Mac SEO Blog

If you want to improve your website’s page loading times, EverWeb 4.1 is just for you! Our new release introduces two new features to EverWeb that will dramatically improve the time it takes for your site’s pages to load in a browser: Lazy Loading and WebP format support. We looked at the latter, WebP format, in a previous blog post, so now we turn our attention to the new Lazy Loading feature.

What Is Lazy Loading?

Usually when a web page loads in a browser, all of its content is loaded at that time. This can cause page loading times to become very slow, especially if you have a lot of large images on the page, or if your page uses other media content that takes time and resources to load. Slow loading pages can deter your visitors from remaining on the page until it loads. As such you increase the potential for visitors to click away from your site.

To solve this problem, lazy loading was developed as a way to help improve page loading times. Typically, lazy loading is usually applied to images on the page, but it is possible to apply lazy loading to other resource intensive content as well.

When a page that uses lazy loading is loaded, only the content that is necessary for the user to interact with is displayed. Any other content that is not displayed, or needed at the current time, will be loaded on demand as the visitor scrolls the page.

How To Use Lazy Loading in Your Site

In EverWeb 4.1, or higher, you can apply lazy loading to images on your pages. Simply select the image you want to lazy load, then go to the Shape Options tab and check the ‘Lazy Load Image’ checkbox. That is all that is required, so super easy!

Once you have check marked all of the images in your site’s pages that you want to lazy load, publish your website and see the difference it makes when your site loads in to a browser window.

The Benefits of Lazy Loading Images

There are a number of benefits gained by using lazy loading in your site:

1. Faster Initial Page Load: By deferring the loading of non-essential elements, lazy loading reduces the initial page load time, allowing users to access the core content more quickly.
2. Improved Performance: Lazy loading helps improve overall website performance by minimizing the amount of data transferred and reducing the server’s workload.
3. Bandwidth Savings: Users may not view the entire page, so lazy loading helps save bandwidth by loading only the content that users actually interact with.
4. Better User Experience: Users get a smoother experience as they navigate the page since the browser loads content progressively as needed, rather than waiting for all resources to load before displaying anything.

Lazy loading is especially beneficial for pages with a large amount of media content, such as image-heavy websites or pages with embedded videos. However, it may not be necessary, or suitable, to use it on every page of your site. As always, it is important to first think about the requirements of your website and your site’s visitors.

Other Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Load Speeds

In addition to Lazy Loading images on your site’s pages, there are a number of other ways in which you can improve your page speed loading times:

1. Use WebP Format when publishing your website. The size of the image will be reduced, but image quality should still be good.
2. Other Image Optimization Techniques: Use image compression software to strip the image file of data that is not needed without losing image quality. You may also find benefit in reducing the image’s dimensions and additionally, you may benefit by changing the image file’s file format from e.g. PNG to JPEG.
3. Minimize HTTP Requests: By reducing the number of elements on your web pages, such as images and any scripts or code you may have you can tweak your page load times.
4. Enable Gzip Compression: If you are using EverWeb Site Shield Addon, Gzip compression is automatically enabled for you on the server side reducing the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files before they are sent over the internet. This reduces bandwidth usage and speeds up loading times.
5. Use less resources on your page. The simpler your page is in structure, the faster it will load.

Using a combination of readily available tools, in EverWeb itself, with EverWeb addons and external tools, you will easily be able to improve your page load speed times.

If you have any questions about page loading times, or about EverWeb in general, please let us know in the Comments Section below. We’re happy to help!

EverWeb’s Blogging feature was introduced in November 2016 when EverWeb 2.0 debuted. In the intervening eight years, there have been lots of improvements and feature additions in EverWeb’s blogging environment to enjoy. Often many of EverWeb’s blogging updates have been more incremental than blockbuster, so in this post we are going to round up the features and updates that have been introduced since our last update on blogging which came with the introduction of EverWeb 3.5.

Paragraph Styles

One of the highlights of our EverWeb 4.0 release was the introduction of Paragraph Styles to the app. You can apply Paragraph Styles anywhere in EverWeb, to text, within the Styled Text Editor in widgets and also within blog posts! All you need to do is highlight the text that you want to apply the Paragraph Style to in the Blog Post Editor, then click on the new Paragraph Styles button in the Blog Post Editor’s Toolbar – the second icon on the left hand side. Select the Paragraph Style that you would like to use from the dropdown list.

The Paragraph Styles are the same as the ones that you find in the Text Inspector, so if you ever want to modify, add or delete a Paragraph Style, you can do so either from the Text Inspector or by using the Format-> Default Styles… menu option.

SEO Key Words and Short Summary Options!

Although introduced in EverWeb 3.5, this is always worth a mention! You can add SEO Keywords and a Short Summary description to your blog post just by selecting your blog post from the Blog Posts List. Next, click on the Settings Cog then choose the Post Options… menu option. Note that ‘Post Options…’ was renamed from ‘Edit…’ as of EverWeb version 3.9 onwards.

Dark Editor Mode

For computers that support this feature, you can now set EverWeb’s Blog Post Editor to Dark Mode. This feature was introduced in EverWeb version 3.9. To access Dark Editor Mode, click on the Settings Cog on the left hand side underneath the Blog Posts List, then choose Dark Editor from the list of options.

Video (and Audio) Embedding Made Easy!

EverWeb made embedding videos in to a blog post a lot easier in EverWeb 3.9.1. Now all you need to do to embed a video in your post is to add the video file to the Assets list, then secondary, or right, click on the file, then select the ‘Copy File Path’ option. Next, go to the place in your blog post where you want to embed the video. Click on the ‘Insert Video’ button in the Blog Post Editor Toolbar then paste in the File Path link. Click on ‘Insert’ to finish.

The great thing about this option is that it also supports Audio file embedding too!

Clearing Text Formatting

In addition to the introduction of Paragraph Styles in EverWeb 4.0, this release also saw the introduction of the ‘Clear Formatting’ button in the Blog Post Editor’s Toolbar. Simply select the text that you want to clear the formatting from, then click on the Clear Formatting button at the far right of the Blog Post Editor Toolbar.

Importing Blog Posts from Other Sources

You used to import blog posts from WordPress or iWeb through the Settings Cog’s Import… menu option. From EverWeb 3.9.1 onwards you can now use the File-> Import menu for importing from these sources instead. If you are using EverWeb 4.0 or later, you can also import image galleries from WordPress, iWeb or Sandvox.

Blog Post Settings Changes

Most of the updates that come to EverWeb’s blogging environment can be seen in the Blog Post Settings when you are editing a blog post.

• Alt Text for the Blog Post Cover Image: This feature debuted in EverWeb 3.6. We recommend that whenever you have the ability to add ALT Text that you do so. Primarily the function of ALT Text is to help vision impaired people. As such, it is important that the text you enter simply describes what the image is about. Nothing more. The second role of ALT Text is to replace an image that cannot be displayed in a browser window. A third possible role also exists for ALT Text in that it might help boost your SEO if you use it. As SEO rankings involve complex algorithms, no one is certain how much of a role ALT Text plays in SEO, if at all. We strongly recommend that you add ALT Text based on its original intended purpose.
• Add Padding To The Blog Post Cover Image: Another nice feature add allows you to add padding around the Blog Post Cover Image, available from EverWeb 3.8 onwards.
• Blog Post Header and Date Fields Alignment: You can now left, center or right align the Blog Post Header and Blog Post Date fields since EverWeb version 3.8.

Improved Blog Editing Performance

Since our last update on blogging, back when EverWeb 3.5 was introduced, we have made improvements to ensure that typing on large blog posts in the Blog Post Editor is smoother with minimal typing delays. We have also improved the scrolling of the Blog Post Settings making the whole blogging experience snappier!

EverWeb’s blogging experience continues to evolve, but if there is anything that you would like to see come to blogging in the future, or in EverWeb in general, please drop us a line in the Comments Section below!

In our latest EverWeb release, version 4.1, we have introduced support for WebP format which has the power to dramatically improve your page load times. In this post we take a deep dive explaining all that you need to know about the format, the advantages of using WebP in EverWeb, and some things that you may want to consider before publishing your site using WebP format…

What Is WebP Format?

WebP is a modern image format developed by Google, who first announced the format in 2010, but only released their first stable version of the format in 2018. The goal of the WebP format was to replace JPEG, PNG and GIF file formats with a new standard that provided better compression without loss of image quality. Using WebP format in your website, therefore, has a number of benefits…

What Are The Advantages of Using WebP Format in EverWeb?

Here are some of the key advantages of using WebP files on your website:

1. Smaller File Sizes: WebP typically offers better compression compared to other image formats such as JPEG and PNG. The result is smaller file sizes which is important for faster page loading times, especially for image based websites, such as photography websites.
2. Faster Loading Times: As WebP files are smaller than other image file formats, so typically downloaded quicker, resulting in faster page loading times. This benefits both the website’s visitor and the website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), where page speed is factored in to the website’s search rankings.
3. Better Bandwidth Usage: Smaller file sizes help reduce bandwidth usage for both the server and end-user. This can benefit users with limited data plans or slow internet connections.
4. Lossless and Lossy Compression: WebP supports both lossless and lossy file compression, so images can retain their quality whilst benefitting from smaller file sizes.
5. Alpha Channel Support: WebP supports transparency (alpha channel), similar to PNG, allowing you to create images with a transparent background. This can be useful for overlaying images on different backgrounds without a visible border.
6. Animation Support: WebP supports animated images, making it a suitable replacement for GIFs. Animated WebP files typically have smaller file sizes than equivalent GIFs, again resulting in faster loading times for web animations.
7. Wide Browser Support: Most modern browsers support WebP, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Opera. Note that older browsers may have limited or no support for WebP format.
8. Google’s Preference: Google actively promotes the use of WebP so using their file format standard may benefit your site’s search engine ranking.

What Should You Be Aware Of When Using WebP Format

While there are clear advantages to using WebP, it is important to consider browser compatibility. Fortunately EverWeb does this for you. If the browser your visitor is using does not support WebP format. an alternative image format will be used instead.

Below is a list of some of the things you might want to consider when thinking about using the WebP format in your website:

1. Limited Browser Support: Although support for WebP has grown, it may not be supported by all browsers, especially older ones.
2. Fallback Requirement: Due to varying browser support, alternative image files (e.g., JPEG or PNG) should be available for browsers that do not support WebP. EverWeb takes care of this requirement for you so you do not have to do anything.
3. Compression Artefacts: WebP’s compression may result in noticeable artefacts, especially in highly detailed images. EverWeb will process and optimizes images to avoid this from happening.

How To Use WebP Format In Your EverWeb Made Website

If you decide to use WebP format in your EverWeb website, it is easy to implement. Simply go to the EverWeb -> Edit Publishing Settings screen if you are using macOS, or the File-> Edit Publishing Settings screen if you are using Windows. Check the box “Export Optimized Images”. This will be in either the EverWeb Location, Folder Location or FTP Server Details section of the screen. Publish your site and WebP support will be included automatically.

WebP Format and Lazy Loading for the Best Page Loading Speeds

WebP format is a great addition to EverWeb. This feature can be also used in conjunction with EverWeb 4.1’s new Lazy Loading feature for even faster page loading speeds. We will be looking at Lazy Loading in a future blog post!

If you have any comments or questions about the new WebP format feature, or about anything else EverWeb related, 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

Instagram

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Check Your Files Before You Add Them To Your Project File

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

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

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

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

Remove Unused Assets

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

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

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

Stripping Out Duplicate Assets

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

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

Link To Your Media Rather Than Embed

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

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

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

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

Starting your own business is an exciting time, turning your dreams and ideas in to reality. It’s also a time where you are likely to want to get your EverWeb website up and running to promote your business and sell your goods and services. Here are some suggestions as what tools you may want to use when starting out…

It Starts with a Name…

When you start a business, one of the most important things to decide is your business name. You may want a name that tells your potential customers or clients what your business is about. The problem new businesses have is trying to match their business name with their website domain name. More often than not, someone is already using the domain name you want. So be prepared. Make a list of four to six business names that you like, in order of preference. Then check with your Chamber of Commerce to see if any of these names are available.

You can look at choosing your business name in another way. Is the domain name for the business name I want available for purchase? Quite often, businesses choose the website name first, then check to see if the business name is available at the Chamber of Commerce. By getting the website name first, it is more likely that the business name will also be available for use. You can check if a domain name is free using EverWeb’s Domain Name Search feature.

When choosing a name you also will want to look at the scope of the name. This comes down to looking at the extension that is used in the website name e.g. everweb.com. Most websites aim for a ‘.com’ suffix but other extensions are available e.g. ‘,org’, ‘.gov’, ‘.edu’ or a country e.g. ‘.co.uk’. ‘.nl’, and even ‘.eu’ for the European Union. This may give you more flexibility when choosing a website name, but bear in mind that some extensions are designed to be used for a specific purpose.

Finally be careful of names that are very similar to other names or using hyphens to try to differentiate your name from someone else’s. For example, you want to call your company ‘abcd business’ but the website name ‘abcdbusiness.com’ is already in use. So you decide to make ‘abcd-business.com’ your business name. We would not recommend this. When potential customers search for your business, you may find that they actually click on your competitor’s site instead of yours.

Choosing Your EverWeb Version

Once you have your website name and have registered your business with your Chamber of Commerce, the next step is to build your site. The next decision to make is where to host your website? You can either host your website with your own Hosting Provider or with EverWeb. The choice is yours. You can still build your website in EverWeb and publish it to whichever Hosting Provider you have chosen. We usually recommend hosting with EverWeb as you get hosting features built directly in to EverWeb itself. You do not have to worry about the Hosting end of things at all as EverWeb takes care of this for you.

Also remember that EverWeb comes with a free stock image library of over 500,000 images to help you choose the perfect images for your site. Just click on the Media button in the Toolbar and select the ‘Free Stock Photos’ option. Enter in your search criteria, then drag and drop the image you want to use into the Editor Window.

SEO Matters…

As you are building your website, you may also be aware that you need to get your site’s pages as high up in search engine results pages as possible. So remember as you design your pages to add in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) key words and phrases to pages that you want to be relevant for SEO. You do not need to include SEO for pages such as Contact Us and About Us type pages. Check out our SEO for EverWeb Video Course for a full tour of SEO and how to easily and quickly apply it to your website.

If you are selling good and services online or your need to maximise your website’s potential, you may also want to consider EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp Addon. The Addon lets you refine your SEO allowing you to assign priority and frequency to your website’s pages, creates and SML Sitemap that can be crawled by web crawlers, optimises your site for search engines, submits your pages to Google, Bing, Yahoo and Alexa, and makes your pages load faster for your visitors using GZip Compression.

And keep an eye on this blog and the EverWeb User Forum for exciting news coming for SEO in the upcoming EverWeb 4.0 release!

Securing Your Website

Whilst SEO will help your page rankings improve, your site’s security is ever more an important issue to keep in mind, both for your site itself and also for your visitors. Most sites today are secure so you see a padlock next to your site’s name in the browser search bar. This indicates to your visitors that data transmitted to and from your site’s server is end to end encoded. The other plus point here is that search engines rank secure websites above non-secure websites. All of these features are available with EverWeb’s Site Shield Addon including Enhanced Security Settings for advanced website security. EverWeb Site Shield Addon is available for purchase through your EverWeb Client Area.

At the moment Site Shield Addon is available only to EverWeb+Hosting customers, but stay tuned as that is about to change in the new EverWeb 4.0 release which should make this addon available to everyone.

Contact Forms

Communication and interaction with your customers is vital to keep a thriving business, especially online. EverWeb’s Contact Form Advanced widget enables you to create powerful, flexible forms to help you engage more effectively with your customer base. You can take your contact management one step further though with EverWeb’s Contact Forms Enhanced Addon. This addon is great when you want to store email addresses for later use and collect data from contact form submissions for analysis. You can design your contact forms for specific campaigns you want run through your website.

Contact Forms Enhanced also lets your visitors upload files to you through the contact formant mass emailing features are also available. For details about purchasing this addon, check out EverWeb’s Online Store. There will also be more features in EverWeb 4.0 to further revolutionize contact form design!

Membership Sites…

Our final consideration is to add a Membership Site to your website so that your visitors can access free and paid for content by signing up to your Membership Site. Easy to use. Easy to set up. Easy to administer and fully featured. It’s coming soon in EverWeb 4.0!

Setting up your website and adding in the features that you need to make your business safe and secure and profitable is easy with EverWeb. Our upcoming EverWeb 4.0 release is going to add great new features and enhancements to make your website building experience even better.

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

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

More Than Just Headings Tags…

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

So What Are Headings Tags and How Do They Work?

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

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

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

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

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

When To Use, and Not Use, HTML Tags

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

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

Additional Features of the HTML Tags Feature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Aim For a More Secure Website in 2023!

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

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

3. Give Your Site’s SEO a Higher Priority

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

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

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

4. Spreading Your Word with a Blog

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

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

5. Creative, Consistent Content!

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

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

6. Work Smarter, Not Harder…

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

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

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

Happy New Year EverWebbers!

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

Blogging Posts Are More Customizable!

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

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

New “Instant” Preview Feature

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

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

More Context Sensitive Help

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

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

Photos and Captions

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

Faster Widget Generation for Apple Silicon Users

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

EverWeb 3.8.1 Is Now Available!

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

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