by Mitch Cohen  Webmaster

I had so much news to tell you, I had to add an entire new page on our website. Hopefully, there will be more and more news to add to this page in the coming months. My staff and I have been working on new features as we respond to our customer requests. First, I'm letting my customers know that I plan on talking as much as I can with you! I am back on the phones during the day, and  I enjoy hearing what customers are doing with SiteRightNow. It's also critical for our business for me to hear your feedback, so I know what we should be working on to improve our service and best serve your needs. SiteRightNow.com is in our 7th year on the web, and one of the reasons we have been successful is that we adapt to what our customers need. We never want to get so big that we can't keep contact with our customers and have the flexibility of changing quickly.

I will be talking about our new Calendar page style, our new Blog page style, our new Live Chat system!, a new Marketing Pro plan, a new Pixel style, new dynamic pull down menus and header...... well... I'm out of breath now just listing. I better start writing... see below.

(Editors note: After completing this long page of announcements, I thought it would be convenient to jump right to the section you would like to read. You can click on a link below. By the way, you can do the same thing on your web page by using the anchor tool in the text enhancer. Feel free to ask us for assistance, if you need guidance on how to use the anchor feature.)

Calendar Page Style
BLOG Page Style
Marketing Pro Plan
Page Setup Service. Let us Build it for You!
Live Chat
SiteRightNow works with the new PayPal Pro!
Dynamic Pull Down menus
Pixel Page Style

I have been working on updating our original Events page style for quite some time, and I have been researching different calendar systems. SiteRightNow has teamed up with localendar.com to bring you a great interactive calendar you can add to your pages. Localendar.com has been on the web since 2000 and specializes in helping publicize local events, hence the name localendar.com. Their calendar is also great as a general purpose web calendar that has many uses.  I am excited to be able to offer the calendar.  Churches, Synagogues, bands, organizations, businesses, and many others can take advantage of the new feature. It can even sync with your palm pilot, it can email you reminders! and so much more.

We fully integrated the calendar into our control panel. To use the new calendar system, just select the Calendar page style. You will now see the calendar style in your list. When you hit work on content, you will see an edit calendar button, that will put you right into the localendar.com editor. You can add your events and much more. Here is a list of some of the features.

• Add events (with email reminders!)
• Enhance your events with built in clipart
• Print Calendar feature
• Show Holidays automatically (USA, Christian and Jewish are currently available to turn on or off)
• Show local weather and astronomy information
• more

We are also excited to be able to include for our SiteRightNow
members localendar's premium service package, which adds a number of advanced features, such as:

• RSS feeds
• Palm Sync
• Outlook and Excel Import/Export
• Discussion Forum
• Public and Private events
• Merge or share calendars
• Option to allow visitors to enter events
• and more!

Here are a few examples from the localendar system:
St. Catherine
Discover 30A Events
Knights of Columbus
Scranton Children's Library

Over the last couple of years, BLOGs have become an important part of the Internet community. BLOG is short for Web Log. A BLOG is a place where you can write articles, discuss topics (such as politics, current events, your organization's policies, you name it). Most BLOGs are interactive so that visitors are allowed to reply with their own comments. Many times BLOGs are updated daily or more often to announce the latest news or opinions.

You will see a new BLOG page style in your list of available styles. We actually added the BLOG style a few months ago, but I was so busy working on new features, I never had a chance to tell people it was there. Many customers have found the new style on their own and are adding BLOGs to their websites. We decided to interface with Google's free BLOG service called Blogger.com. With the reliability of Google, we thought this would be a good BLOG service for our customers. When you click "work on content" on your BLOG pages, you will see a spot to sign-up for the free blogger.com account, and it will connect your new BLOG directly to your website. Our BLOG style also supports other blog services. You will find a box to type in the address of other blogs you may have created.

Show your Myspace or Friendster site on your SiteRightNow site or even Link to Custom Pages!
Sometimes when you create a new feature, you get a nice surprise!  We found out that the new BLOG page style could also be used for a number of other purposes that are very powerful.  You can also use the BLOG style to show your myspace.com site right on your SiteRightNow web page or open it up in a new window. You can do the same thing with Friendster or any other web page you would like to show. Just type in the address in the box we provide for other blogs. 

Also, if you have a programmer make a custom page for you and upload it to your website, you can put in the path to this custom page in the "other blog" box, and your website button will pull up your custom page!  If you need more explanation on what I just said, feel free to call me at 1-866-984-7800. We can also provide you with a free FTP account, if you want to design a custom page in your own software or have a programmer who is designing a page for you. The FTP account gives you the ability to copy the custom page to your website, and with the BLOG style, you can link directly to your custom page!  That's a very powerful extra feature that was a nice surprise that we discovered after experimenting with our new BLOG style.

June update: We added more features to the Marketing Pro Plan! See below for details or click on the button at the top of your control panel that looks like the one below!

Getting noticed on the Internet is a challenge that all on-line businesses face. Customers have been asking what else we might be able to do to help them get on the search engines and get more traffic.  I decided to have our company invest in software that enables us to provide a number of new marketing services. We are now offering the Marketing Pro Plan, which adds these features. New: We have completed development of a new "marketing power tools" feature you can access from your SiteRightNow control panel!  See below for details.

