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Latest News
The software that powers your website is constantly updated with new features. We keep track here of the the major updates.
Invite other website administrators
June 24, 2008 by Jean
Another often requested feature just made to our servers and is available for your website: you can invite others to become administrators of your website. Gone are the days of sharing the same password between collaborators!
Login to your website using your own domain name
June 24, 2008 by Jean
You can now login to your website from your own domain name, not only from its ugal.com address. Simply go to http://www.yourdomainname.com/login and enter your email and password. Or click the "login" link at the bottom of every page of your website.
More designs for your website
May 13, 2008 by Jean
Good news for the website creators: more designs where just added to our collection. Available for free with your website, you can customize those designs with a banner of your own and they are all available in three layouts supported by UGAL.
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Enjoy!
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UGAL CSS Design Kit update
March 25, 2008 by Jean
Our CSS Design Kit has been updated and version 2.2 is now available for download. The update reflects the changes made to UGAL over the last few months.
UGAL's CSS Design Kit is a reference for web designers who design their client's websites on top of UGAL. It details the HTML markup generated by our Content Management System and gives them instructions on how to decorate it using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
If there is a designer you'd like to work with for your website, send him/her to http://www.ugal.com/designers. Your website will look exactly as you specify while you still benefit from the Content Management capabilities of UGAL.
Email designers@ugal.com for any questions about designing websites powered by UGAL.
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Use Flash for your website banners
March 18, 2008 by Jean
There is one place where we think that Flash can help your website: the banner that sits on top of your pages. The functionality has been on the todo list for a while, and we are very happy to have it finally available: on top of image based banners (.gif and .jpeg files), UGAL now lets you upload Flash banners (.swf files):
Other banner related functionalities that make UGAL unique stay of course available:
- You can simultaneously use banners of multiple type (gif, jpeg or Flash) for your website.
- When multiple banners are available, one will be randomly picked for every page request, introducing a subtle dynamic effect to your website.
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Photos and slideshows
March 4, 2008 by Jean
Product Catalogs and Portfolios are among the first pages to benefit from the new interface, with new and improved photo management features:
- Uploading photos is now much easier.
- Photos can be re-ordered by single drag and drop.
- Legends can be attached to photos.
- Photos can be displayed in a slideshow.
When editing a product or a project, there is now a "Photos" tab dedicated to the management of the associated photos:
Easier Management Interface
March 4, 2008 by Jean
A number of interface changes to ease the management of your pages just made it to our servers - and to your website. Instead of having to navigate to multiple places to manage your pages, you can now do it all from the same page:
The screenshot above shows what you see when you click on "manage page properties" for a product catalog (the example is for UGAL's website plans product catlog).
Add a Favicon to your website
February 4, 2008 by Jean
A Favicon (favorite icon) is the small icon associated with a website that is displayed by most web browsers in the address bar and next to a website bookmark. The favicon adds to your website overall feel and helps your visitors identify your website among other bookmarks and open tabs:
Google Analytics updated
January 31, 2008 by Jean
UGAL was just updated to use the latest version of the Google Analytics code.
No action is required if you already use Google Analytics. If you don't, you probably should, and here is how to setup Google Analytics with your UGAL website.
Randomly Display your Featured Products
January 29, 2008 by Jean
A small addition to the product catalogs just made it to your website: you can now choose to randomly display the featured products on your home page.
With the option activated, the featured products are rotated on your home page every time it is loaded.
New features for your online store
January 25, 2008 by Jean
UGAL was just updated with new features for your online store:
- Export your online orders to use with your external order processing system.
- Customize the messages displayed to your customers, from your store information to your order confirmation page.
- Let your customers attach comments to their orders.
Categories for all your content
January 15, 2008 by Jean
The technology behind the news categories (see 'Create a Blog') is now available for the Product Catalogs and the FAQs pages. Both types of pages had categories in the past, they had however shortcomings that are now addressed:
- Friendly URLs. Category URLs now look like http://www.mywebsite.com/products/category/bikes/. Much better than the cryptic http://www.mywebsite.com/products/c,3167/. Friendly URLs are easier to read and communicate and are better understood by search engines.
- Easier management. The content management pages (where you update your products and FAQs) have been redesigned to include the same category management tools as the news / blog pages. We use a technology called AJAX that allows to manipulate parts of the content of the current page without having to refresh the entire page.
Create a blog
December 14, 2007 by Jean
UGAL news pages have supported automatic RSS feeds and visitors comments from the start. We just added the features that were missing to be able to create a blog. So, here we go, the news pages now allow you to:- Create and maintain content categories
- Display links to the categories from the sidebar
- Maintain a blogroll (links to blogs or site you follow)
- Display an "About this blog" area to present your blog
'Quick Info' text box for your home page
November 21, 2007 by Jean
UGAL was recently updated with a new option called "Quick Info". It is a small text box that you can place anywhere on your home page, and is useful for short messages that you want to highlight on your home page.
Friendly URLs
October 23, 2007 by Jean
An important change was introduced to UGAL last week, as we switched from system generated URLs to friendly URLs. For example, this page is available at:
Keep reading to see why friendly URLs are good for people and even better for search engines.
Home Page Layout Management
September 18, 2007 by Jean
UGAL's Content Management System allows to display dynamic information from various pages of your website on your home page (e.g. the 10 latest news). Up until now the interface to update where this information is displayed was not the friendliest. Enters the Page Layout functionality.
It could not be easier to use: simply drag and drop the pieces of dynamic content around your home page, click "Save Changes" et Voilà, the layout of your home page is updated.
Newsletters
August 23, 2007 by Jean
 | Newsletters is without any doubt your best weapon to efficiently and quickly reach your audience. We have just released a bunch of new features to help you better manage your newsletters and subscribers. |
Attention: Web Designers
August 2, 2007 by Jean
If you are a web designer looking for an easy to implement Content Management Solution, have a look at our designer section, grab our CSS Design Kit and create UGAL websites with the look that your customers want.
The CSS Design Kit is now version 2.1 and implements the entire feature set of the UGAL platform, including e-commerce.
For more info, contact us at designers@ugal.com
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Fighting Comment Spam
July 26, 2007 by Jean
A number of UGAL websites have been hit lately by comment spam: using automated scripts (aka bots), spammers post their spam in web forms like the one at the end of this news. Some customers saw 500+ Viagra like comments posted to their website per day. Hopefully it will not happen anymore, our systems have just been upgraded to detect and reject automated comments.
Pushing better RSS feeds
July 6, 2007 by Jean
We just implemented a few changes to improve our handling of RSS feeds. RSS is becoming mainstream and it was time for UGAL to offer better support for them.
Our feeds now include the introduction copy of the news and back links to the news details page. They are available from the news details page, which should help making them much more visible to your visitors.
Keep reading for the complete list of changes.