Mac SEO Blog

In our last post we looked at the basics of blogging and how to get started with your own blog in EverWeb. In this post, we will be looking more in depth at how you blog, and how to make the most of EverWeb’s blogging feature so you get the best out of your blogging investment!

The Blog Posts Page

EverWeb’s Blog Post page is where you create and manage your blog posts. In this way, the ‘posts’ page is unique. It is comprised of four sections:

The Blog Post List

When you click on the ‘posts’ page, in the Web Page List, you will enter the heart of EverWeb’s blogging environment. In the top section of the posts page is the Blog Post List. Here is where you can see listed all of the blog posts that you have created. It is also where you can create a new post, delete posts, as well as add in SEO to your posts and import blog posts from iWeb and WordPress using the Settings Cog icon.

Once you have created a blog, you can also set the date and time that you want time stamped on the post, or set the publish date and time to the same as your website publishing date/time.. Simply click on the blog post’s date field to set this up. If you do not want the blog post to be published yet, e.g. if you are still working on your post, then you can click in the Draft checkbox. Notice also on the far left hand side you have red and green traffic lights that indicate whether the post has been updated since it was last published.

The Blog Post Editor Window

The heart of your blog post is your text and the Blog Post Editor Window is where you create your content. You can use the Blog Post Toolbar to style your post. If you are using EverWeb 4.0 or higher, you can even use Paragraph Styles in your post. You can also include images within your post by drag and dropping them in to the Blog Post Editor. When you do this, you will see an Image Toolbar that allows you to add ALT Text to the image and set its alignment as In-line or break text. The Blog Post Editor Window also lets you add in video and audio files using the Video icon in the Toolbar.

The Blog Post Preview Window

When you add your content in to the Blog Post Editor Window, you will notice that it is also displayed as a preview in the Blog Post Preview Window which sits directly below the Blog Post Editor Window. You can think of the Blog Posts Preview Window as a kind of Master Page in which your content sits. When you create your first post, you will notice that the Preview Window contains a Header, date at the top of the Preview page and the EverWeb logo at the bottom. All these features will appear on all of your blog posts. You can add, delete and rearrange objects in the Preview Window as desired. For example, if you add your company logo to the Preview Window, it will appear on all of your posts. If e.g. you remove the EverWeb logo from the Preview Window, it will not appear on any of your posts. Therefore, use the Preview Window to format and customize the look of your blog itself if you want to. Alternatively, you can still use a Master Page instead if you prefer.

Blog Post Settings

In the Blog Posts Preview Window section above, we mentioned styling and customizing it to get the look that you want for your blog. Many of the customization settings can be found in the Blog Post Settings column that runs down the right hand side of the posts page. Here you can customize the fonts used for the posts header and date fields.. Additionally you can also add an image to the post and define the colors that you want to use for any hyperlinks. You can also create Navigation Links within the blog post to make it easy to navigate to the next or previous post as well as to the blog’s Index page. The last part of the Blog Posts Settings section is for adding a Comments Engine, such as Disqus or FaceBook Comments, if you want to allow your visitors to add comments about what you have posted.

SEO and Blog Posts

The last important part of the blog posts page it to remember that you can add in SEO to your posts. The post’s header will be used, and you should add keywords in to the first paragraph of your post if it is suitable to do so. If it is not, please just create good content instead. Google will prefer that to you adding keywords just for the sake of SEO.

In addition, you can also add keywords and summaries to your blog posts. Select the blog post that you want to apply SEO to in the Blog Posts List. Next, click on the left hand bottom side of the Blog Posts List. Choose the Post Options… menu option. You will now see a dialog box where you can add in a short summary description of your post, as well as Keywords relevant to your post. Once you have added these in, click on OK to finish.

Adding posts to your blog is super easy and super flexible! In our next post we will be looking at the blog page and the archive page.

