Updates
The software that powers your website is constantly updated with new features. We keep track here of the the major updates.
Documents and Photos for all pages
December 19, 2011 by Jean
A quick update to let you know that the "Photos" tab and the recently launched "Documents" tabs are now available for the simple pages and the contact pages. We figured it might be useful to be able to display a slideshow or a list of documents on those pages as well.
Attach documents to your pages
December 16, 2011 by Jean
A new feature just made it to all UGAL websites: you can now attach documents directly to your pages. The most common document types are supported (images, PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and zip files) and you can upload as many document per page as you want. The only limitation is that each document cannot exceed 10MB.
Maintenance - December 1st
December 1, 2011 by Jean
UGAL will be taken down for maintenance tonight December 1st, 2011 at 8:00pm PST. We do not expect the downtime to exceed 90 minutes.
We will post an update when the maintenance is completed.
Introducing HTML banners
November 8, 2011 by Jean
Banners are an important aspect of a website. They pretty much set the mood. So far UGAL has been supporting images for banners. It now gives you the ability to fully control the HTML code that is generated for the banner. Dangerous stuff!
10 new themes for your website
September 16, 2011 by Jean
We just added a batch of 10 new themes for your website. They are available from the "Design" tab, by clicking the "Choose another theme" link.
Display your FAQs as knowledge base
August 23, 2011 by Jean
We had a limitation on our French website, where the number of FAQs was becoming too important for the usual FAQs display mode. Instead of a specific development that only UGAL could have used, we have updated the standard FAQs pages with a new "Knowledge base" display mode:
Introducing e-commerce user accounts
July 28, 2011 by Jean
We just deployed an important update to UGAL: your customers can now create accounts with your online store. Creating accounts remains optional, and is done once the order is placed: the checkout process stays as simple and quick as possible. When shoppers sign-in to your website with their account, the checkout fields are pre-populated with the information from their last order.
Search Engine updated
May 24, 2011 by Jean
We just updated the search engine that powers your website. The search engine has been introduced late 2009 and while we are very happy with its performance, it was due for some "cosmetic" changes. More data is now indexed and thumbnails are displayed next to each search result.
Rich Text Editor updated
May 17, 2011 by Jean
UGAL uses a customized version of tinyMCE for its Rich Text Editor. They recently released version 3.4. We decided to wait a few weeks for the last bugs to be worked out and have now upgraded UGAL to use the newest tinyMCE version (3.4.2).
This new version comes with important good news:
- Embedding media now works flawlessly, regardless of the source of the media (YouTube, Daily Motion, Flash files). We have yet to find a media source for which we have issues.
- The editor is using new internal engines which makes it impossible to produce non XML compliant HTML code. This is very important for SEO: whatever you throw at the text editor will be converted to standard compliant code. Search engines will like UGAL even more.
Visit the tinyMCE changelog for more details on the many changes coming with this version.
Promo codes management interface
May 9, 2011 by Jean
Last week, we briefly wrote about how promo codes work on UGAL. We just released today the interface that allows to manage them and are jumping on the occasion to get more in the details of promo codes.
Promo codes for your e-commerce website
May 2, 2011 by Jean
Promo codes is a hidden functionality of UGAL as we do not have (yet) a web interface to manage them, but they do exist. Contact us if you'd like to use promo codes on your website. They support the following functionalities:
- Start and end validity dates.
- Minimum required cart amount.
- Percentage discount or fixed amount discount.
- Free shipping (new functionality).
Big news day at UGAL today, it must be due to the spring weather.
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Custom views
May 2, 2011 by Jean
UGAL websites come with a default set of "page types", like news, projects and products pages. While the look of those pages can be modified using custom themes, the positioning of the elements on the page cannot always be controlled. Mostly because you do not have direct control over the HTML code generated for the pages of your website.
Welcome "Custom Views", an advanced functionality that gives you total control over the HTML code of your website while keeping the entire set of functionalities offered by UGAL.
Destination based shipping charges update
May 2, 2011 by Jean
An update to allow better control of the per destination shipping charges is now available to all UGAL e-commerce websites. The original model was to define, for each destination, a percentage markup to apply to the local shipping charge.
It works well and is easy to implement, but has one drawback: when the local shipping charge is zero, all destination charges remain at zero, regardless of the markup applied.
The correction we introduce today resolves the issue by adding an offset to the calculation:
shipping(destination) = shipping(local) * markup + offset
The update makes shipping charges calculations more flexible, while keeping them simple to manage. Contact us if you think of other improvements.
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Multiple emails for your website
April 5, 2011 by Jean
Up until now, all emails sent from your website were going to the website owner (the email used when the site was created). While simple, it has started to become a limitation for many websites, so we are introducing the ability to specify which email to use for the different pages of your website.
When you edit the properties of the page, there is now the option to overwrite the website email address for that page:
Customized intranet invitation emails
March 29, 2011 by Jean
A quick update that we wanted to roll out for a long time is now available: customized intranet invitation emails. The title says it all, when you invite new members to your intranet, you can now customize the invitation email they receive:
The email is HTML formatted, and the variables in {brackets} will automatically be replaced by their values in each individual email.
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Shopping cart redesign
March 29, 2011 by Jean
A redesign of the UGAL shopping cart has recently been introduced. The goals were to make the checkout process easier and to support 2 new functionalities: quantity discounts and multiple price lists.
Watch your spam folder!
March 3, 2011 by Jean
We have recently experienced a few occurences of valid messages left by visitors that were marked as spam. Not good :-)
Since you probably never review your UGAL spam list (it is available under the "Tools" tab), a direct link to your list of spam messages is now available from your dashboard, on top of the UGAL news.
Next time you login, make sure to check that you do not have any spam there. If any, have a quick look at those messages.
Twitter and Facebook widgets
February 4, 2011 by Jean
An UGAL update to automatically embed Tweet (from Twitter) and Like (from Facebook) widgets on your web pages is now available. The widgets allow your visitors to share your pages with the 2 social networks. An easy way to promote your website!
UGAL partners with Cegid
February 3, 2011 by Jean
We are proud to announce that UGAL has entered into a partnership with Cegid. Our website content management tools are now available from Cegid's line of management software for small businesses and associations.
Users of Cegid Business Line and Yourcegid can now connect to their UGAL e-commerce website for simplified product and order management. Cegid was looking at complementing its line of products with a simple, reliable and scalable e-commerce solution. UGAL was chosen and will soon be available directly from Cegid and from its network of distributors to small businesses wanting to connect their back office management software with their website.
Easier newsletter subscriptions
February 1, 2011 by Jean
UGAL now makes it easier for your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. On top of the usual newsletter subscription page, your visitors can now opt-in when they post a news comment, request information about a product or fill-in your contact form. A simple "Subscribe to our newsletter" check-box has been added to all the forms displayed on your website.
If you have an e-commerce website with UGAL, customers placing an order will automatically be added to your subscriber list as well. We felt that bypassing the opt-in newsletter subscription during checkout was the right choice, because UGAL makes it very easy to unsubscribe, and never re-subscribes someone who has previously opted out.