Moonfruit Lounge - Twitter

Final creative prize for a Macbook Pro

Joe — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:46:00 +0100

Thank you all for making this competition so special. The creative entries have really blown us away and we'll be continuing to pick through them all, post up the best and create a gallery to pay our respects for all those who have entered. (And maybe a few discretionary prizes too ending Friday 10th July 3pm BST).

But we thought we'd end this crazy Twitter promotion with one more Macbook Pro prize. And this will go to the creator of the best website on Moonfruit.com. Anyone can enter from new or old customers, friends or foes, and you certainly don't have to enter if you don't want to ;-).

The website contest will run until 17th July (next Friday 3pm BST) at which point we'll pick and announce the winner.

Judging a website is going to be tricky, so when you enter your website we want you to tell us why it's special or innovative and why you think it should win. All entries should be as comments on this blog and we'll pick the winner from there. We'll pick the site that is most true to its stated objective and inspires us as a great example of what a website can do. Build it about something you're passionate about and are interested in.

Thanks again for all your support and may the Fruit be with you. Always.

Rules

Create a website on www.moonfruit.com
Post it on this blog with your reasons for why it should be picked
One website entry per person (and one post please!)
Winner will be posted to this blog on 17th July at 3pm BST (GMT+1)
Good luck!

Real people get creative with #moonfruit

Joe — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:24:00 +0100

Well we never expected this! Songs, pictures, stories - all about Moonfruit. This crazy thing is getting out of control! We love the things you're doing. You guys have turned this Twitter campaign into a Creative Moonfruit Movement.

NB: Will add as fast as we can. We are using the searches below and a database of tweets to look at entries. Please add to this blog if you think your entries are missing. Thankyou!

Creative responses on YouTube
Creative responses on Flickr
Our 'Thank You' compilation of responses

Here's selection of some we've picked up, sorry we haven't got to everyone yet there are so many:

@sutuma http://bit.ly/Z6IoR (first winner)

@tear96 http://bit.ly/19snmq (2nd winner)

@chadwelch http://bit.ly/w73zF (3rd winner)

@bramketting #Moonfruit didn't comply to my demands so I set the bird free: http://pic.gd/de8f5 It's over: http://bit.ly/1VxxCh (4th winner)

@Felorah http://bit.ly/tKZVX (robot cartoon animation)

@awessendorf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vckPscOt7Y (cartoon song)

@usebombs http://twitpic.com/9695y (Moonfruit picture quiz)

@topitzman http://bit.ly/krfq6 cool Moonfruit song

@pauldz http://twitpic.com/947yr (moonfruit comic strip)

@ChosenPredator http://bit.ly/VqI8O (moonfruit puppet story)

@sloorp http://bit.ly/143TzF (moonfruit animated story)

@MasterWayne http://twitpic.com/975wm (mathematical fruit)

@eagleascent http://bit.ly/ir3UE (US kid talks to himself)

@pauldz http://bit.ly/UqJSF (picture story)

@fabulouscess http://bit.ly/U1XMa (two sisters singing)

@JorjLim http://bit.ly/17mJNI (so bad it's great)

@aurelienlewin http://twitpic.com/94r44 (radio active moonfruit)

@tgundred http://twitpic.com/991n9 (apple moonfruit)

@kelsiwaslike http://twitpic.com/992ja (another apple moonfruit)

@mayasud http://twitpic.com/994c4 (nice picture nursery rhyme)

@essexgourmet http://twitpic.com/9dzms

@rockstarsharks http://bit.ly/bc4uT (video shows real dedication!)

@lintster http://twitpic.com/9p1sp (cute illustration]

@yashiyama http://twitpic.com/9ff4q (adorable!)

And there's more to come. If you've seen some that you think are great post them here too. Enjoy!

Celebrate 10 years of Moonfruit and win a MacBook Pro

Joe — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:47:00 +0100

To celebrate Moonfruit's 10th birthday we are giving away 10 new Macbook Pro's, one each day for 10 days! If you've never seen one of these in real life, they are just as svelte and beautifully crafted as they look in the pictures, we can't keep our hands off them! (I'm using on now, but not one of the competition ones obviously ;-) )

Check the full details of the competition at http://www.moonfruit.com/macbook-pro.html and follow us @moontweet to find out who the winners are each day.

We wouldn't be here today without all you wonderful people building websites with us and allowing us to support you in your online adventures. So a special thanks to the 2m+ of you who've built a site with us!

Happy tweeting!

Why are members good for growing my site?

Joe — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:43:00 +0100

Members are people that have a relationship with your site, including their own login. They are users who have taken the step from being a visitor to signing up and creating their own account with you. Members can be advocates of your site and your services, along with helping you grow your site by telling other people about you (although they can also be detractors, so make sure you treat them nice!).

Your challenge is turning members into advocates. Members need to feel special and valued, so there should be good reasons why joining your site creates additional benefits for them. This might be access to members-only pages containing unique content, editing privileges allowing members to edit part of your site or being able to join in on certain discussions. It might be regular newsletters that offer them interesting or useful information on the same subject as your site.

To turn members into advocates you need to excite them and arm them with useful information. For most websites that do this well it will be about their content or services. If your site can offer them something they cannot get elsewhere, they will tell others about it. Remember you cannot force people to be advocates and trying too hard may annoy or alienate your members.

The simple rules are:

Focus on content and give your members things that they cannot get elsewhere
Make sure there is something extra for members, e.g. members-only content, discounts or communities
Communicate with your members via newsletters, Facebook/Twitter, etc.
Listen to them and give them a forum for their feedback. This helps them feel valued.

Some Moonfruit sites have already created large and successful membership bases, which support their site and business. Check out some of these.

http://extraicingonthecake.com/
1800+ members

http://extremekidrock.moonfruit.com
6500+ members

http://whitleybridge.moonfruit.com/
800+ members

http://simsgogogo.moonfruit.com/
2000+ members

New release - 18 May 2009 - Membership and more

Joe — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:00:00 +0100

Want to know how to grow your website with more members and advocates? How to interact, manage and develop a better relationship with your visitors? Want to create members-only/client-only pages or sections? Want to post information or updates from your website to Facebook/Twitter? Build a collaborative website with edit rights for different people?

Well then, the membership release is what you've been waiting for! After many months of development it has finally arrived, jam packed with new features and a lot of improvement. Read on for more detail...

This release sees a whole new membership section with a number of improvements to make it easier for site owners to attract, manage and communicate with their members. In particular, the main areas of improvement are: a) to make it easier to invite members to join; b) to ensure members become members of the site only and no longer have to create a SiteMaker account; c) to replace 'SiteMaker' branding in the join process with the site owner's own look and feel; d) to allow site owners to create site administrators; e) to make managing page permissions easier; and finally, f) to enable integration with some Facebook and Twitter services.

More detail on these features is provided below. While there are over 100 new FAQs in the Help section covering the various new features, we will aslo be publishing some specific articles over the coming weeks. These will highlight more of what's new, what's improved and how you can make the most of it.

Getting new members

It's now possible to invite new members using your Windows Live or Gmail address books. Alternatively, you can also just copy and paste a list of emails addresses if you want to transfer them from an offline address book. The content of the invite email can also be customised by you. As a site owner, it is now possible to create a member yourself, while in edit mode. Previously, the site owner would have to ask the new member to come to his or her site and create an account before being able to assign any access/edit rights.

Site Level Membership

Previously visitors to a Moonfruit site who wanted to join as a member were required to complete a two-stage sign up process: firstly, they had to create a SiteMaker account; secondly, they then had to join the site. Now, all new sites will be built with Site Level Membership, which means that visitors join the site in a one step process. It also means that the members are free to choose a username that is unique to that site alone. Previously, usernames had to be unique across all usernames for all members of the sites built by the partner.

Sites built before the launch will be able to upgrade their site to site level membership, therefore getting access to all the new features provided under site level membership. However, this is not mandatory and in fact some sites use the Moonfruit wide membership so that they can run a number of sites with shared logins.

The join up process now involves setting up a join page which contains a new customisable login/join widget where the site owner can create a branded experience explaining the benefits of joining their site. Previously, the join process took place in a SiteMaker editor style popup window Emails from the site now refer to the site's name and come from the site email address. Previously, some account emails were from the SiteMaker Team and mentioned SiteMaker.

Site Admin

A new role of Site Administrator has been created. A site admin has access to all the toolbar functions, but any information regarding the site owner, such as billing details, are not accessible. This feature is particularly useful for website resellers.

Managing members and page permissions

It is now possible to set up permissions for multiple pages at once. The interface on the settings panel has been improved to make it much simpler to understand what permissions have been given to individual members as well as each group.

You can now create groups and drag and drop members into those groups from a single panel. Site owners can now view and update members’ email addresses and send them an email that allows the member to reset their password (as long as the site is using site level membership)

Integration with Facebook and Twitter

It is now possible to allow visitors to become a member of your site using their Facebook login credentials, therefore making it easier for users to register as they won't have to create another username and password.

You can also link your site with your Facebook account enabling you to post notes and updates on your wall about your website so that your friend network on Facebook can hear about your site or be updated with any changes.

It is also possible to send updates to an associated Twitter account to communicate with your twitter followers about your site.

NB. If you have your own domain name you'll have to get a Facebook Application key to use the Facebook features. You can do this in the new 'People' section on the 'Settings' tab and we'll talk you through the process. It's quite simple.

And that as they say is that. It's taken a while for us to get our heads around it all, but we're sure you'll get to grips with it much faster. Let us know what you think and we hope you enjoy the new tools!

HTML widget - what have you found?

Joe — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:40:00 +0000

So, it's been a month or so since we released the alpha (early testing) version of the HTML widget. We've had nearly 250 people download and try out the widget in our website builder from our site labs.moonfruit.com, so we know you've been using it. But the thing we want to know is what have you been using it for?

We're working away on getting the widget ready for a beta release (slightly more robust), which we will distribute more widely. And once we've done that we can start to produce specific versions for the things you want to use it for.

But firstly and update on the bugs. You might remember that currently the HTML widget only works correctly if you view the site using Internet Explorer 6 or above, with Flash Player 10. So for Firefox users, it displays the HTML content below the site so they can still see it, but its not ideal.

We've had some exciting news from Firefox that the bug that prevents the HTML widget correctly displaying in your site for Firefox users will be fixed in the 3.1 release of the browser, due sometime in the next couple of months (hopefully). This is great, as this bug was something we couldn't fix ourselves.

The main bug that we're looking at on our side is why some HTML snippets don't load correctly, which seems to be mainly those that use external JavaScript files in the HTML, e.g. Google AdSense or any Google Gadgets widget. Hopefully we'll be able to fix that too and open the net wider.

Once the HTML widget is fully robust we hope to be able to offer many different pre-configured flavours of it. There will always be the generic 'paste in any HTML' widget, but we'll also do some that are focused on particular services. For example a Youtube multi-video player (http://www.youtube.com/custom_player), or a twitter widget (http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/twidget). Both of these work with the current HTML alpha widget.

So which ones have you found that you like? Which HTML widgets do you think we should make available as pre-configured choices? Let us know and we'll add them to the list. Can you add a link to the widget you are using so we can see it?

As our customers you have the best idea about the things you really want to use yourselves, so if we can add them we will. Thanks for your help.