SEO is one subject that we often come back to with EverWeb. For some SEO may not be important, whilst for others it can be the key to a successful online presence, typically for business ventures. EverWeb makes adding SEO to your site easy. When you complete fields in the Page Settings tab of a page in your site, you are already adding information that will be used for SEO purposes when you publish your site..

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is used to improve your website’s visibility to search engines such as Google, Bing and Alexa. In turn this will drive more traffic organically to your site. Adding the right key words to the pages of your site optimizes them to help search engines better your ranking in search results.

The Benefits of Adding SEO To Your Site

1. Adding SEO To Your Site Increases Organic Traffic: Using SEO effectively should help your website rank higher in search engine results. This will make it easier for potential customers to find your site without the need to use paid for advertisements.
2. Gives Your Visitors a Better User Experience: When SEO is properly added to you site it should help improve your site’s speed, its mobile-friendliness, and navigation, all of which will enhance your visitors’ experience.
3. Better Perceived Credibility & Trust: Websites that rank on the first page of search engine results pages are perceived to be more reliable and authoritative which in turn increases trust among visitors.
4. Cost-Effective Marketing: Using SEO can help lead to more consistent traffic coming to your site over time without the ongoing costs that marketing may entail.
5. Build a Competitive Advantage: If you are not using SEO but your competitors are, they could be attracting more traffic, leads, and sales than you.
6. Targeted Audience & Higher Conversion Rate: SEO helps attract users who are actively searching for what you offer, increasing the chances of conversions (sales, sign-ups, etc.).
7. Localized SEO for Local Businesses: If your business operates in one country only, localizing SEO may help attract more local customers as your SEO is relevant to where you are based.
8. Long-Term Results: Unlike paid for advertising, where traffic will stop if you stop paying, SEO builds a foundation for long-term online success.

SEO and Your EverWeb Site…

As we mentioned at the start of this post, EverWeb has SEO baked in to it automatically. As you add information to the fields in the Page Settings tab of the inspector Window, EverWeb will use this for SEO purposes when your site is published. If SEO is important to your business there are three things that are important to bear in mind when starting to add SEO to your site’s pages :

1. Filling in the right fields for SEO
2. Adding quality information in SEO relevant fields
3. Using the right key words and/or phrases in SEO related fields

Effective SEO For Your EverWeb Site…

The best way to make sure that you are filling in the right fields with the best SEO keywords or phrases is to either follow the SEO for EverWeb Video Course, or check out chapter 12 – EverWeb & SEO – of the EverWeb User Manual which can be accessed either from the Projects Window or via the Help Menu. These tools will help you gain an understanding of SEO in clear, concise steps. There are lots of great tips as well that will help to boost your site’s search engine results page ranking.

Additional SEO Tools To Give You The Edge Over Your Competition

EverWeb gives you the basic tools that you need to set up SEO effectively for your site. This is usually sufficient for most users but if SEO is business critical, you can tailor your SEO more specifically through the use of the EverWeb SEO Power Up addon, which includes the very useful Check Page feature, making implementing SEO even easier!

Keeping Your Site’s SEO Up To Date

Once you have added the SEO that you want to the pages in your site that require it, remember to review these pages on a regular basis. There are two reasons why this is important to remember: firstly, your pages may change their content over time e.g. the home page or products page of your site. If this is the case then do you need to update the page’s SEO to reflect these changes? The second reason to check your SEO every so often is that search engines such as Google, may change their algorithms from time to time. These changes to the search engine algorithms may have a positive or negative effect on your search engine result page rankings. So you may need to realign your SEO to account for these changes.

Adding SEO to your site is a good way to boost page rankings in search engine results pages. It is also a no, or low, cost option to promote your site that usually only requires reviewing, or updating, on a regular basis.

The recently introduced EverWeb 4.3 for macOS, or Windows brings a host of new and updated features to the product, with the headline feature being the introduction of the new PayPal Modern Widget!