• Weekly auto submissions to 1000+ search engines and directories to help pickup your changes and help you work on improving your rankings. Includes Google, Yahoo, and more. Click here for the list of search engines and directories
• NEW 14 Marketing Power Tools with step by step instructions on how to use the information to work on getting your site noticed:
  
  • Get Yourself Listed (on Yahoo and Google Local Search and more)
  • Find the Right Keywords (2 tools)
  • Check Your Ranking (6 tools)
  • Help with Linking (2 tools)
  • Analyze Your Site (3 tools)
• Personal Site Reviews by our professional staff to offer a (once a month upon request)
• and more.

The Marketing Pro plan is $34.95 per month and includes all of the features in the Business Standard plan plus the additional marketing features. If you are interested in upgrading your plan, Click Here.  You can also upgrade by clicking the new Marketing Power Tools button you will see at the top of your control panel screen.

Webmaster note: I'm extremely excited with the installation of our new marketing power tools on the SiteRightNow control panel.  The 14 tools are packed with information you can use to narrow down which keywords to target, check out your competition, monitor your ranking, and much more. The information is only good if you can use it! That's why we were sure to include special instructions on each screen on what you can do with the information you find. At SiteRightNow.com, we are dedicated to helping our customers be successful. We want you to get the most from your website and do as well with your business as possible, and we believe our new marketing power tools and marketing pro package will help many customers.

One of our main company core values is that our customers should receive very responsive customer service. We have been known over the years for responding quickly. You won't get a complicated voice mail system when you call us on the phone. We also do not "outsource" our support to other countries. You'll speak directly to us when you call. I'm not sure about you, but I have been frustrated too many times over the last few years with calling hardware and software companies for help, so I pledge never to do that to our customers.

To make it even easier to contact us, we recently added a live chat feature. So far, customers have really enjoyed using it. Also, if our phone lines happen to be full, you can try the live chat and often you will get your question answered right away.

The picture next to the headline above is our live chat button. When we're on-line, it will say you can chat with us live. If we happen to be offline, the picture will change and say you can leave us a message. In general, our live chat hours are the same as our phone support hours.

The live chat has some powerful features that we can use to help you even better, including:

• Sending URL's to your screen.
  We can send a web page directly to your browser so you can see a FAQ page that we're talking about or another form you may need to see, such as an "authpro setup request" form.
• Co Browsing
  We're still experimenting with this feature, but with co browsing, we can work right along with you and help you fill out a form or watch you work in your control panel so we can see what might be causing the problem.
• Email transcripts of chat session
  You can receive an email transcript after your session, so you can refer to our help instructions again at a later time.
• Gives International customers a great way to contact us without having to call long distance.
• Phone Call Back (not yet implemented)
  This feature enables you to type in your phone number, and our system will call you back toll free pretty much anywhere in the world. This eliminates the need to call from overseas and works through an Internet phone system.

I hope you enjoy using the live chat system and it adds to our overall support, so we're here to help you when you need us.

PayPal, the popular payment service has recently added an enhanced plan called PayPal Website Payment Pro. As PayPal says on their website, this service is targeted to customers who want to...."get the features of an Internet merchant account and payment gateway, plus much more - at a lower cost".  It also gives customers a way to remove PayPal's standard check out screen. It also allows the merchant to enter credit cards over the phone. 

I'm very excited to announce that SiteRightNow is compatible with the new PayPal service.  One of our shopping cart options is the Mal's shopping cart (this is available on your shopping cart options screen). Mal's premium cart has full support for the new PayPal Pro service in the USA.  Also, Mal's just added PayPal Pro service in the UK as well.  We offer a free upgrade to Mal's premium cart for customers on our Business Standard Plan ($24.95 plan) and our Marketing Pro plan.

Also, PayPal recently purchased Verisign, who was one of the leading payment processors on the Internet. PayPal is also now offers the Verisign PayFlow payment services. Our Mal's cart option supports the Verisign PayFlow service as well.

I recently added a new type of interface that uses dynamic pull down menus. You will see a nice example of this on one of our customer's sites justright4girls.com. I think it offers a great new look, and it is compatible with all of the "sub page" levels in our control panel, so people can navigate through your site easily.

It's one of my priorities to a diverse set of new Interfaces for our customers in the coming months.  This is the first addition that I think many customers will like to use. It also includes a special header and footer area that can be shown on all your pages. I provide special boxes to insert Google AdSense code (for the many people who use the Google Adsense affiliate service) along with a place to insert your logo and other features.

To use the new pull down menus, you will see a new interface choice listed on the BUTTONS screen. In the long pull down menu, you will find the dynamic pull down menus listed. You will also find an Edit Header/Footer button lower down on the BUTTONS screen, so you can edit the new special header and footer area. Note that this special header and footer area is only used when you select the dynamic pull down menus.

Note: The dynamic pull downs currently have a problem with page names that uses apostrophes or quotation marks. If you want to use the dynamic pull downs, you can rename any page that uses these symbols.  I am working on a fix for this that should be released soon.

Update on 12/29/06

Text Enhancer Upgrade
We just completed an upgrade to our visual text enhancer code that incorporates all the latest updates for newer browsers and a number of other fixes. When pasting from Word you will notice a new dialog box that asks whether you wish to clean up before pasting. This saves time, if you are used to using the Paste From Word button.  Also, the anchor feature now detects anchors properly in the current text enhancer window, and there are a number of other improvements.

We will continue to update the text enhancer with the latest technology as advances are made.

More Graphics
You will notice a number of new graphics categories in our online library.  We are planning on adding many new categories in the weeks to come. You will also find a new request button at the end of our library list where you can send us a request for graphics you would like to see.