New Release! Just a few bug fixes.

This release contained a few bug fixes here and there.  Some of the fixes are backend efficiencies.  But here are a few things that you will notice.  Firstly in the image gallery.  We got a lot of complaints from people that the ordering of the images in the image gallery (in thumbnail mode) was confusing.  It used to be in a grid such that the next consecutive image came UNDER the previous image (kind of like chinese writing).  So, we’ve changed this to a left-to-right ordering so that the next image comes to the RIGHT of the previous image.  I think this is more intuitive for most people.

Also, another little fix was in the Image Wizard.  Once you give an image a name, you used to have a series of letters you could click, once you clicked that letter it would show all the images started with that letter.  This gets really cumersome when dealing with a lot of images.  So we’ve just put in a simple search box and list the images, 8 per page.  So if you want to find a particular image, just search for the name or the first part of the name (or even just the first letter, like it was before).  This will make finding images a lot easier.

Mnet 4.3.8 is Released! Full site search is introduced.

This release introduces a new feature which many of you will be very familiar with: Search. Search has become very important because of the massive volume of data people need to scan.  You may or may not have large amounts of data on your site.

One of the benefits of the Mnet system is that we try to make our system work for about 95% of peoples’ needs.  Your site may only have a few pages because you’re using the site as a marketing tool… you want to generate leads from the site (people call or email you for business).  But you might be one of the fewer people who has a site with large volumes of information such as a product catalog or blog.

If you are a ‘large data’ person, you may want to consider putting search to work on your site.  For the most part, all your pages will be saved by Google and so people can find what they want from there.  But if they are already on your site and don’t know the special search syntax to search only your site on Google, it helps to have a search box right on your site.

With this release you can now do just this.  Let us know if you’re interested in putting the search feature on your site.  As always, the feature is free.  We just want you to get the most out of your site and to remain a happy customer of Conlatus.  Send us a quick email and we’ll enable search for your site.

Also, keep in mind that the search copies (aka indexes) are built nightly.  So if you make a change to a page, that change will only be reflected in the search the following day.

Mnet 4.3.7 is Released! New Page Type for a simple list of items.

This release introduces a handy and versitile new Page Type called Item List.  The Item List page type is generic enough for you to add lists of whatever you want: products, services, stuff for sale, stuff for rent, a list of people… the posibilities are endless.  The Item List also has ecommerce capabilities.  So you can add a price to an item and it can be added to the shopping cart and purchased by site visitors using PayPal.

We wanted to create this for people who had a list of stuff they wanted to put on the site, but each item didn’t have a big description.  So this is for items that mostly just have a short description or maybe no description at all.  Each item can have multiple pictures associated with it, too.  And best of all, if you have a long list of items, we have a batch entry mode.  So you can export your list from a spreadsheet into a CSV format (where each field is separated by semi-colons) and upload all your items at once.

You can read more about the Item List Page Type in the Mnet Version 4 User’s Manual.

Mnet 4.3.6 is Released! New Page Type as well as SEO options.

We have introduced a new Page Type called Menu Page.  This page type will ease the process of creating a page which basically just links to a bunch of other pages.  Usually, you would want to create such a page as a sub-menu or means of categorizing your pages.  This Page Type makes the process really easy.

To use it, simply add a new page of type Menu Page (if you don’t see the Page Type drop down, let us know and we’ll enable it for your account, it’s disabled by default).  Now, you simply need to add a list of links to the page.  So click the Edit button and then click the “+ Add Item” link.  From there, you choose which page you want to link to, you can add a short text caption or description which appears under the link and also, you can choose a picture to be displayed from your image library.  Click “Add Page” and you’re done!  Repeat this for all the links you want and when you view the page you’ll see a nice grid of links with descriptions and pictures.

New SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Options - Page Title and Description

When you search on Google, you will be presented a list of results that looks like this:

The first line is the title of your page or site.  It’s really good to write a title for each page on your site.  The titles should not use promotional language (for example, “we’re #1…”) and should be concise.  You should include relevant keywords (but don’t over-use them).  Read more from Google themselves about how to write a good page title.

The next part is the snippet.  Usually, Google takes this from the actual text from your site.  But, sometimes (like when there isn’t enough text) it will use your site’s description.  So that is why it can be good to provide a site description.

We have added support to edit the title and description for each PAGE as well as set a default, site-wide title and description.  The default is only used when you don’t enter in a title and description for the page.  You can access the page specific title and description in the Page Manager, then click the “More” link next to the page you want.  The default title and description is available in the Settings area.

New SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Options - Primary Host Names

Imagine that you are Google.  When someone searches for something, your goal is to present them with a page of really great, relevant information.  You certainly don’t want to provide duplicate links to the same information.

This is why we have introduced Primary Host Names.  Say you have examplewidgets.com and examplegears.com.  If both domains are pointing at your Mnet site, then both can’t pull up the same exact content.  Google wouldn’t like that.  So, Mnet performs a “301 Redirect” to the primary domain.  But which is the primary?  Well either domain could be the primary.  Just let us know which you want to be primary and we’ll set it for you.

Mnet 4.3.5 is Released! Bug fixes and Password Protection for Pages!

This release introduces a new feature which allows you to protect pages with a password.  Before we added this feature we researched other programs and compared how they got the job done.  We were pretty disappointed.  To protect a page with a password you had to assign various permissions, user rolls, user groups, blah, blah, blah… We are committed to simplicity and are happy to say this this where Mnet shines.  To protect a page with a password, simply login, click the Pages button, click ‘More’ next to the page you want, and in the field for ‘Password’, simply enter your password.  Easy as that!  Note that all the sub-pages will also have the same password assigned when you click ‘Save’.

This feature is really useful for content that you want to keep private, or for only a certain bunch of people that you’ll email the password to.  For example, let’s say you have some special wholesale pricing that you don’t want the world to see, but you do want your customers to see.  Simply add a password to your wholesale pricing page and then email the password to your clients.  They will then be able to login and view the lower pricing, but no one else will.

Bug Fixes in This Release

Sometimes someone will try to rename the home page and then everything goes very wrong.  The page named ‘Home’ is a special page and must always be named ‘Home’ for Mnet to work properly.  In this release, you will now get an error message when you try to rename the page named ‘Home’.

Also, now and again someone will try to make a page a sub-page of itself, probably because they don’t really get the concept of pages and sub-pages.  If they do this, they will get the peculiar result of having the page disappear.  Well, not to worry, from now on, a error message will be given (using the clearest wording possible!) that will indicate that a page as a sub-page of itself just doesn’t make any sense!  Pages are organized like a hierarchy.  For example you could have ‘Power Tools’ as a page name and then the sub-pages of that page would be, ‘Drills’, ‘Sanders’, ‘Saws’.  See how they are like sub-types?  That is how pages and sub-pages work.  Now it should be clear why you can’t have something as a sub-type of itself!

Mnet 4.3.4 is Released! New Catalog Features and More!

We’ve added a handful of assorted options that have been frequently requested.  Firstly, you can toggle on/off the RSS link (you can see it to the right of this page, under the articles menu).  It’s best to leave it on, but if you want to put something else there, now you can using the Syndication Rich Text field for a Blog Page Type.  What is syndication?  It is a fancy word meaning that your blog postings will reach a wider audience (which is great for driving traffic at your site).  One of these syndication providers is FeedBurner.  You can signup for free and add your RSS link (the same one that is in under your articles menu on your blog… simply right click it and click ‘Copy Shortcut’ on Internet Explorer 7).  Once you add your link, FeedBurner will distribute your blog postings across their network to interested readers.  Also, it has a lot of other great features like "RSS to Email."  This will allow people to subscribe to your blog by email; whenever you add a blog posting, FeedBurner will automatically email all the people subscribed to your Blog.  You can try it by subscribing to this Blog (about Conlatus and webmarketing) by clicking the Subscribe by Email link on this page on the right under the articles menu.

Other Features Added

You can now choose to redirect a FormBuilder page to another page when it is submitted.  This will help you track lead conversions.  This basically means that a visitor who comes to your site has actually submitted your form and requested more information or wants to be contact and so they are now a potential client of yours, aka, a lead!  So you can create a "Thank you, we’ll get back to you shortly" page on your site, mark it as hidden, then set the Redirect Page.  Now, the only way to get to the "Thank you" page, is via the form submission.  So you can now easily see how many people submitted the form in your Statistics.

Finally, we’ve added options to allow more control over how your catalogs will appear.  Namely options to Show/Hide the right images column in item view mode.  Also, you can set the thumbnail size of images in the item list mode (previously, only small was allowed).  If you want to see the price under items in the list view mode, now you can toggle that on or off.  Finally, you can now put text above the item list in item list mode for each category.

Mnet 4.3.3 is Released!

Another quick release with a few improvements.  Most importantly, we have added something to the code of a webpage, if it has been marked as hidden from the Page Manager, that tells the search engines like Google to move along and to not index (or save a copy of) the page if it comes across it.  This will really allow the page to be invisible so that not even the search engines can pick up on your page if you mark it hidden.  This is useful for creating hidden content that you only want certain people to see.  You can create these pages, mark them hidden, then email the link to people.

Let’s say you create a hidden page named "Wholesale Pricing" from the Page Manager.  Let’s also say that your domain name is example.com.  If you wanted to email this hidden page to someone, the link that you would email would be:

http://www.example.com/Wholesale-Pricing.page

Notice the dash which replaces the space.  You must always put dashes where spaces were before.  Also, you need the http:// part and the .page at the end.

One other small feature is the addition of a setting for the Catalog Page Type.  You can now specify the size of the thumbnails for the images that are displayed in item list view mode (not just in the category view mode).  The sizes you can specify are Small (100×100), Medium (200×200) or Large (500×500).

Finally, a problem kept coming up where people would try to upload an image and it would be too big when they tried to put it on the page.  Basically, this problem should be easily avoided when you upload your image in the Image Manager and you check off the "Compress for Faster Downloading" option.  This will also resize you image to a maximum size of 700×700 pixels (maintains the aspect ratio of the image).  This size will be a good size for most computer monitor resolutions and web-browsers taking into consideration toolbars and scroll bars, etc.

Other improvements are behind the scenes stuff that will help Mnet run faster and be more responsive.  We will also be releasing another Layout, Honolulu, very soon.

Mnet 4.3.1 is Released!

A quick release to tackle a few bug fixes.  A few features were also added.  The two major features added were first RSS feeds for blogs.  All blogs now display an RSS link (like the one you see on this page).  The RSS link can be used with RSS readers (such as Google Reader) and will notify readers of new blog entries when they are published as public.  Also, you can now specify a background color to the article list column on Blog pages.  As for bug fixes, we upgraded the text editor used with Mnet and it seems that it broke the spellcheck feature that Firefox uses.  So we’ve enabled that again and now Firefox will once again underline misspelled words.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  It is basically a term used to mean that a website or blog will notify you when new information is ready instead of you having to go back and check for new stuff all the time.  RSS is used with an RSS Reader (such as Google Reader); people subscribe to your RSS feed using their reader and then they will be notified when you publish a new article.  These reader programs or services basically do the checking for you.  They periodically check to see if there is new information periodically (the timeframe is typically based on when the publisher indicates that they usually put out new content).  So RSS is really great for keeping in touch with all the news sites that you love.  It’s also a great way to get people to come to your website because you could use RSS to announce a new product or service that is available.

Mnet 4.3.2 is Released!

A quick bug-fix release.  There were two major problems.  Firstly, the link wizard lost its ability to open links in a new window.  This problem has been fixed.  Now, when links are built in the link wizard, they are correctly added to the page which open in a new window.  Also, there was a problem with deleting items from the catalog, when in the Item View for a catalog datasource.  The problem has been fixed and you can now delete items as required.

As for new stuff, we have a fresh layout called Ottawa.  Ottawa is a full page layout (aka liquid).  This means that it fills the whole screen.  So it will be good for Mnet sites with lots of content.  All your text and pictures will have a little more breathing room.  It will be especially good for large catalogs and blogs.  You can see a screenshot of the default settings of an Ottawa layout above.  It features a logo area (adjustable in size) then a  horizonal menu on the top row.  Next you will see a row containing the main content area and a background all around it with extra space on the left (perfect for a nice hi-resolution photo like the picture of the family seen here).  Finally, at the bottom you can add a Global Content area for a footer.

Mnet 4.3.0 is Released!

There are many new features in the 4.3.0 release.  This release focuses on e-commerce.  PayPal integration has been added in two places to make it a lot easier for you to collect payments for your products and services using your website.  The two places where PayPal payments have been integrated are the Catalog Datasource as well as the Form Builder Module.

The Catalog Datasource’s New E-commerce Capabilities

With the catalog, you can now add Price Points to items.  A price point is basically a price for a particular type of that item (like a particular model).  For example, you might have a basket of flowers for sale and then you could have two price points, one for with candles and one for without candles.  The one with candles would be priced at say, $25 and the one without candles would be priced at $20.

You can also add Item Options to a particular item, that must be chosen by the site visitor when they’re adding the item to the shopping cart.  Options are just simple parameters.  For example, you could add an option for Size and make the values Small, Medium and Large.  This way, the visitor must chose their size when they add that item to their cart.  You don’t have to add any Item Options if you don’t need them, of course.

The Form Builder’s New E-commerce Capabilities

The Form Builder now has a new field type called Payment Amount.  With Payment Amount, you can add a checkbox to your form that will basically indicate that a visitor can purchase that item while completing the form.  This is really useful for things like registration forms.  In the options of the form, you can also specify a Base Payment Amount, so that the Payment Amounts are add-ons to your product/service, in effect.

For example, let’s say you offer yoga classes and want people to register for your class on the website.  You can use the Form Builder Module to create a registration form and then add Payment Amount fields.  The pricing for your class is as follows:

• $100 for the 4 week class
• Add $50 for the advanced class
• Add $20 if they would like a yoga mat

To do this, simply set the Base Payment amount to $100 and then add two Payment Amount fields, one for the $50 advanced class and another for the $20 yoga mat.  How easy is that!

Other 4.3.0 Details

Besides these major feature enhancements, there were also several bug fixes in the 4.3.0 release.  Most important of these fixes are as follows.

• There was a problem using the Comic Sans font on all layouts; this has been resolved.
• Firefox 3 broke the Mnet Link Wizard; this issue has been resolved.