Our new widget uses the latest PayPal button API, adding more options for how your customers can pay you. This means you have more control and flexibility to offer different payment methods, making it easier for visitors to purchase products and services from your website. You can now offer Venmo payments in the US and local European and Australian payment methods including PayPal’s pay later options.

The new widget also enables you to sell subscription services as well as products, from your site.

Before we get started with the PayPal Modern widget, remember that EverWeb also includes the PayPal Widget. We recommend that you check out this widget as well in case it is more appropriate for you to use our original widget rather than the new PayPal Modern widget which we will be exploring below..

Getting Started With The PayPal Modern Widget

To use PayPal Modern widget, make sure that you have signed up for a PayPal account, if you do not have one already. Once you have a Paypal account set up you can add the widget to your page in EverWeb. If you are using a Center Aligned page layout, you can just drag and drop the widget on to the page and size and position it where you want. If you are using a Responsive page layout, you will need to add the widget in to a Responsive Row widget. To do this, drag and drop a Responsive Row widget on to the page, then drag and drop the PayPal Modern Widget in to the Responsive Row that you just added, or in to an existing Responsive Row.

Once you have placed the widget on your page, choose the button type from the dropdown menu. You can choose either Purchase for goods and services, or Subscription if you are offering a subscription service. 

The PayPal Client ID

After selecting the button type that you want to use, the next step is to enter your PayPal Client ID in to the PayPal Client ID field. If you do not have a PayPal Client ID, click on the “Get Client ID” button. This will take you to PayPal’s Developer website. Although the developer’s website has a lot of tools to use, we are only interested in generating a PayPal Client ID that can be used in the PayPal Modern widget.

At certain times, you may be required to log in to your PayPal account e.g. when first accessing the developer website. Once you have logged in, you will be taken to the PayPal Developer Dashboard.

Click on the Create App button, then enter a name for the app in the App field. it does not matter what name you choose here, so you could call it e.g. ‘My first app’. After entering a name for your app, click on the Create App button to finish.

The next screen you will be taken to is where you will see the Client ID which has been automatically generated for you. All you need to do here is to click on the Copy icon to copy the Client ID to the Clipboard. 

After copying your Client ID to the Clipboard, you can logout of the PayPal Developer app and go back to EverWeb. Paste the Client ID in to the PayPal Client ID field. If you are not going to use the widget to add a Subscription Plan, you can skip the next section and go to the section ‘Completing the Widget Settings’ below.

Creating a Subscription Plan

If you are going to be using the PayPal Modern widget to create a subscription service, you will need to first create a subscription plan in PayPal itself. When you create a subscription plan, it will have its own PayPal Subscription Plan ID.

In the PayPal Modern widget, remember to set the Button Type in the Widget Settings to Subscription before you start. Next click on the click on the Create Subscription Plan ID button. If asked to, login to your PayPal account. You will then be taken to the Subscriptions home page. 

Begin by clicking on the Getting Started button. if this is the first time that you are accessing the Subscriptions page you may see a short slideshow first before being taken to the Manage Subscriptions page.

PayPal will guide you step by step to create your subscription service plan. Once the plan has been set up, you can either save the plan you have created as a draft, or you can turn the plan on. After creating your plan, copy the Plan ID to the clipboard, then return to EverWeb and paste the Plan ID in to the widget’s Plan ID field.

Completing the Widget Settings

After entering your PayPal Client ID and, optionally, your Subscription Plan ID, you can now complete the rest of the Widget Settings…

Product Name

Use this field to enter the name of the product or subscription service that you are adding to the page. When you update the Product Name field, the widget updates automatically in the Editor Window. If you want to change the font of the Product Name (and the font of the Product Pricing and Currency fields), click on the Fonts button in the Toolbar and select the font that you require. The font size is automatically set for you.

Product Details

The Product Details section of the widget is where you add a detailed description of the product, or subscription service, that you are selling. The description is added using the Styled Text Editor so you can use predefined Paragraph Styles to automatically style your descriptive text.

