Website Support Blog

Dashboard Updated With Friendlier Interface

The Dashboard has been redesigned with a cleaner, more useful interface. The major changes are:

• Your orders appear at the top and only show when you have new orders.*
  
  
• The HitsLink Site Stats shows a line graph of your total visitors and page views instead of a global map.
  
  
• At the top right, you will see updates from this blog so you'll always know what's happening with your site.
  
  
• We've also put in some helpful links to third party services that we recommend at the bottom.

*New orders appear when your store is enabled, the order was inserted today and the order had not been deleted or refunded.

Here's what the new Dashboard looks like:

If you have problems seeing the new Dashboard, please delete your cache (the cache stores a memorized version of your page, so by deleting it, it forces the page to be refreshed). Here are instructions on how to do this for each browser:

• Chrome
• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Firefox

New Feature: Archive of Your Past Template Designs

We've created a new feature so that you can easily go back to an old saved version of your design. This will allow you to go back to a design from many days ago or to undo up to the last 10 saves of your design. Here's how to use it:

1. Go to 'Design' -> 'Previous Versions.'





2. Click on the 'Use This Design' button beside the template you wish to use. Note that any text you added to your header will not appear, you would have to recreate just that part of your design.
   
   
   
   

How It Works

• As soon as you change the design, the last version will be at the top of your archives.
• You can click on the preview image of the design to view a larger version.
• Placing your pointer by the archived time will show you the exact date and time when this version was saved.
• The last 10 saved versions of your design will show no matter if they're all on one day or several days.
• For anything older than the last 10 saved versions of your design, you'll have the last design saved on each previous day.
• The maximum number of saved designs at any given time is 20. The 10 latest changes plus 10 designs from previous days.
• Once a design does not appear on your archives, it cannot be retrieved.

No Billing Phone Support Jan. 23-25

Billing phone support will be closed January 23rd to 25th, 2013 due to a company retreat/workshop. Please note that you can still get help like usual through online support by clicking the "SUPPORT" button at the top right when you're logged in.

Billing phone support will be back to it s normal hours Monday to Friday 9:00 to 5:00 Pacific Standard Time on January 28th.

New Feature: Spam Filter Improvements

Getting unwanted messages on your Guest Book and Message Board pages can be down right frustrating, so we've made some improvements to help you manage and get rid of all that spam.

Currently, both layouts already include a captcha -- an image with text in that any poster has to correctly enter for their message to show. Now, in addition to this, we have added:

• an automated spam checker that will hide comments that look like spam and after 14 days delete them,
• the ability to mark or unmark posts as spam,
• the ability for the spam checker to learn what is and is not spam based on what you mark/unmark as spam.

You can easily view posts marked as spam by going to your Guest Book or Message Board pages. Items marked as spam will show greyed out to you as a logged in administrator. To mark or unmark items as spam, checkmark the item and then click the "Mark as Spam" or "Not Spam" buttons at the top.

Alternatively, you can view all your spam in one place by clicking "Edit Page" on your Guest Book or Message Board page and then "Spam Management." Again, you can unmark spam. You also have the option to sort items by clicking on "USER" or "INSERTED" at the top.

On the Message Board page, note that if all messages in a topic are marked as spam, the topic no longer appears to your visitors. However, if any post in that topic is unmarked as spam, the topic will show again.

It's highly recommended that you take the time to mark and unmark spam. Remember, over time, this will help the spam checker to learn better what you want to keep and what you want removed.

Billing and Support Holiday Hours

Due to a company event, the billing phone line will be closed from noon (Pacific Standard Time) until closing on December 13th.  Billing phones will be back on December 14th. The billing call center will also be closed December 22nd to January 1st.

For all the above closures, you are welcome to send billing and support inquiries to our online support team via the "SUPPORT" link at the top of your site. Online support will be open regular hours 9:00 am to 4:30 pm with the exception of December 25th, when our office will be closed.

We wish everyone a very happy holiday!

New Feature: Customizable Web Addresses and Meta Tags for Product Pages

We're excited to announce 2 new features that will help with your search engine ranking.

Customizable Web Addresses for Product Pages

First, you can now customize the web address of each individual product page on the catalog layout. Here's how it works:

1. Go to any of your catalog pages and then click "Edit Page" -> "Edit Products."

2. Click the "Edit" button by any product. You'll then see a new text box called "Page URL."

3. Enter the web address extension you would like for your product and save. In this example, I inputted "hello_kitty_cosmetic_bag."

The end result is the page will show web address:

Not only will your web addresses for your product pages look better, but putting keywords that describe your product will help improve your search engine ranking.

Meta Tags for Product Pages

You can also now add a title tag, meta description and meta keywords to your individual product pages.  Here's how it works:

1. Go to any of your catalog pages and then click "Edit Page" -> "Properties."

2. A window pops up. In the field beside "Edit," you can click on the down arrow to show a drop down menu listing all your products in alphabetical order for that catalog page. Click on the one you would like to edit.

3. Enter in your text for HTML Title Tag, Meta Keywords and Meta Description. Then, save the page.

For most search engines, the title tag is what will show as the highlighted link text and then below that will show your meta description. It's a good idea to put in some of your keywords (words that would help bring up your page when searched in a search engine) in both of these, but don't overload them or it becomes difficult for potential visitors to quickly see what your page is about -- i.e. they might not click on your link.  Instead, you can load lots of keywords into your meta keywords. For your keywords, input phrases that someone might type in a search engine to find your page. Separate each one with a comma.

Here's how the example above would typically look on a search engine listing:

New Feature: Hiding Your Product Prices

We have created an option so you can hide the prices of individual products or entire catalogs by checking off a box. Note that after a product is put into a shopping cart, the price shows in your cart.

This new features was created for our customers in the trades such as flooring who are required not to show prices until their customers have clearly shown they have an intention to purchase. This is how a typical catalog page would look with the prices hidden:

This is how an individual item looks with its price hidden:

Here's how the new option works.

Hiding the Prices of All Products in a Catalog

1. Go to your catalog page and click "Edit Page." Then, click "Catalog Settings" on the left.
2. Under "Pricing Display," select "Hide Pricing" and save the page. By default, prices always show for a catalog.

Hiding the Price of an Individual Product

1. Go to the editing page of your product.
2. By "Price Visibility," select "Hide Price" from the drop down menu. By default, all prices will show or hide based on what you chose for your catalog.

Changes to Message Boards to Reduce Spam

Effective immediately, messages posted on the message board layout pages will be limited to 4096 characters. This will greatly reduce the amount of spam (i.e. unwanted messages) that is getting posted. From our research, we've found that more than 99.99% of messages that are over 4096 characters are spam.

Spam takes away from your visitors' experience on your message boards and makes pages slower to load. It's also a burden on moderators to continually have to remove the posts. We've had many requests to help customers find ways to fight spam and felt this was the best option. Note that if a visitor does try to submit a message that's over the maximum allowed, they will see a notice to shorten their message.

Any old posts that are over 4096 characters are also going to be removed over the next few weeks in batches. We apologize if this affects any legitimate messages. Since over 99.99% of messages are spam, it was decided that the benefits outweighed the unfortunate loss of a small number of legitimate messages. There are hundreds of thousands of messages that are going to be deleted.

If you are aware of longer messages in your discussion boards you would like to keep, we encourage you to copy and paste them else where and/or repost them in parts.

Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and eBay Integrations to Close

On August 7, 2012, we’ll no longer be providing integrations with Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com and eBay as not many customers are using these features. Note that you can still go directly to any of the services to post products.

Our goal has always been to provide the services that best help our customers and to do this, we often have to make difficult decisions. All three integrations require a large amount of changes to bring their software up to date as well as regular software updates thereafter. Also, anytime we would like to add or improve a feature that is related to the shopping cart, inventory, catalog layout pages, shipping options, etc., we have to make sure it integrates with the 3 services. This effectively takes programming time away from other projects that are more requested.

We apologize to those of you who like to use the integrations, but we are excited about the new features and improvements we’ll be able to accomplish with the time we’ll have available.

Here are some instructions on how to list your products on your own with Shopping.com, Shopzilla or eBay:

• Shopping.com
• Shopzilla 
• eBay

New Feature: 15 New Web Page Layouts with Columns

Have you ever wished you could have a 3 or even a 4 column layout? Or, maybe put a Google ad on the right side of your page?

We're happy to announce 15 brand new layouts that give you loads of flexibility in how you can format your page without having to insert a table.

To access these new layouts, add a new page or edit an old "Web Page" layout page. Then, click on "Change Layout" on the left side.

You will then see a total of 26 layout options. The new ones are circled below.

For the new layouts, you can select how wide each column is by dragging a slider that appears at the top. Simply drag the squares to change the percentage distribution of your columns. The total always adds up to 100%. The minimum column width is 5%.

 

Below that, you can select how much column padding -- i.e. spacing between columns -- you would like. The range is from 1 to 30 pixels.

When inputting your content, a snapshot to the left of each text box will show you which area of the page you're editing.

Common Questions Answered:

Q:  Will I lose my content if I change from a layout with 4 sections down to 3 sections?

No, but the information in the 4th section won't show.  However, if you change to a layout with at least 4 sections again, all your content will reappear. This is what happens anytime you change to a layout with less sections than before.

Q:  How come my image/video/table is overlapping onto another column?

If you insert an image, video or table that's wider than the column width percent you chose, it will appear behind the content of the next column over. The only exception is if the image is at the edge of your template design, it will just be cut off.  You can adjust your image, video or table width to fix the problem.

Here are some ideas of what you can do with the new layouts: