only" and a person shared a link to it on Facebook, and someone else then tapped on it while checking out Facebook from their mobile.
YWD will now display that page even on people’s mobile phones, while still preventing it from appearing on the website’s navigation on mobile (which it does because the page itself or its parent has been defined as "computer-only").
And if you have enabled the mobile-optimized version of your website, YWD will automatically switch to a mobile-friendly layout when the page is viewed on phones.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Your website is a very important business tool. So you don't want it to be a "living dead" entity, do you? This week we take the gloves off and provide you with enough ammunition to eliminate any threats that might come from an undead website.
Business-building tips
WordPress and its zombie surrogates
There are any range of services out there if you want a website. Most domain hosting companies will let you drop your own html into their system for free. Many offer incredibly awful DIY web tools. There are services that charge several hundreds of dollars a month. The point is not cost, but value and frankly the difference between free and $588 a year is zero if your website is an important business tool. Hopefully you're planning on making more than $600 a year.
How to insert photos from your Google account directly into a page of your website or blog
Your Web Department includes a nifty Assets Manager so you can upload your images and place them anywhere on your website. But what if you’d like to insert images that reside elsewhere – on Google Photos, for instance? This way you can quickly add a picture without even having to download it to your computer and then upload to YWD.
You can now apply a background image to any content block without the need to write any code. To do that, while adding or editing the content block, click Advanced options and in the “Box” style (optional) section, select the background image (which must have been previously uploaded to YWD's Assets Manager). When the page is previewed, the image will appear behind the block’s content.
Our DOCTYPE and HTML tags have been updated
We’re updating all the documents generated by the YWD platform in order to make them compatible with HTML5 standards. Part of that involves changing our DOCTYPE and HTML tags, and that’s already done. By the end of the process, YWD websites will have leaner and more modern code which will allow us to implement additional responsive design techniques.
This change has no effect over the mobile-optimized version of YWD websites, which already use the latest tags.
For legacy websites, which may be used to enter images in a particular way that's incompatible with HTML5, we've made an option available in YWD Designer / Tools / Advanced / Accessibility & SEO that lets clients choose the old DOCTYPE tag that's compatible with HTML4 and XHTML.
Functionality tweaks
Usability tweak: Embed Code tool
Previously, if you added code to an Embed Code content block containing a very long string of characters without spaces (like the code for a PayPal button, for instance) YWD’s back-end interface would “stretch” beyond the width of the browser window. In order to avoid this issue, Embed Code content blocks now fit within fixed-width “boxes”, with scrollbars appearing automatically to indicate that the code is long. This change has no effect over the front-end display of the website.
Fixed: "Please wait" popup on Chrome
There was an issue with recent version of Chrome that caused the “Publishing page... please wait” popup (which YWD displays whenever you publish a page) to be displayed incorrectly on Chrome. This has been fixed.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Mobile is so big that it has impacted the sales of personal computers, which are down 14% from last year's sales in the same period. So we'll provide you with information about what's really important on the mobile version of your YWD website.
Business-building tips
Anatomy of your mobile business website
The fact is that businesses today need a mobile version of their website. Yes, you too need the mobile version as well; Google predicts that by 2014 mobile searches will surpass desktop searches. Social media is consumed more on mobile than on desktop and that is where you will do your marketing.
Oh, so you're building the mobile version of your YWD website on your own? No problem! Previously, if you activated the mobile-optimized version of your website, YWD would simply display the name of your website in the banner area until you specified a smaller banner (typically a 320px wide image) to be used just for the mobile version.
YWD will now use your standard/computer banner – and resize it on the fly to fit the mobile viewport – until you upload and select a proper mobile banner image.
Preventing the accidental reordering of the Home page
Clicking the "down" arrow beside your Home page link on the YWD back-end will now prompt you to confirm the operation first. The same is true if you click the "up" arrow of the page immediately beneath the Home page. This is to prevent clients from inadvertently reordering their Home page.
YWD Designer usability tweak
In order to work properly, YWD Designer requires that your browser window be at least 1300 pixels wide (a laptop is typically set to 1440 pixels or more, for example). If your browser window is too small, YWD Designer will still launch, but a window will now popup and ask you to maximize the browser window or increase the monitor resolution.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Let us remind you: your website is not for you -- it is for your audience... And there's a growing chance people will be using a phone to access it. So we've added new features to our mobile offering to make it even more flexible and powerful.
Business-building tips
Small businesses: mobilize!
A website and its mobile counterpart are a must for any business. With YWD, you could have both a good desktop and a mobile website. You can create the mobile version of your website yourself or we can do it for you.
A website management system like Your Web Department provides different options in terms of mobile navigation without programming. This way you can easily match it to your specific needs. Check out a few examples from our clients.
If you treat your customers well, they'll actually treat you well
Rona Birenbaum is a customer of ours. Her website, www.caringforclients.com has been on Your Web Department for several years and has gone through several iterations as her business evolved. So, have a listen to this interview about Rona's financial planning business. Great advice and a nice plug for YWD later in the video.
So you use the Facebook app on your mobile and wanted to be able to have a similar navigation style on the mobile version of your website in YWD? Well, you can now. In YWD Designer / Mobile devices / Smartphones / Navigation there’s now another option for the “Main navigation style for mobile” setting. It’s called “Vertical, sliding pane” and will do something similar to what’s shown below.
When people tap on the navigation icon on the top left...
...the whole page slides in to the right, revealing the navigation:
Tapping on the icon again or on the content, slides the page back into position.
New QR code widget
QR (Quick Response) codes are becoming increasingly popular. I'm sure you've seen them on bus stops, magazines, "house for sale" signs, etc. When people scan the QR code image using their smartphones, they're taken directly to a web page. YWD already provided a way for clients to generate the QR code for a property in our Real Estate tool. But you can now add a "QR code widget" to any page of your YWD website. The new option is found in YWD Designer / Social media & widgets / Other widgets / General purpose. When the little widget is clicked on the live website, it will display a large QR code image which can be saved and then inserted into any printed material for easy scanning.
Visit our online Help website and at the bottom of any page you'll see the little QR code widget, next to the printer-friendly and PDF widgets. Click it and you'll see the QR code for that page.
Functionality tweaks
Clearing the start/end dates from a product in the Catalog/E-commerce or a property in the Real Estate tools
Previously, once you'd set a start or end date in the the "Product status and optional activation dates" section of the "Product properties" form (or a property in the Real Estate tool), you could only modify the dates but not remove them altogether. There's now a "Clear" button beside each field's "Calendar" widget that allows you to do just that.
Vertical dropdown menus styles on mobile tweaked
These menu styles now allow for longer page names -- they'll automatically wrap inside the dropdown menu "box'". And the padding between the page name links has been fine-tuned, making it easier for people to tap the links.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
YWD this week Mobile browsing is on the rise, and we have the numbers to proof that. Several of our clients have already incorporated a mobile-optimized version of their websites, either on their own or with our help. Now is the time to do go about it.
We love mobile
We think that mobile is so important to all businesses that it is something we regularly blog about. Check out the mobile category of the YWD blog for tips and tricks on how best to use the features and see examples of how other YWD clients are using mobile.
So you just went live with a new website for your business. Congratulations! Now you go to Google, search for it and... nothing. Oh, you must have typed something wrong, of course. You search for something more unique within the content and... nada. OK, this is starting to get on your nerves. You then search for the name of the website itself and... nothing again. What’s going on?
We've revised our mobile display code. We were able to get the portrait view of the website to be centered with pixel-perfect precision, and also to automatically scale to the full viewport width when the phone is turned sideways without the need to manually reposition the page.
Lucida font on mobile
Although the Lucida font is standard on both Mac and Windows computers, it's not included with the iPhone. So we're using Helvetica as its replacement there as opposed to Verdana, as the former is visually closest to Lucida than the latter. Computers and tablets are not being affected by this change.
Functionality tweaks
Canonical URLs for other tools
We have normalized the URLs of pages generated by other tools such as Event Calendar, News Manager, Catalog/E-Commerce, Real Estate. This will translate into better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for all YWD websites.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
YWD this week Business owners are beginning to see the rewards of meeting the needs of mobile device users. A massive shift toward a mobile web presence is under way. This week we tell everything you need to know about getting your mobile website up and running!
Business-building tips
The time for your mobile website is now
Only 26% of businesses have a mobile-friendly website. At YWD we don't want you to be part of the 74%. Mobile websites are part of our core package; that means you don't pay extra for activating a mobile version of your website, and it is very easy to activate!
And, yes, you do need a mobile version of your website.
Mobile isn’t coming, it’s here. The numbers are staggering: 3.6 billion people around the world use mobile devices. 500,000 Android devices are activated every day and more than 50% of Americans have smart phones. Mobile is growing faster than any technology before. And perhaps most importantly, mobile websites impact sales:
94% use their smart phone to find a local business
74% made a purchase based on a smart phone search
Having a mobile version of your website ensures your customers have an experience that is optimal for the device they are using. It means that your website is formatted for a smaller screen and ideally takes advantage of the touch screen technology (touch to call for example) and geolocation tools that quickly take users to services like Google Maps. This kind of user experience just may be the differentiating factor that leads a potential customer to call, or stop in to, your business vs. your competition’s.