At this point, you probably will want to add an image of the product, or subscription. To do this, scroll down to the Appearance section of the Widget Settings. Click on the Product Image field’s ‘Choose…’ button to select the image that you want to use.

Product Pricing

Enter the price of the product or subscription service, the currency used, and the country in which you operate your business in. Note that you can only use one currency per page so make sure all PayPal Modern widgets that you add to the page use the same currency.

EverWeb also lets you specify which Payment Sources you would like to use, by checking the appropriate payment sources in the Payment Sources list box. 

If a tax rate is applicable to your product or service, enter the Tax Rate in as a percentage.

If the product or subscription is something that buyers can purchase multiples of, check the ‘Allow Multiple Quantity’ field,

The Quantity label by default will display ‘Quantity’, but you can change this if you want. In addition, you can also set a maximum quantity a buyer can purchase in the Max Quantity field.

Options

The Options section of the Widget Settings is used when you are selling items that have different options available. In my example, I am selling a standard lawnmower model, and also a deluxe version, so I can list both as options to buy. Start by clicking on the ‘Add Options with Price’ button. Enter the option that you want, in my example this is the standard lawnmower model. Next, enter the price of the product. Now click on the ‘Add Options with Price’ button again, and add the deluxe lawnmower model and its price.

The second option allows you to do the same thing as just described, but without the price difference. So for example, in this case I could add different color choices as my options.

Shipping Options

If you want to add a shipping cost to the product check the ‘Enable Shipping’ checkbox. Click on the ‘Add Shipping Method’ button to add a shipping cost option. For example, you could add a standard shipping and express shipping options.

In addition, you can allow shipping outside of your own country by checking the ‘Allow International Shipping’ checkbox. You can also allow shipping by quantity, by clicking on the ‘Calculate Shipping Per Quantity’ checkbox. Furthermore, you can add a Handling fee to the customer’s purchase using the ‘Handling Fee’ option. The fee can also be calculated by quantity if you want. To set up International shipping, or handling, based on quantity you will need to do this in PayPal itself.

Discounts

If you want to add discount possibilities you can do so in the Discounts section. A discount can be applied as a percentage of the product price, or as a fixed amount.

Directing and Redirecting Your Customers

Use the Actions section of the widget, to redirect your customers to a ‘Thank You Page’ or to a ‘Cancelled Page’ that you have created in your site. This is useful to do as it will keep your customers within your website after their purchase.

If your customers are not redirected automatically back to your website after their purchase, you may need to set up in PayPal the redirect back to your website after the customer purchase. To activate this, log in to PayPal then go to your PayPal Account Settings. 

Under the Website Payments option, make sure that your Website Preferences are set to ‘bring customers back to my website after they pay with PayPal’. 

One you have completed your settings, preview or publish your site to test that the features you have added work properly.

The new PayPal Modern Widget opens up a new world of possibilities to PayPal users by allowing subscription services for your customers to purchase in addition to product sales. The new widget also gives you more control over the different payment methods that you may want to offer your customers.

In the first part of this blog, How EverWeb Can Keep Visitors Interested in Your Site, we looked at how you should prepare before going live with your EverWeb made website. We also looked at how to create an SEO strategy so that your website’s chances of being found on the Internet are the best that they can be. In this second, concluding part, we look at things that you can do in EverWeb from a design and content approach that will help keep visitors interested in your site.

Create and Maintain a Dynamic Landing Page

Perhaps the most important page of your website is the Landing page, also known as your site’s Home page. This page, typically, will be the first page which new and returning visitors will access. So, it is important to keep it up to date. For example, anything that is time sensitive should only be on the landing page whilst it is relevant. If you have, for example, an event on your page that is three years old, chances are that your visitors will think that your site is no longer active and may stop visiting you!

