Did We Really Do All That? 2008 - Not a Bad Vintage

Walt — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:15:00 +0000

Wow, what a year it's been. When we sat down and looked back at what he had done this year we were quite surprised. So we thought we'd give you a summary of all the changes and improvements we made to SiteMaker during 2008, as we'd even forgotten about a few of them ourselves!

Here they are in the order they arrived. My haven't we been busy...

8 Feb 2008 - First Release of the Year!

Updating page URLs and bookmarking
Undo/redo (for moves and scales)
SEO improvements (page title changes)
Forum improvements

March 19 - New Showhome Sites

25 March - The One with the SEO Guide

New SEO guide added to the moonfruit.com portal
'Viewport' added to make sure the Editor is always available onscreen
Improvements to W3C compliance and some tidy up
Making Title tags more prominent in the HTML
'Show Homes' page and links added to moonfruit.com
Addition of 10 new templates
Improvements to multiple selection with changes to using the Control or Shift keys

28th March - Changes to the Way HTML is Generated

H1 tag - The first Title text box on a page is now rendered as an H1 tag
H3 tags - Text boxes with only bold text and less than 120 characters will be converted to an H3 tag
No more boxes around text - The HTML now ignores text box dimensions
New "View HTML Version" on the Page Settings panel

2 April 2008 - Bug Fixes and Site Updates

Blurry thumbnails for the pop-up gallery, slide show and image effects fixed
Editor (File Manager and other panels) no longer hides in the top-left corner
Users can now set up Google Analytics with the new tracking code - the 'ga.js' tracking code
New SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) guide added to the moonfruit.com site

1st May - The Big One

Domain name module

Register and manage domain names through Moonfruit.com (good prices!)
Free domain name vouchers bundled with SiteMaker Standard, Plus and Max accounts

New File manager!

Larger, clearer and easier to use interface
User folders - create folders and organise your files
Integrated multiple file uploader (no more Javascript popup window or Java applet)
Native support for PNGs & GIFs (including preserving transparency)
Rename files and folders
Multiple select, delete and move
Improvements to SEO (HTML) version of sites (viewable from Edit->Page Settings->View HTML version)
Nested navigation list now mimics the Flash Version
Better grouping of elements, preserving things like tabular layout and sidebars

AdSense revenue share for SiteMaker Free users

Users of SiteMakerFree can sign up with Google to share ad revenue generated by their site
For each click on a ad on your Free site, you get 50% of the money
So now you get a free site AND free money!

Other stuff:

New design templates
New backgrounds
We've added new PayPal currencies: CZK, DKK, HUF, NZD, NOK, PLN, SGD, SEK, CHF

08 July - Our Summer Release

Free email accounts on Moonfruit domain names

Up to 5 mailboxes can be set up on each domain name you order with Moonfruit (purchases & vouchers)
Mailboxes can be accessed via webmail or using POP3 or IMAP
Each mailbox can have an unlimited number of aliases, e.g. names that go to the same mailbox
Or you can set up email forwarding to another email address you already have e.g. gmail, hotmail etc
Free Google AdWords vouchers for every subscriber
Get up to £50 pounds worth of Google AdWords vouchers with your subscription
Use the AdWords voucher to pay for ads on Google to direct traffic to your site
See www.moonfruit.com/adwords.html for details

Improved alternative HTML version (how the search engines see your site)

The HTML alternative for your site is now much prettier and better organised
Go to ('Edit' ->) 'View' -> 'HTML version' in the SiteMaker toolbar to see your HTML pages and navigate through them
You can then 'View source' on each of these pages to see your keywords and other meta data in the HTML

Advanced form improvements

You can now add a file upload field to your form so users can submit files
Files are uploaded to a specific folder of your choice in the file manager

15 September - The One with Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking widgets allow visitors to quickly bookmark the site to services like Digg, De.licio.us, and facebook - see the 'social bookmarking' folder in the File Manger to add one
Domain transfers - customers can now transfer domain names to moonfruit.com for use with their SiteMaker site and to benefit from the free webmail
New fonts - 20 new fonts added to the graphic fonts selection to enable further customisation of your site
The Comments widget now provides 'pages' so that the widget is more responsive when it contains lots of comments
Thumbnail images are now larger (144 x144px, up from 100 x100px) - which should improve quality on screen

13 October - Preferred Site Address

Addition of the preferred site address allowing choice of one domain name to take priority

20 October - The Small One

.co.uk transfers available

11 November - Moonfruit Resellers - a case study

Improvements to the reseller products
Now even easier to become a Moonfruit/SiteMaker reseller

18 December - Christmas present

Google maps integration
Add a Google map interface to your site so customers can find you!

So the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that despite releasing a lot of stuff this year, we released more in the first 9 months than we did in the last 3. Never fear, this is not a sign of things to come, nor related to the credit crunch (feature crunch?) , but simply a result of the things we've been working on.

As you will remember we've been promising improvements to the membership and e-Commerce features for some time. Work on both these areas has started and been ongoing for a number of months, but due to the size and complexity of these projects it has and is taking us quite some time to get them ready for you. Like everything in SiteMaker we want to make them powerful and easy, which are usually in opposition to each other as objective!

But bear with us, membership improvements will come in early 2009 as a platform for e-Commerce changes due early Q2.

The SiteMaker Team would like to take the opportunity to thank all our customers for their continued support and wish you a fantastic 2009!

Moonfruit Resellers - a case study

Joe — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:03:00 +0000

More and more people are making a living out of Moonfruit as professional web designers. Once people discover how easy it is to do, they realise that they can do it, not just for themselves, but for others also. And they can make money ;-). So we thought we'd give you a bit more information on what life is like as a Moonfruit Reseller.

Alistair at SDDesigns joined Moonfruit in June 2006 and has been designing sites ever since with clients in the UK, US and Portugal. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us...

1. What is your business called and how did you get started?

I actually started web designing as a hobby, my first website was for a very good friend who became a client: www.councillorcreswell.co.uk. As time went on more and more people asked me to design for them, so I started my own small business.

SDDesigns originally started as scrappydoodesigns but as I progressed I realised the name, although catchy, was not really doing my profile any good and I rebranded.

SDDesigns now has clients in the UK, New York and Portugal. I design commercial and political websites, with the newest one being www.kenthouseinc.com

2. What was the challenge you faced in your business that led you to use Moonfruit SiteMaker?

My first ever websites was designed on Microsoft Front Page, but it wasn't flexible and I found myself getting frustrated as I knew how I wanted it to look but couldn't get it right. So I surfed the net and tried several products then came across a new product “Moonfruit”. It was so easy to use that I have used it ever since.

3. Why did you pick Moonfruit over other reseller options?

I picked moonfruit because the look was right, the features and the programming where already done for me. I liked the way I could instantly change something when a client was online, and if you got in trouble, help was only an email away.

4. How has Moonfruit allowed you to achieve your business goals?

Moonfruit has allowed me to achieve a better understanding of the internet, ease in my business and most of all allowed me to enjoy my job.

5. How successful has your business with Moonfruit been?

My business owes its success to Moonfruit, as it has allowed me to achieve the look that my clients require.

6. What advice would you have for someone thinking about setting up a Moonfruit Reseller business?

If you are thinking of setting up a reseller, just do it, you have nothing really to loose. Be honest with your clients at all times, say what you can do, and most of all enjoy doing it. If you don't enjoy designing then it will show.

So there you have it. You could be making a tidy living from Moonfruit. And some of you probably are ;-).

Reseller packs are different from our standard packs that you see on moonfruit.com as those packs are designed for personal and not commercial use. We tend to make the distinction that if you're receiving money to build a website you should really be using one of our Reseller packs. Reseller packs have higher disk and bandwidth limits, plus more free domain names. If you're interested in becoming a reseller, then please contact us. Other types of partnership are also available, see our partners page for details.

Moonfruit Lounge - Resellers

Did We Really Do All That? 2008 - Not a Bad Vintage

Moonfruit Resellers - a case study