We love mobile
We think that mobile is so important to small and mid sized businesses that it is something we regularly blog about. Check out the mobile category of the YWD blog for tips and tricks on how best to use the features and see examples of how other YWD clients are using mobile.
In addition to the horizontal navigation bar with buttons for the topmost level, you can now have a vertical dropdown menu that slides down when people tap a single button. The button can either be labeled "Menu" or simply display an icon -- the 3 short horizontal bars used by many apps and popular websites on mobile like Facebook and others. You can select the colour of the button as well as the text size of both the "Menu" label in the button (if applicable) and the dropdown menu links. You can also specify the distance from the top of the mobile viewport (shifting the button up/down to position it exactly where you want above the banner) and even the width of the dropdown, useful if you have long page names.
The new styles provide a modern and convenient way for people to navigate on their mobile, while saving screen real estate
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Is your website due for a redesign? We'll help you decide. We also demonstrate how content marketing can benefit your business. New mobile features are also announced.
Business-building tips
Does your business website need a redesign?
OK, you already got a website for your business. It’s a start, and in fact you’re ahead of lots of people. But is your website really working for you? Does it need a tune up, or even a major overhaul? There are a few symptoms that could indicate that your website needs a redesign, and we’ll go through them here.
Previously, YWD allowed you to add two buttons to the bottom of the mobile-optimized version of a website: "Call us" and/or "Show Google Map" (for both of which you could customize the label, colour, etc.). Now you can also add a generic button. You can specify the button label, the colour, the URL to where it should link when clicked and whether it should launch it on the same browser widow or open a new one.
Writing CSS code specifically for mobile
If you're familiar with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) you can now add a few classes specifically for when the website is viewed on mobile devices. You may enter your code in YWD Designer / Tools / Advanced / Custom CSS into the "Custom CSS code specifically for mobile" field. Please note that this option is reserved for experienced designers, and that the field is limited to just a few lines.
Functionality tweaks
Windows Phone now supported
If you have a mobile-optimized version of your website, it will now be displayed on Windows phones.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
We know how important your website can be for your business. So this week we’ve introduced a few new features designed to improve its rankings even more, so it can get all the respect it deserves!
Business-building tips
Search Engine Optimization: better canonical URLs
In a previous update we implemented canonical URLs i.e. the "preferred" URL for search engines to use for your pages. We have now taken this feature a step further by adding specific exceptions for the Home page and Blog tool pages (in the case of the latter, by instructing search bots to avoid either indexing or following months that don't have any posts.)
This will translate into even better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and higher rankings for your website.
Verifying your website on Pinterest
Would you like to know which images people are pinning from your website? Pinterest has just launched a new tool for site owners that lets you see how well your pages are performing on that popular social network. It's called Pinterest Web Analytics and it's available to companies with a verified website.
When your website is verified, people will see a checkmark next to your domain in search results. They will also see the full website URL and checkmark on your profile. And you will be able to access the traffic analysis data that's now being provided by Pinterest.
YWD now lets you verify your website through our Google, Yahoo, Bing, Pinterest / Verify Ownership tool. Please refer to this blog post for step by step instructions on how to do it..
Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. If you business has a website and/or a blog you are already doing content marketing, maybe not as well as you could be but you are there already. The good thing is that getting better at it takes only: discipline, strategy and lots of tracking.
You can now select which category to display in a blog content block. This allows you for example to have an instance of your blog in a section of your website containing only posts that relate to it, without having to create separate blogs altogether.
When adding or editing a blog content block, you now have three selection mode options at your disposal:
Automatic: all posts are displayed.
Manual (individual posts): allows you to pick specific posts by their titles.
Manual (individual categories): allows you to select.
You can select multiple categories using Cmnd-click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (Windows).
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
Your Web Department brings you weekly updates detailing all the improvements and upgrades as we roll them out to the benefit of all of our clients. If you are a member of our service and are not recieving these updates in your email please email support@yourwebdepartment.com to get added.
QR (Quick Response) codes are becoming increasingly popular. I'm sure you've seen them on bus stops, magazines, "house for sale" signs, etc. When people scan the QR code image using their smartphones, they're taken directly to a web page. YWD already provided a way for clients to generate the QR code for a property in our 