New Content Creation Is Important for SEO

Adding new, fresh content to your website is an important ingredient in keeping visitors coming back to your website. Use the Home page of your site to highlight what is new and trending. Updating at least the Home page of your website on a regular basis is a simple, effective way of telling your visitors that your site is active and alive and kicking! How many websites do you know of that are not updated for years? If you are selling goods and services on your site, this is doubly important.

When creating content for the Home page of your site, make sure your message is clear and simple, typically with only one objective in the message. Clear and simple is always best. Avoid just updating your Home page just for the sake of it, and whilst using SEO Keywords on your Home page is great, do not sacrifice your content for the sake of SEO.

Blogging – Is It For You and Your Audience?

One great way to add new content is to add a blog to your site. This can become a tool that will hook your visitors on your site if you add content that is fresh, relevant and interesting to your audience. A regular blog is something of an investment and it is not for everyone but if it is right for your audience then it is worth trialling.

Remember To Keep EverWeb Up To Date!

One other vital factor in keeping visitors interested in your site is to keep EverWeb up to date. In addition to maintenance and stability releases, major point version releases of EverWeb will bring new features, or enhanced existing features, for you to use. EverWeb usually gets three to four major point releases throughout the year so don’t get left behind!

Consider Revamping Your Site From Time To Time

Sometimes keeping your visitors interested in your site can just come down to revamping your site from time to time. Changes in colors, fonts and layout can have a huge impact – both positive and negative – so figuring out what works for your target market is important. When it comes to design in EverWeb, remember to use Paragraph Styles in all of your pages. We also recommend that you assign Document Colors to your site as well. When it comes to revamping your site, you only need to update your Paragraph Style and Document Color defaults which will then ripple throughout your site, saving you lots of time and effort!

Spreading the Word About Your Website

One of the best ways of getting more traction to your website is by spreading the word through social media such as Facebook pages, Instagram, Pinterest, LnkedIn and other social media platforms that are appropriate to your business, or interest group. Linking your website’s content to social media is a good way of keeping visitors and customers informed and up to date about your site and business.

Remember as well that social media is not for everyone either, again think of what best suits your audience. For example, including an email newsletter sign up Contact Form in your website. Creating a regular newsletter may be a better alternative to social media and blogging for some audiences. If you choose to go the newsletter route, you can use EverWeb’s Contact Form Enhanced addon to manage the contact forms that are submitted to you from the Contact Form Advanced widget.

Keeping Visitors Interested: Final Take Aways…

There are a number of different tools within EverWeb that you can use to help keep your website live and fresh to your current visitors as well as potential new visitors. If you run a business over the Internet, remember that your website is your calling card so needs attention!

When you build your website in EverWeb it’s a great feeling to finally publish it to the Internet for the whole world to see. All those hours of effort you put in to designing and building your site are rewarded when you ‘Go Live’. So does this mean that it is now time to sit back and let your site do the work that you intended it to do? It’s a tempting thought, but the reality is that going live is only really the start of the journey…

Is Your Website Achieving Its Objectives?

Anyone who builds a website is doing so for a purpose. Behind the purpose will be one or more specific goals or objectives that the website should meet, both now and in the future. Once your website has gone live, you should check if its goals are being met, or if they need to be modified, on a regular basis. It is also important to think about how your website will need adapt in the future to meet ongoing changes in business, or personal, goals and objectives.

Fix Issues Before They Become Problems

After going live, the most immediate task for any website developer will be to fix any issues that may have come to light after go live, as quickly as possible. The best test of how any website is going to work is when it goes live on the Internet. Obviously, it is important to test your site as thoroughly as possible before go live as this should help iron out most, if not all, potential issues or problems.

Prior to going live, your testing phase is also a good time to double check your site’s workflow. Is your site easy to use and to navigate? This is an important part of your site’s development. If your site is difficult to navigate you will probably lose you visitors once it has gone live. Remember as well to check all of the links in your pages and navigation menus.

