RunYourWebsite Website Builder: The easiest way to build, design and manage a great website

Announcing our Sites For Good program

2010-06-02T13:39:07Z

Inspired by Tom's Shoes program where for every pair of shoes purchased they give one pair to a child in need, today we are happy to announce our Sites For Good program.

For every normal user we have building their website with our RunYourWebsite.com system, we will be giving away a free website on our system to any individual or group trying to make their community or our world a better place.

These donated websites will be our full featured Professional package including all features and the same great dedicated support our paying users receive, and will include domain registration and annual renewal at our expense.

This is a program we have been running unofficially for some time, but it is now officially part of our business and is available for anyone. We will be providing some more details on the guidelines and more in the coming days, but in the meantime anybody can sign up for a 30 day trial and let us know that they are interested in having their site provided by our Sites For Good program.

So if you know anyone who is working to make the world a better place and could use our great website builder service for FREE, let them know. We are making this retroactive to count all of our current users, so we have website to give away immediately, and we will keep adding them as our regular user base grows.

Control Panel Overhaul!

2010-02-05T15:19:53Z

RunYourWebsite.com is very pleased to announce a major control panel revision which we just launched.

New Organization

The control panel is now organized around the main things you will do rather than how you do them. This means that in addition to our Design tab, we now have a Content tab and a Marketing tab.

Content Tab

The Content tab replaces both My Web Pages and the Cube Modules tab, and shows you all of your content in one place regardless of what kind of content it is. You can add new content to your site here, either selecting one of our advanced modules (Blog, Store, etc.) or by creating a new editable page which you can now build in seconds with our Page Wizard templates rather than having to start from scratch each time. Also, when editing a page manually, we have upgraded our editor significantly, and moved the toolbar to the top so you can see your page as it will look while editing.

Marketing Tab

The Marketing tab puts all of our existing marketing features like your Contact Manager and Website Reports together with some great new features, most noticeably our Newsletter feature. This great new tool allows you to send out HTML email newsletters to people who subscribe on your site, and uses the new Email Stationary feature which automatically creates an email look based on your overall site design. New marketing features are coming soon, including Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Autoresponders, and more!

Easier Than Ever

We hope the changes make managing a great website easier than ever, and allow you to stay in contact with your customers more than ever before!

Submenus!

2009-11-12T20:59:49Z

We are very pleased to announe an important new feature for our websites: submenus. Now your side column menu can have submenus that come out when the visitor moves their mouse over the menu item. As part of the change our menu control panel has been updated, and the heaer menu is now managed there was well.

There are also a few basic settings to customize the side column menu as well, and we are adding more.

We have launched with a very simple interface, but are working on drag and drop to change your menus, as well as drop down menus for the header menu.

We greatly appreciate any feedback on this new feature and are happy to answer any questions that may come up.

New Drag and Drop Cubes Control Panel

2009-09-09T19:32:10Z

Our new updated Cubes control panel allows you to drag and drop to add, reorder, and remove different modules from the side columns of your website. We hope you love this new intuitive design as much as we do! It is the first of many control panel overhauls we have underway to keep making every aspect of running your own website simpler and more powerful.

We are also expanding some of the configurable options in our cube modules. For example our Blog module now allows you to add a label list or a label cloud, and many more changes will be added gradually to all of our cubes.

We welcome any feedback from our terrific customers who help us make RunYourWebsite.com more powerful every day.

Updated File Manager

2009-07-22T21:21:20Z

We just added a new update to our File Manager for the RunYourWebsite.com Website Builder. The improved file manager separates different file types into tabs, has improved preview and delete options, but the most important improvement is for file uploads.

You can now select multiple files at once when you upload. As they upload you can see their progress, which makes it a lot easier to upload larger files. Upon completion each file uploaded will offer confirmation.

There are two options when uploading. The first is the familiar resize which automatically adjusts images to one of three available size options to easily convert larger digital camera images into web friendly images. The second is an option to determine what to do if the uploaded file exists. In addition to overwrite and skip, you can choose to rename the old file (which will become image_1.jpg as an example), or you can have the new file be renamed.

We already have more new features planned for the file manager which will continue to improve and help make building and managing a website easier than ever.

As always we appreciate the great feedback we get from our customers which help us improve our Website Builder, and hope to get some more on these latest changes.

Theme Updates: Logo and Widths

2009-07-18T14:18:37Z

We have been adding to and improving our website Themes as well as Color Schemes which allow you to get a complete look and feel in two clicks.

Our Themes have always been about flexibility to be more than just website templates. The first major step for this was our Color Schemes and allowing every theme to adapt to any set of colors you choose. We are now adding to this flexible widths, allowing some themes to be different widths from our standard, but more importantly allowing them to be adaptable to any widths you specify. We've added a couple new themes that take advantage of this flexibility, and soon we will add controls to customize these widths after selecting a theme.

Additionally, you can now upload a Logo in the header control panel that is features on some (but not all) of our theme designs. A few new Color Schemes have been added as well., and a variety of small control panel layout improvements have been added as we continue to refine our UI.

We hope these changes help our customers build even better websites, and as always we welcome feedback and suggestions.

Control Panel Improvements

2009-06-24T16:34:24Z

We are at the beginning of a long series of really cool improvements planned to our control panel which our long time users will notice right away.

First of all the general appearance of the main control panel is evolving, and you will notice some new colors and tabs. In the future the control panel will be skinnable so you will be able to choose the look you like best. The main control panel is now full width, hiding any side columns you have to allow a more consistent and workable space. The side columns will still show up in any of the control panels relating to web design, but when you are fulfilling orders in your store, managing your contacts, etc. they columns limit the space available and have been hidden to allow a better work space.

Another major improvement we are very excited about is the header image upload feature. In the past header images had to be a specific size, which meant editing an image outside before importing, and made it more difficult. As of today you can upload any size image and within our control panel crop and resize to get your header image just right.

We also are gradually adding more new controls to make editing your site faster and easier. One of the first to check out is the use of sliders in the spacing section of the customize control panel. Instead of typing in a number, clicking save, and waiting for a refresh, you can instead drag the slider and in real time see a preview of what your site would look like with that setting. When you find the one you like click save to keep it!

As always we really appreciate the great feedback of our users who are a key driving force in our evolution.

Webpage Revision Feature

2009-06-23T13:12:06Z

We are very happy to announce a major new feature we have been developing for a while: Webpage Revisions.

Behind the scenes for a while we have been keeping a copy of your previous version of a page any time you save changes, so that you have access to them in an emergency. Up until now this has been a feature we access for you when something gets deleted by accident, etc.

Today we have integrated this feature into the My Web Pages and making it available to you. This new feature makes it easier to make big changes, try things out, and always get back to where you were before if anything goes wrong. We know it will make it easier for you to build and manage a great website, and that is our core focus.

So take a look, and as always, please let us know if you have any questions or feedback. Input from our customers has always been a key to making RunYourWebsite.com the best it can be.

New Website Design

2009-05-04T13:34:38Z

We are in the process of redesigning our own website at RunYourWebsite.com, taking advantage of our new CSS themes and several new features the new structure allows. We will be phasing in more changes to our own site as well, and will try to consistently make it an example of our best new features as we roll them out.

Completely Revised Themes

2009-05-04T13:32:03Z

We recently overhauled our entire Theme system, adding 20 new themes, and making a great new control panel allowing you to preview your theme and a color scheme together for tons of different website looks.

Our new themes rely less on Flash and are built using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), making them more flexible as well as allowing them to display well on more devices (smartphones, etc).

Now that the groundwork has been laid, you will start to see new themes added regularly and more new features to take advantage of the increased flexibility.

Store Improvements

2009-01-09T00:04:48Z

The RunYourWebsite store module continues to evolve into a powerful e-commerce platform, and recently we have released a variety of new features.

The order management now has fields for the shipping method, date, and tracking number and a checkbox to email a shipping confirmation to the customer. You can also create a pdf invoice or packing slip for each order with one click.

The invoice and packing slips are also available for batches of orders for higher volume stores, and you can also export order details in a .csv file to help bulk order fulfillment. Additionally you can import back in a .csv file with tracking numbers and ship dates and have your store automatically mark those orders as complete and send out tracking emails to each customer.

Our customer registration system has been expanded, and you can choose to have your store require registration or have it be optional. The customer system has been merged with the contact manager so you can use the contact manager to stay in touch with all of your customers with specials, promotions, and more.

Registered customers can view their order history along with status and tracking numbers, and soon the registered user feature will be used as a platform for more interactivity and features, such as comments on blogs, password protected features, and more.

Additionally the registration confirmation email, order confirmation, and shipping notification emails can all be sent on an HTML email stationary branded to your website.

We have lots more planned, so stay tuned, and as always we welcome requests and suggestions from our customers along the way.

Column Controls Moved

2008-07-13T06:31:14Z

As a part of our continuing effort to make the control panel simpler without taking away any of the flexibility and advanced features of our system, we have removed the Columns control panel. The two features prevously found in this control panel (Column Layout and Site Alignment) have been moved to the Customize control panel.

Most users will want to use the Column Layout and Site Alignment that goes with the Theme they select, so these features are really more for the advanced user, and no longer warrant a control panel of their own, but are of course still available for anyone who would like to take advantage of them.

Control Panel Favorites

2008-07-04T07:13:18Z

Our control panel has a lot of choices. We pride ourselves on not being a simple template site, but in being a powerful, dynamic, and flexible website creation system.

Despite all our advanced controls, we want the process to be simple and prevent the choices from being too daunting or confusing to a new user. While we are in the process of reprogramming our setup wizard, we have added an important new feature to our control panel organization.

When you log in, the first tab you now see is "Favorites". This tab will show a couple of the most important and frequently used controls, and it will also show automatically any of our main modules you are currently using without showing ones you may not care about.

In the coming weeks we will be improving this further to include any of the controls you use most frequently, and eventually to become even more configurable so you can have all of your essentials at your fingertips.

It is all part of our ongoing commitment to making our system easy for anyone to use in the very first minutes, but deeply powerful and flexible for the experienced or advanced user.

Store Updates

2008-06-11T06:29:28Z

We have made lots of updates to our Store module and have several more big improvements coming soon.

You can now track store customers who can register and manage their account, check order status, and more.

You now have two new options in your store settings to configure your store visualizations. We used to handle these automatically, and still give an automatic options, but the rock band selling two CDs and a T-Shirt has different needs from the office supply company selling 200 models of toner. You can now choose which of our layouts users see when initially viewing the store, and separately choose what layout users see when navigating to a specific category of products. You can also now specify if you allow different shipping and billing addresses or if you want to always ship to the billing address. And our international customers can select an alternative currency to use in their store.

We have also expanded the options each product can have. The interface is easier to use, and each product can have more options than before. Additionally, upon special request each option can affect the price of the product. So if your wedding cake store offers hazelnut filling for an extra $5, or if your computer store charges differently for each of five hard drives available, you can now do that directly in the single product.

Be sure to look for many other improvements in our store, including managing categories and subcategories, and many more features coming soon!

Our new name: RunYourWebsite.com

2008-01-05T13:17:19Z

We are starting the new year with a new name. HybridSites.com is now known as RunYourWebsite.com. This change of brand is designed to make clearer what we do and what our main goal is: to help you be able to run your website. We hope it will also be easier to share with others and you can spread the word about RunYourWebsite.com!

Photo Gallery Upgrade

2007-11-26T15:30:26Z

We are pleased to announce a major upgrade to our photo gallery feature. Having long been one of our established and most used features, the photo gallery needed some sprucing up, and we decided to recreate it from the ground up while making sure all existing photos and features kept working exactly as they had been.

The new photo gallery has a greatly improved front end, giving you more choices, making navigation easier, and allowing larger images to be viewed as a slide show. Now that the new structure is in place, you should expect to see more improvements and new features to be rolled out shortly.

The control panel is also considerably more advanced and easy to use. Creating and managing and organizing galleries is easier than ever, which makes a big difference especially for those who make updates regularly and have lots of images. There are also now gallery settings where you can choose one of several options for how your galleries appear visually. Again with the new structure in place, there will be many improvements coming up here too.

We welcome any feedback or further suggestions. While we aren't quite ready to put Flickr out of business, we strive to make adding pictures to your website easier and more feature filled, and as with every aspect of our system, tightly integrated into our service.

Blog Improvements: CAPTCHA and more.

2007-06-25T02:47:06Z

We have put some exciting new improvements into our Blog Cube module making it more flexible, more powerful, and easier to use.

The first change is optionally adding in a CAPTCHA to eliminate automated junk comments. A CAPTCHA is that image of squiggly letters that you are asked to type below when submitting something to verify that you are an actual human being and not an automated spam computer. By requiring a user to quickly type these five characters, your blog is protected from junk "spam bots" which can often attempt to put hundreds of junk comments on your blog a day.

The second improvement also regards potentially unwanted comments, and also is optional. You can now choose to have your blog moderated or not. If you choose to have it moderated, new comments will not appear on your blog until you approve them. If you choose to have your blog not moderated new comments will appear instantly as usual. In either case you will receive an email notification of the comment with options to click a link to approve, block, or delete the comment instantly without having to log in to your control panel and locate it.

The third improvement is a new automated RSS feed which puts a "subscribe" link on your blog and allows readers to subscribe and be notified in their RSS reader instantly of any new posts to your blog.

In connection with these three new features, the fourth addition to the blog is a blog settings section in your blog control panel where you can select all the options you want, including specifying a title for your blog.

We hope you enjoy the new additions, and we have many more improvements already planned!

New Themes, New Colors, CSS Menus

2007-01-25T22:25:26Z

We have added several new themes using some new color technology. In addition to adding some features that make our themes more flexible and allow for greater design variation, we also have added some new color features.

The color control panel has a new color selector which includes two new options: custom color 1 and custom color 2. These custom colors will control color schemes for a growing number of our cube modules, with the calendar the first to feature this. Additionally several new headers and footers are special chameleon elements which will automatically adjust to the two custom colors allowing you to pick one of our new themes, and then modify the colors if you choose to match your company logo, match your t-shirt, or just find a combination that you like. There are nearly limitless color combinations!

Additionally some of the new themes use our new CSS menus which also can take on your custom colors to match the look and feel of your site. These CSS menus will also have the option to have sub-menus soon.

Now that the new technologies are in place we plan on rolling out more of these flexible themes regularly to give you an ever growing number of choices for the look of your website.

Understanding Style Sheets: Why we don't have a font menu

2006-11-22T11:56:40Z

One of the harder things to understand at first for our customers is why there is not a font menu in the Webpage Editor, and how Style Sheets work on our system.

Style sheets play a very important role in web design, and are used by virtually every professional web designer and every well made website. The basic idea is to take certain design aspects and put them in one easily editable place that can be used by any page on the website.

In the case we are talking about here, we take text formatting and fonts and put all that information into the style sheet, instead of page by page and line by line throughout your entire website. This makes your website easier to build, more professional in appearance, and easier to change.

When editing a page, you do not have to select a particular font and font size for each thing, remembering what you used on other pages or ending up with inconsistencies that make your website look amature. Instead you leave most of your text the default, and apply styles to certain parts that should be different from the default.

You can apply "Headline" to your first line to make it bigger and bold, you can apply "Small Print" to a paragraph at the bottom which you want smaller than normal, and more. This tells the browser to put that headline in the font and size and format that the style sheet says headlines should be, the same concept for the small print, and everything else to format as the style sheet says the default should be.

You do not have to make the style sheet or know much about their inner workings, because our builder takes care of all of that for you. Each theme has a style sheet attached when you select it, and you can change this at any time by selecting another option in the style sheet control panel.

The amazing thing is that if you want to use style sheet with a larger font, or a different font, you change the style sheet with one click, and every page on your site is instantly updated to the new look. You do not have to go back and edit individual pages, and all of the automatic parts of your site will update to the new look as well.

It might take some getting used to, especially for many of us that have been using word processors one document at a time, but the results are clear. You end up with a better website which you can build and manage more easily, and that is what HybridSites.com is all about.

Webpage Editor Updates

2006-11-11T10:57:05Z

We have recently launched some exciting improvements to our Webpage Editor and the process of creating and managing the pages on your website.

For starters, when creating a page you no longer start with a blank canvas. You now choose from one of several templates as a starting point. A blank option is still available and the default, but you can more easily pick a general direction you want your page to go in and edit it, instead of starting the process from scratch each time. This should not be confused with your overall website layout and design, and just control what goes in the main content section of each page individually.

The next major improvement is that the Webpage Editor is not more tightly integrated with your website. The editor now appears in the context of your total site design, in the exact width that will be available to your finished page. It also automatically adjusts to your center background color (for those of you not using white) as well as to your body margin setting for the same spacing you will see on your live page.

Additionally the Webpage Editor code has been updated behind the scenes which should help everything just work faster and better.

We hope these improvements help you build a better website more easily, and welcome any feedback. We have many more changes under development as we strive to constantly improve our service.

Improved Layout and New Features

2006-09-15T14:41:49Z

We are happy to launch some improvements to the system today.

First off are some significant improvements and streamlining of the code that creates the web pages. Users do not need to do anything to take advantage of these changes. Pages will simply load faster with better code, and several minor graphics bugs that could show up in some instances have been eliminated. This reprogramming also will enable us to debut several new features and improvements in the near future that we have been working on.

Next are several important changes to the webpage control panel. You can now specify meta tag keywords and descriptions for individual pages and have these override the general values for your site.

You can also override the column layout of individual pages. This allows you to show columns on some pages but not on other pages. One advanced option now allows you to remove the header and footer on an individual page as well, particularly useful for a help pop up or an intro page, or a splash page which uses a different layout from the rest of your site. And the last option allows you to bypass our web builder code completely and make an individual page show the exact code you specify.

New Features

2006-08-10T22:36:56Z

Two simple but important updates have been added to our Website Builder and are available instantly to all users.

First, you can now specify a top margin above your header, a left margin for sites aligned to the left, and a body margin around your main content in the middle of the page. This last one is probably the most important. The default value of 5 pixels will keep text from getting too close to the columns, but advanced users can control this spacing manually putting in any value they want. These three values are found in the "Customize" Control Panel.

Second, you can now select one of our special modules as a homepage instead of building your own from scratch. If your website focuses on the Store you can make the store page your homepage. If your website uses the News module as the main focus, you can make this your homepage so users see it immediately when visiting your website. The same can be done with the Photo Gallery, the Calendar, or more. Many users will still want to build their own homepage, but some will find using one of these special pages suits their needs better. Either way, our HybridSites Website Builder now gives you more choices, and more control.

Welcome

2006-08-08T20:01:13Z

This is the first test entry in the HybridSites.com Blog. We will use this Blog to talk about new features and improvements on the system.

The first new feature we will discuss is this Blog feature. It is currently in final testing and should be available for use soon. A Blog, short for "Web Log" is a place where the author can quickly and easily post new entries, and readers can post comments discussing the entry.

The Blog "Cube" (or module) is easily controlled from its own control panel where you can add an entry, edit or delete an entry, and manage user comments with a few short clicks. All of the formatting and layout is done automatically using the style sheet you have selected.

The Blog Cube will join our News Cube and our upcoming Forum Cube to provide three different ways to easily communicate with website visitors. The three are similar, but have some slight differences. Choosing the right one depends on the specifics of the website. The News Cube is closed, and only the site owner can post articles. The Blog Cube expands on this and allows readers to post comments discussing the Blog entry. The Forum Cube is more open ended and allows registered readers to start their own discussions or contribute to existing discussions.

An additional new feature we will be adding once all of these new Cubes are live is the ability to select one of the Cubes (News, Blog, Forum, as well as Store or Gallery) as your homepage instead of building a custom homepage with the web page editor. We are excited to see these new features come together to help more of you build great websites, and we welcome any feedback or questions you might have.