As you know, we're constantly update the Your Web Department platform. What you see below are features added just in the past few days.
Whether you're a business user or a designer utilizing YWD to create websites for your own clients, I think these may interest you:
(More) Social media bookmarking
The social media bookmarking options in YWD Designer are now even easier to use. Large icons for individual networks allow you to simply pick just the ones you want. New StumbleUpon, Tumblr and Digg buttons are now available and can be used in either a horizontal row of small icons at the bottom of the pages or as a floating vertical badge with counters (like the one you see right here on this page).
Pagination for blogs
If your blog contains lots of entries, YWD will now automatically include pagination numbers at the very bottom of the blog. They allow visitors to navigate through previous entries with ease. The default is to have 10 entries before the pagination numbers are displayed, but you can change that value for any blog by changing its properties in Tools / Blogs Manager / Blogs.
You can see an example of this new feature by scrolling all the way down this blog's Home page.
New blog option: displaying specific summaries
The Blog tool now lets you pick specific summaries (up to 50 words each) to be displayed on the blog list. The option is available through the blog content block. You can pick as many summaries as you want; use Cmnd/Ctrl-click (Mac/Windows respectively) to select more than one.
New display option for events list
If your website uses the Events Calendar tool and you chose to display the events as a simple list, you can now show the event titles below the date/time (as opposed to side-by-side). It applies only to a list of events placed on the Main column, since lists placed on either the Left or Right columns are automatically stacked, as well as tabular lists of evens broken down by month.
This option can be found in YWD Designer / Tools / Other tools / Events calendar.
Applying an autoformat to the News Manager tool
Any of the 5 available autoformats in YWD Designer / Autoformats can now be applied to the News Manager tool -- either to the whole news area or to each individual news item.
Cropping content that's too wide to fit
We know designers love to have control... so YWD Designer now includes an option that will automatically crop content -- images, tables, etc. -- placed in the main column. It can be found in Layout / Main column / Width & margins. New websites will be set to "Crop the content so it doesn't break the layout" by default, whereas existing websites will remain set to "Allow the content to overflow" (unless you change that, of course). There's also a third option that will automatically display a horizontal scrollbar in case the content is too wide to fit.
This feature can be useful for designers wishing to prevent large images uploaded from their clients from breaking the page layout. It is available for the Left and Right columns as well.
Compatibility with Android tablets
YWD websites already look great on iPads; they've now been optimized for display on Android tablets as well.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
I have a love/hate relationship with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click). It's something you should consider doing but it can be a bit of scam, also. Wait, we offer basic SEO services, is what we're doing a scam? No, first of all our service is designed to bring YWD clients up to the minimum standard for SEO. We don't do any of those fake site website things. We provide best business practices and some advice as to how you might take it further, but that's it.
Companies that do SEO/PPC for a living have their own agendas. They promise a lot. They have to or why would you go with a company that won't put you on top of the Google rankings or give you the best pay per click position? But I know a lot of companies who didn't get the results promised or implied. (If you're one of those companies, drop me a note and tell me about your experience). And it can really cost a ton of money to do this right. You can't do this on the cheap.
The thing about SEO and PPC is that it reminds me of that accounting trick whereby you insist on getting paid in 30 days but don't pay your own bills for 90. There are some serious advantages to this, that is until everyone is doing the same thing and then it becomes a level playing field once more.
This seems to be what is happening to SEO and PPC. Not everyone can be number one or on the first page of Google searches. Someone has to be second, third, fourth, etc. This means that there must be companies either not doing SEO at all or doing it very badly for the successful to succeed. And then if you reach such lofty heights you have to stay there. At some point all your energies will end up being spent maintaining your PPC gambling habit at the expense of looking out for your clients.
Another example is the stock market. For people to make money, someone has to lose money. Luckily, there are way more people making bad stock choices than good. And so it goes with SEO and PPC. Let's just hope everyone doesn't smarten up all at once or there won't be any SEO business left.
Finally, if an SEO company approaches you for your business, Google them- "SEO-your city" and see if they show up on the first page. If they don't, how are they going to help you?
My advice for good SEO, have great, relevant content. It's the cheapest option and it works just fine.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
This past week: I've taken the top 8 most clicked tweets from last week. Hootsuite conveniently arranges them in their quick reports. As always YWD focus is the SMB (Small Medium Business) with good tips and what not to do in the cyber world. The list below reflects that, including much talked about McDonald's faux pas on Twitter.
Funny -> McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories
I though it was funny, an honest mistake using hashtags. I think some people just took this story and made it bigger that what it was. Live and learn, even with careful planning things can go wrong, and McDonald to their defence handled it very well.
The new darling of SocialMedia, lots of fun check it out -> How to use Pinterest's pinboard for the Web
This was part of last week's roundup, but during the past week it has been the second most clicked link. It just shows the growing popularity of Pinterest. Brands are starting to use this new social network in very interesting ways. If your business deals with anything that is visual or can be represented visually join the hype; drop me an email and I'll send you an invite.
Into Link Building? A long and very comprehensive list -> Link Building Techniques – The Complete List
I'm sure you heard of link building applied to your SEO before. This is a complete list of all different methods to achieve this. Good to know even if you are not working on the SEO of your website, you will know what they are talking about.
Google+ gets 625,000 new users per day Are you still thinking about it? -> Your essential guide to Google Plus
There is some discussion as to the validity of this number, but one thing for sure it's growing. If you care about search ranking it is a must and most important it is a pretty good platform for sharing content.
Stats on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ Tumblr and Digg -> The SMB Social Media Cheat Sheet
Infographic, good data to have for quick reference.
A positive view on Google's new way of search -> Google Search Plus Is Shaking Things Up a Bit
Again a very popular tweet that made it into last week's roundup. I see this as great news, all that SEO and search ranking techniques of the past were a lot of guess work and most time just a lot of nothing. Now, as the content and website owner you have more control on the page rank for your website. Better yet, you can control your page rank for the right target audience.
Blogging or thinking of blogging? here are some good tips -> 6 Tips for Being A Good Blogger in 2012
Blogging is the best way to generate meaningful content for your audience, it creates traffic, adds credibility to your business and attracts the right people for your product.
We just revamped the social bookmarks manager in YWD -> 9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website
In an age of content sharing not having social bookmarks on the pages of your website is just counter productive. I'm sure there was some thought and effort to produce the text and imagery of your site. The best way to make sure everyone knows about it is through word of mouth; so why not make easier to the visitor to tell their friends? And as I mentioned on the tweet, this is easy to do in YWD take a look: Social media bookmarking and other widgets
Next Friday I'll have another round up, in the meantime you can follow me and YWD on the networks below:
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
Your business web address, Domain or URL is how your audience finds you in the internet. It not only drives traffic to your website, but is also responsible for getting emails to your own email account (provided you have an email account with your business domain, which you should. Why, well credibility for one reason but that is another post).
At YWD we complete domain transfer and registration for our clients as needed, and we can do it for you too. We make sure your website and email are accessible with your business web and email address.
We have found that many of our clients have a very limited understanding of how a domain name works, this quite understandable since it is very complicated. If you are one of those people who ever wonder what a DNS (Domain Name System), CName (Canonical Name record), ARecord and IP adresse is, this post is for you.
A web site address usually looks like this “www.yourwebdepartment.com” or sometimes looks like this “yourwebdepartment.com” (this bit is the domain proper) and some times you see it like this “blog.yourwebdepartment.com”; this is a subdomain. I know it seems strange, but www.yourwebdepartment.com is actually a subdomain of yourwebdepartment.com.
A while back the people managing the internet started using “www” in front of the domain name to differentiate websites from domains for emails, and things like discussion boards and newsgroups. After that it kind of stuck with everyone.
Getting back on topic, the domain name is what gets registered on the internet. Once registered a record of ownership (though you need to pay yearly to maintain it) is stored in a server, or more specifically on a collection of redundant servers. This record then points to the Name Servers and these servers have the DNS for your domain. The DNS is the most useful part of this, it has the location of your website and email on the internet.
So far we have the domain registered in one set of servers and the DNS on another set of servers. Usually the Domain and DNS are with the same registration company, these companies are called registrars. YWD is a registrar so is Godaddy, Network Solutions and EasyDNS.
What you can manage with a DNS
ARecord, this is where the domain name or yourwebdepartment.com points to and IP address (a set of numbers that computers can locate each other), you can also point a subname to an IP address as well.
CName, this is where the subdomains are created and they can only point to a domain or another subdomain (for the subdomain option it can also be of different domain as well).
MX Records, here is where the email address is set, and unlike the the other two above, the MX Record can use and IP number or a subdomain for the email server address. To learn more about email read my post: “Help, how do I set up my email?”.
Are you now an Domain name expert?
At YWD we have been setting up Domains for years, much of this is second nature to us, taking on this service to help our clients is easy for us. So how did we do explaining it? Did this help? Do you have more questions? I would love to hear what you think.
Gustavo Jabbaz started his digital career as a designer and then became a developer and these days spends most of his time as a digital marketer. A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for day-to-day operations, marketing and development strategy. He is who you talk to when you need support with SEO and/or Social Media. Gustavo Jabbaz on Google+ | Twitter
You can now have social media buttons appear on the mobile-optimized version of your website. In YWD Designer / Mobile devices / Smartphones / Banner & content you will find an option called "Social media buttons". If set to "Show", the network buttons you select in Social media & widgets / Social bookmarking will be displayed on people's phones.
Big buttons are used for the mobile, as they're easy to tap there, and without counters in order to speed up page download and save screen real estate. You can see an example of this new feature by visiting our own public website on your phone and scrolling down to the bottom of any page.
Please feel free to bookmark us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon or any other network of your choice!
Other social media options recently added
YWD Designer has a whole new section called Social media & widgets that allows visitors to share pages of your website much more easily. It contains the following sub-sections:
Social media bookmarking
All the social bookmarking options have been combined here in a simple, easy to use interface. You can either choose amongst several combo presets that include different combinations of buttons, or you pick just the specific social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) that you'd like to use. In both cases, you can decide whether the buttons should be laid out horizontally or as a vertical side badge (similar to the one the YWD Help website uses).
New buttons, reflecting popular networks like StumbleUpon and Tumblr have been included, as well as a "+" button from AddThis that allows people to choose from many dozens of other services.
The style of the buttons has also been updated; they look more modern and in tune to the current branding used by the various social networks.
Linked side badges
These are floating badges images that you can place on either side of the page and link to your own Facebook or Twitter pages. They can be used in conjunction with the social social bookmarking buttons, even if you've laid them out as a vertical badge (simply place the linked side badge in the opposite side).
Discussion groups
Allows you to place a Disqus forum at the bottom of every page. For instance, we use that feature in our Help to allow anyone to place comments on any page.
General purpose widgets
Other widgets such as a 'Top of page' arrow (useful in websites with long pages with lots of information), 'Printer friendly', etc. If you're using social media buttons and they're laid out horizontally, the general purpose widgets will appear on a separate row immediately underneath.
You can also add a general purpose floating side tab to the right side of your pages, similar to the "Try it for free" tab we have on YWD's public website.
Flavio Mester is a graphic designer as well as a systems analyst (in a distant life he was an architect). A founding partner of Your Web Department, he's responsible for the design and development of all the YWD website management platform interfaces. Flavio Mester on Google+ | Twitter | LinkedIn
What is a website? What is website design? There are two ways people approach website development, either they make the website design the hero or the content is the hero. While YWD is amazingly flexible we are much better suited to websites where businesses have figured out their unique selling proposition, have great, confident messaging and know what their websites to do for them. It's not that you can't do some neat tricks with YWD we just don't put a priority on them.
Websites that need to use every technical trick in the book are misguided. Have you ever seen a print ad that stops dead you in your tracks, that made you think or elicited a reaction from you? And my gosh there’s no interactivity, yet it captured your attention. No slidey, pop-up, animated thingy anywhere. The best thing you can do is make your website’s content compelling, create original material and then see where the whizzy stuff might enhance the message. Not the other way around.
Unfortunately, I still see many designs that completely ignore the practical user needs of the client and create what I call a portfolio site. Great for the designer's portfolio but not much use to the business owner. Why do so many website designs start with the widgets? Let’s be honest, many times it is the client's fault. They see a cool shadowbox trick and they want the same thing. That has nothing to do with strategy, but it takes a confident designer to say, “Hold on, let's figure out what your site needs to do first.”
Another analogy I like to use is that your website should be like an art gallery. An art gallery is just a bunch of rooms painted white with really good lighting. But if the paintings or sculptures are compelling then the gallery comes to life. Again, it's all about the content. And with Google incorporating Google+ into its search, content is becoming even more important.
Remember, if you have nothing to say and you're covering that pig up with lipstick... well, all you’ve got is a pig with lipstick on it.
Paul Chato has been many things: a graphic designer, programmer, comedian, head of network TV comedy, game producer, 3D animator, playwright, event host, director and anything else that matches his fancy. Most of the time he is a managing partner at Your Web Department and is most excited about LiveBuild™. Check out LiveBuild
At YWD we complete domain transfer and registration for our clients as needed, and we can do it for you too. We make sure your website and email are accessible with your business web and email address. 
You can now have social media buttons appear on the mobile-optimized version of your website. In YWD Designer / Mobile devices / Smartphones / Banner & content you will find an option called "Social media buttons". If set to "Show", the network buttons you select in Social media & widgets / Social bookmarking will be displayed on people's phones.
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