In addition to looking at your site’s workflow, also make sure that you include a ‘404 Page Not Found‘ page to your site’s pages. The 404 page appears if a visitor clicks on a link to a page that does not exist or cannot be found. Using a 404 page in your site helps keep the visitor within your site and helps you direct them back to another page within your site e.g. your 404 page could include a button to take the visitor back to your Home page. In EverWeb, add your 404 page to your site in the Site Publishing Settings page which can be accessed from the File-> Edit Publishing Settings menu option.

When it comes to rooting out potential problems before you go live, often developers publish the site to a ‘test’ area on Internet until all issues have been resolved. This is as close to a Go Live as you can get. Once any problems have been resolved, the site can then be published to its true URL for Go Live.

The final way of checking for any potential issues on your site is to test it once it has gone live and to look out for any feedback from the site’s visitors about things that do not work, or work in unexpected ways. It may be possible that you cannot test some features using a test setup and Go Live is the only way to try out some of your sites features. In this case, whenever possible, fix any such problems as soon as possible. This will add credibility and professionalism to your site. If a visitor to your site posts an issue on social media, respond quickly, courteously and positively as possible. Also remember to update those who flagged the issues as to the progress in fixing the problem they highlighted. This approach is good PR for you even though if it is hard work at the time.

Get Your Website’s Stats!

Once your site is up and running, you can find out how interested visitors are in it by analyzing your visitor statistics. If you have an EverWeb+Hosting account, you can access your site stats through your EverWeb Client Area. If you use your own Hosting Provider, please contact them for more information on getting your stats.

Using your visitor statistics, over time, will detail how your site traffic is holding up. It is also useful to check your stats after you have made any major changes to your site as this may indicate whether the changes you have made have been successful or not. Site statistics can also be affected by your site’s SEO in relationship to Google, Microsoft Bing, Alexa and other search engines algorithms.

Is Your SEO Strategy Working?

Often you will attract visitors by having your site found in internet searches. Your site’s visitor statistics is a good indicator as to whether your site’s SEO strategy is working. If your SEO strategy is working properly your chances of being found in an Internet search will be better.

SEO can be tricky to evaluate, as any changes that Google (or other search engine providers) search algorithms may affect your site’s traffic. As such, monitoring traffic on a regular basis may provide you with valuable insights in to whether your SEO is on target or not.

For more information about SEO in EverWeb, either follow our SEO for EverWeb Video Course or check out the chapter on SEO in the EverWeb User Manual. Additionally, you can also fine tune your SEO using EverWeb’s SEO Power Up Addon.

Keeping Your Visitors Interested: Initial Take Aways…

Keeping visitors interested in your site is a constant task that needs attending to. If you fail to do so, over time you will find that the number of visitors to your site will decline. In addition, you should also review at your SEO strategy on a regular basis to make sure that you are still in synch with search engine algorithms and that you are targeting your market audience properly.

In the next post we will be focusing on website design and content as ways to keep your visitors interested in your site. Hooking visitors to your site is key to retaining and growing your site’s traffic and your business!

A new maintenance release of EverWeb for Windows and macOS is now available. If you are currently running EverWeb 4.2, we recommend that you update your version to the new 4.2.1 version.

EverWeb 4.2.1 is a free update for both EverWeb + Hosting users and EverWeb Standalone users with active Support & Update plans. 

Which Version of EverWeb Is For You?

EverWeb 4.2.1 is available in the following versions:

• If you are running Microsoft Windows 10 or 11.
• If you are running an Intel Mac running macOS High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura or Sonoma.
• If you are running an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur or Sonoma. As EverWeb is a Universal Binary it will run natively without the need to use Rosetta 2.

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

Fixed and Improved In EverWeb 4.2.1

• [IMPROVED] Improved support for re-arranging FlexBox objects
• [IMPROVED] Better parsing of Vimeo link urls
• [IMPROVED] Removed the ‘Max Size’ for Shapes
• [FIXED] The Text Style name was not appearing in the Paragraph Styles dropdown menu. Fixed!
• [FIXED] The SEO suggestion for the number of keywords
• [FIXED] Issues with shadows for certain objects
• [FIXED] An issue with ‘Insert Fixed Scroll Position ‘
• [FIXED] An issue with Dividers on FireFox and on mobile devices

How To Update To EverWeb for Windows

You can easily update EverWeb for Windows by either:

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

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

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

How To Update To EverWeb for macOS

You can easily update EverWeb for macOS by either:

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

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

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

About Your EverWeb Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Information About EverWeb

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

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

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

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!

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

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

How A Membership Site Can Benefit Your Business

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

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

More About EverWeb Membership Sites…

You can easily find out more about EverWeb Membership Sites by

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once you have established your EverWeb website, you may start to think about the possible ways in which to expand its scope, possibilities and reach. For example, starting a blog, adding a storefront page or even monetizing your site through advertising on your website’s pages. In this post, we will take a look at whether you should be running advertisements in your EverWeb website. We begin with a question…

Is Advertising On My Site Going To Pay?

This is the first question you need to ask yourself. To answer this question you need to look at your site’s metrics. Is your website getting enough visitors to make placing advertisements on your site viable and profitable? Typically, website publishers get paid for placing advertisements by impressions and/or by advertisements being clicked upon by your visitors.

Two metrics are important to look at, the first is the amount of content that your website contains. You should only consider placing advertisements on your site if you have around 50 or more quality blog posts on your site. The second metric to look at is whether your site receives more than 100 organic visits to your site per day on average over a period of a few weeks.

If you meet the above criteria hosting advertisements on your site could be worthwhile. The next step is to look at the actual pros and cons of advertising on your site.

The Pros and Cons of Placing Ads on Your Site

Once you have decided that placing advertisements on your site is viable, you should then consider the pros and cons of placing advertisements on your site. Here is a fast summary…

Pros of Placing Advertisements on Your Website

• Advertisements can be monetized.
• Advertising can help fund your website.
• Advertisements are not limited to time slots.
• The Internet is a unique way to advertize and your site can be seen on all platforms.
• Advertisements run on your web pages 7×24.
• You can track the results of your advertisement placments.
• You can leverage your site’s existing SEO or build out your site’s SEO.
• You quickly see results, unlike SEO which can take time.

Cons of Placing Advertisements on Your Website

• You need to have enough good quality content (e.g at least 50-100 blog posts).
• You need to have enough hits on your site to make advertising viable (at least 100 per day).
• There are a lot of spammers offering ad placements.
• You might find that you are paying more for hosting advertisements than you earn from advertising.
• The time, effort and cost in maintaining and adjusting your advertising may make it prohibitive.

Choosing Your Advertising Partner

If you decide that placing ads on your website is still good to go, then you will probably be looking at Google as your provider. Most businesses go with Google as it is relatively easy to setup and work with. It is also a well known brand. Advertisers and website publishers also find it to be the most successful way of placing ads. Using Google also gives you the reassurance that you will not be working with a trusted parter and not a spammer or fraudulent business.

Google offers two products in this area: Google Ads and Google AdSense. Whilst the two products offer a lot that is the same as each other, there are differences as outlined below.

Google Ads versus Google AdSense – Which To Use?

First of all it is important to define what Google Ads and AdSense are…

Google Ads: You use this service if for advertisers who wants to promote their products and services on Google Search, YouTube, and other sites on the Internet.

AdSense: This product is for website publishers who want to earn money by placing ads on their website.

Whilst the two services Google Ads and AdSense have many similarities, you can see that they aim for two different audiences. As a website publisher, you would probably choose Google’s AdSense product.

Before You Start To Use Google AdSense

Before you start to use Google AdSense, make sure that you familiarize yourself with how it works and what the terms and conditions are for placing advertisements on your site. There are many things that you can and cannot do when placing an advertisement so make sure that you read up on it before starting to place advertisements on your pages.

Using Google AdSense on Your Website

When using Google’s AdSense you will use the following process:

• Make sure you have enough space on your pages to display advertisements: AdSense works by generating a code snippet that contains code that displays the advertiser’s advertisement.in EverWeb, you would add the HTML Snippet widget on to your page, then paste in thecae that y0u have copied to the clipboard from AdsSense into the ‘Code’ box. Press apply to finish. You would then move the advertisement displayed in the Editor Window to where you want it placed. ou will need to decide where you want to place the code.
• The advertisers’ bidding process: Advertisers bid in a real-time auction to be able to show their advertisements on a website publisher’s website. The advertiser with the highest bid will have their advertisements displayed on the website publisher’s website.
• The Website Publisher is Paid: Google manages and pays the website publisher directly for the advertisements placed.

Conclusion

Adding advertisements to your website can help you monitize your site, but there are caveats to doing so. Placing advertisements on your site may actually cost you rather than earn you money if your daily site traffic is low and if you do not already have good SEO practices and good content already in place. You should also make sure that you build out SEO for website so that it is as visible as possible to potential visitors. This in itself may be better, more efficient goal as it will get more visitors to your site. Playing advertisements that are only visible to a few visitors per day will not monitize your site, so build out your content on your site first, add SEO and see what effect this has on visits to your site over a few weeks. If all of that gives you confidence that you have the metrics you need to succeed with advertisements then why not give it a try.

EverWeb’s third party provider community continues to expand with the recent arrival of EverWeb Garden. This new third party provides additional widgets to supplement those that are built in to EverWeb already.

At launch, EverWeb Garden has about 60 widgets to choose from with more to follow. At the moment these widgets are free as they are in a limited time beta test period.

A Broad Choice of Widgets

EverWeb Garden not only has a large number of widgets ready at launch, but the widgets themselves are great for enhancing your website. The widgets have a modern design approach and are highly customizable to suit your needs and match the look and feel of your website. Below is a short summary of some of the categories and widgets that are available.

Media Themed Widgets

There are a host of media themed widgets available such as the Soundloud widget . This widget lets you copy a song’s URL from SoundCloud with the SoundCloud widget, and add options such as download, share and buy buttons as well as adding the song’s artwork.

The EventBrite widget allows you to sell tickets for events and lets your customers purchase from within your site.

Other media themed widgets include Video, YouTube and Flickr Galleries and customizable Plyr audio, video and Vimeo player widgets.

Widgets That Work With Data

If you have ever wanted a table, list, pricing grid or piechart in your web page, EverWeb Garden has you covered with widgets to meet these needs. There’s even a calendar widget too. Again these widgets offer easy and full customizations.

New Style Navigation and Notification Widgets

There are plenty of navigation themed widgets to suit almost all website needs including a fly-out menu, Hidden menu and fading navigation menus. If you want to catch your visitors attention, there are also popup notification widgets available.

Enhanced Design Widgets

If you want your site to really shine, there are new widgets that just do that by displaying images in cool new ways, a variety of sliders and there’s a tabs widget, tip cards and a lonely card widget to add extra pizzaz to your pages!

E-Commerce Widgets

If you have a PayPal account you have two E-Store widgets to enhance your product listings.

More About EverWeb Garden

EverWeb Garden at launch will feature different yearly Standard, Advanced and Pro plans. The Pro plan, for example, will include custom widget development, standard and premium widgets as well as an ‘early widget access’ and priority support.

If you download EverWeb Garden widgets during the beta test period, or purchase them directly once they are out of beta, remember that for any support on these widgets, please contact EverWeb Gardens directly.

So, sign up now for a wealth of free widgets before the beta test period ends, the clock is ticking!

EverWeb on Social Media

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

Facebook

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram