For example, if Google wants to display a thumbnail for a page, or wants a description of a page, it can get that information from the Open Graph tags on the page. Or if a user is posting a link on Facebook to your site, the Facebook system will automatically “reach over” to your website to see if there are any Open Graph tags on the page and if so, it will pull the page title, page description, page type, thumbnail image for the page, etc. from the target page’s Open Graph tags and will compose a status update post from that information for the user.

Where Does the Open Graph Data Come From?

Bongo4U considers what it already knows about a given site and about each of the site’s pages to determine what to automatically generate for these Open Graph tags.

Any product catalog or promotions listing, or product detail pages, will have an appropriate page title generated, will have a page type of “product,” and for product detail pages will also have one of the product’s photos automatically tagged as the thumbnail photo for that page.

The Page Properties form within the Bongo4U Admin area for each page now has a “Page Type” optional field. This can be used to tell the Open Graph generator what object type to use for a given page. There are only about 30 object types currently supported (e.g. for activities, businesses, organizations, groups, people, places, products, entertainment, etc.). More will be added once they are supported by the Open Graph initiative. It defaults to “website” if you don’t define a page type.

The page description comes from the existing “Meta Description” field which is also located on the Page Properties field. Of course, everyone has already entered a sentence or two on each of your pages to describe what can be found on the page, right? If not, now would be a good time to take a few minutes to do it. This description is now used by more than search engines, since it will now also be used in the Open Graph tags that more and more external websites and social networking facilities are starting to reference and expect.

The Site Properties page within the Bongo4U Admin area has been updated to add a “Site Thumbnail Image Filename” field under the “Advanced Options” area. Having a thumbnail image associated with your site will provide the thumbnail to these external systems when they want to use one (e.g. for links/posts about your pages). You just need to upload a thumbnail image about your website, e.g. your logo, a screen capture of your home page, etc., to the normal “images” area of your website, then go to the “Site Properties” area, click “Advanced Options” and enter its filename in the appropriate field. This will create a default thumbnail image for all pages of your website. The thumbnail image should be at least 200 pixels wide and at least 200 pixels high, but smaller ones can also be used.

These Open Graph tags are invisible. Users of your website will not see them. However, they can be seen if you “View Source” in your web browser on your web pages and look for the “og:___” meta tags near the top.

Please let us know if you have any questions. And our Help Desk is always available at http://help.emerge2.com

It is a 2-step process.

First, login to your mailing list provider’s website (e.g. Constant Contact, GetResponse, iContact, MailChimp, Vertical Response, etc.) and locate the Opt-In form code that they auto-generate for your website. This code (HTML) can usually just be copied-and-pasted from their code generator, to your website. Copy this HTML into your clipboard (highlight the HTML and press Ctrl-C).

Second, login to your Bongo4U website and add the “Mailing List Opt-In Form HTML” block to any page or layout on your site. This will be where the Opt-In form will appear. When prompted to copy-and-paste the opt-in form HTML, paste it into the large input box(press Ctrl-V). Click the [Save Changes] button.

Don’t forget to test your subscription form. You will probably need to test it with an email address which is not already on your mailing list.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

When adding products into your Bongo4U catalogue, sometimes you have extra information which doesn’t fit any of the current product fields. In such cases, you can now enable “custom product fields” on your website. You just tell the system how many custom fields you want, and thereafter the Product Add and Product Edit forms will provide you with that number of custom input fields.

The custom fields are optional. If they are left empty for a given product, then they will not be displayed in the product listings and/or on the product detail page (to conserve display space).

To enable custom product fields, login to the Admin Area of your Bongo4U website. On the admin menu, hover over “My Site…” and click “Site Properties”. (Products need to be enabled otherwise the custom fields won’t matter.) Select the desired number of custom fields from the dropdown list, and click the [Save Changes] button. That’s it!

The next time you add or edit products, you will see the custom fields. Click the “?” link beside any of the custom fields for additional details.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Previously, all product listings were displayed in a format which was three (3) columns wide. But now the number of columns can be set to a number between one (1) and six (6).

To set the number of columns for your website, login to the Admin Area of your Bongo4U website. On the admin menu, hover over “My Site…” and click “Site Properties”. (Products need to be enabled otherwise the number of columns won’t matter.) Select the desired number of columns from the dropdown list, and click the [Save Changes] button.

If the number of columns is not set, then the default of three (3) columns will continue to be used.

Please let us know if you have any questions

Just add this new block to any page, enter the @accountname of the Twitter account you wish to see, and voila — its recent tweets will be displayed on your page.

You can customize how many tweets are displayed, whether it uses a fixed size or a scrollable area, what colors to set for the box, the tweets, links, etc.

It is easy and fast to setup. Just enter the account name, optionally customize it, and you’re done.

Thereafter, on each load of the page, the most recent ‘N’ tweets will automatically be extracted from the Twitter ecosystem and displayed on your website.

Refer to the associated entry in the Bongo4U Help Centre for details:

http://help.bongo4u.com/kb/content/?anc=twitterwidget#twitterwidget

An upgrade was implemented today which changes how the previously named “Paste as Plain Text” button () works in the WYSIWYG block. (the button with a “T” on it)

Previously, when you clicked this button, a pop-up input box would appear and any content that you pasted into this input box would have its formatting removed and only the plain text would be inserted into your block once you clicked the submit button on the pop-up.

This button has been changed to be a “Plain Text Mode Toggle.” By default, pasting starts as a raw paste function that retains any embedded formatting.

Many people use the Ctrl-V short-cut to paste content. It is a universally consistent method of pasting content in many tools, utilities and systems. The previous method of stripping out the formatting was a multiple-step (slower) process.

Now, you can click this Plain Text Mode Toggle button and then your subsequent Ctrl-V paste will be done as plain text (any embedded formatting will be removed during the paste).

The first time you click the Plain Text Mode Toggle button in a session, the system will display a quick note that says, “Paste is now in plain text mode. Click again to toggle back to regular paste mode. After you paste something you will be returned to regular paste mode.”

If you change your mind, just click the Plain Text Mode Toggle button again to change modes. The background of this “T” icon changes to visually represent if Plain Text Mode is enabled or disabled.

The previous “Paste from Word” button () remains unchanged.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

As a result, the WYSIWYG Editor within Bongo4U was upgraded today. This upgrade includes logic which makes the “IE9-problematic features” compatible with the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser version 9 (IE9).

This upgrade has also implemented a change to how the Paste function of the WYSIWYG block works: read about it in this blog post.

Please let us know if you have any questions about these enhancements.

We received positive feedback when the Testimonials feature was implemented. However, we also started to get suggestions from “early adopters” who were asking us to take it further — to add the ability to group similar testimonials into categories.

For example, to be able to group comments about the organization into one category, comments about a specific product into a category about that product, comments about service into a service category, etc. Then when adding the Testimonial display block on the About Us page, select the organizational testimonials, when on the Product page select the product testimonials, when on the Service page select the service related testimonials, and so on.

This was a great idea. So we implemented it too.

And we also made it so that the category is optional when entering testimonial comments, and also when displaying them, so you can still display, for example, a random 10 testimonials from *any/all* categories if you wish. You now have lots of flexibility to customize the display of your loaded testimonials throughout your Bongo4U website.

Here is a page of FAQ entries regarding Testimonials:

http://help.bongo4u.com/kb/testimonials/

When you are in a WYSIWYG block, and you click the Upload Media icon, and upload a video file to be displayed within your block, there is an “Advanced” tab during the uploading process. If you go to the Advanced tab, there is an “Auto play” checkbox that can be on(checked) or off(empty).

Previously, for Quicktime related video types like .mov, .mp4, etc., even if the Auto-Play feature was off, sometimes the video would begin playing immediately after the page is displayed. This bug has now been fixed. However, for any video which auto-plays when it shouldn’t, you will only need to view and re-save the video’s parameters so that the updated and fixed internal code gets re-generated for each such video. See below.

For each video which currently auto-plays, but shouldn’t, do the following:

1. Edit the WYSIWYG block which contains this video.
2. Click the media icon within the WYSIWYG block which represents this video (its placeholder).
3. Click the “Select/Upload Embedded Media” icon (which looks like a piece of film).
4. In the small pop-up window, click the “Advanced” tab.
5. Ensure that the “Auto play” checkbox is off(empty).
6. Click the [Update] button at the bottom of the small pop-up window. This will close the pop-up window.
7. Click the [Save Changes] button to save your fix.

This should fix the undesirable auto-play of Quicktime-related videos. If it doesn’t, then clear your web browser cache (delete the browser’s Cache or “Temporary Internet Files”) and then try the above steps again.

If you have any questions, please submit a help desk ticket at http://Help.Emerge2.com

Thanks!

By using a simple “video embed tag” anywhere within your WYSIWYG blocks, you can easily embed (display) one or more videos on your website’s pages directly from third party video sites.

We have created a step-by-step FAQ entry in the Bongo4U Help Centre to show you how to embed third party videos on your pages:

http://help.bongo4u.com/kb/content/?anc=embedvideo#embedvideo

Please let us know if you have any questions about this new feature.

Users asked for the ability to display testimonials on their Bongo4U website, and this new feature is in direct response to their suggestions.

In its simplist form, you just use the new “Testimonials…” option on your main menu to add testimonials, quotes, etc. and then just add a “Testimonials” block on one or more pages of your site. When you add a Testimonials block, you will be given the option to customize how and what gets displayed (or leave the defaults).

Some websites might want to display one random testimonial in multiple places throughout their website. Other websites might want to create a separate testimonials page and either list all testimonials or a random 10, 15 or 25 testimonials on that page. Or use a combination of both approaches. It really is up to you regarding how you want to use it on your site.

We have created a new section within the Bongo4U Help Centre to give an overview of testimonials and to also provide instructions regarding how to Add, Edit, Delete and Display testimonials on your Bongo4U website.

Here’s a link to the new Testimonials section for the instructions:

http://Help.Bongo4U.com/kb/testimonials

Please let us know if you have any questions, and enjoy the new feature!

Some organizations have standardized on using “Google Analytics” on all of their web properties. No problem. You can now use both the built-in “Web Stats” and also Google Analytics. Here’s how:

Just login to the Google Analytics system and generate a “Google Analytics ID” for your website (you need to use a separate ID for each website). Then login to your Bongo4U Admin area, go to your “Site Properties” (located under “My Site…”), enter your “Google Analytics ID” and click [Save Changes].

That’s it. Your site will instantly start invoking the Google Analytics tracking system for all subsequent page views.

Of course, this is all optional. It is not required. The built-in “Web Stats” will continue to provide you with interesting statistics about how your website is being used, whether or not you also use the Google Analytics system for additional tracking.

Any questions? Please just let us know… [thanks!]

The most likely location for a Countdown is near the top of your home page. However, you may add a Countdown to any page. You can even have multiple Countdowns on the same page if you wish to highlight multiple upcoming events.

Adding a Countdown block is easy. Just login to Admin mode, go to the page where you want the Countdown to be, and add the new Countdown block to that page. The system will ask you for a target date, for a prefix message (e.g. “Days until the Big Event:”), and even an optional second message to automatically display after the target date has been reached (or display nothing if you wish).

Try it. Experiment with it. It is easy to add or change at any time.

See the “How Do I Add a Countdown” help entry in the Bongo4U Help Centre for details.

You can now easily add a “CAPTCHA Challenge Box” to any or all of the online forms on your website. All you have to do is “turn on the switch” and everything else is done automatically by Bongo4U.

When a “CAPTCHA Challenge Box” is enabled, two randomly selected words are displayed at the bottom of your online form, along with an input field. The user is asked to enter these two words into the input field. That’s all.

This proves to the system that the user is a human and not a computer program, bot, spider or other automated process that is trying to push its malware, scam or spam into your online forms and to the recipient of the form’s email messages.

You can add a “CAPTCHA Chellenge Box” to your online form(s) using the following help entry: “How Do I Add a CAPTCHA Challenge Box to an Email Form“

Email Forms can be used to create a contact form, or a request form, or some other information-gathering online form. All you need to do is to add an “Email Form” block to any page of your website, enter the questions that you want asked, specify what email address to send the requests to, and a few other optional pieces of information.

It is easy to do. Just following the instructions in the following help entry:

“How Do I Create an Email Form”

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The new top/bottom pictures could be used as additional product photos, or as lifestyle photos relating to the product’s use, or as anything else that might enhance the appeal of the product. They can be as wide as the website layout allows the image to be.

The new top picture goes above all of the product details that are displayed on the page, and the new bottom picture goes below all of the product details. Think of them as possible “vertical bookends” to the product detail information.

These new photos are optional, as are most of the product information fields. This allows you to tailer the product information to suit the specific needs of your website.

The “How Do I Add A Product” help entry in the Bongo4U Help Centre has been updated to including details about the new top & bottom product pictures.

Why promote your site on Google Map?

• it’s free promotion of your physical location
• it’s a free link to your website
• it’s helps build traffic to your store and website

Why can’t we do this for you?

• the physical location of the source of information is verified by Google
• it is your organization’s information that you need to share with Google

So you see it’s worth taking a few moments to do this – Today! Head over to the Bongo4U help center to view simple instructions to guide you through the process.

For example, let’s say that you have a page that periodically changes. However, users have no way of knowing when any of the content on that page has been updated unless the Admin users manually update a hard-coded date on the page each time they change the page (which is easy to forget to do).

This special tag can be entered anywhere within a WYSIWYG block and whenever the system sees one of these special tags, it will lookup the timestamp of the last change to the current block and will display that date for users whenever the page is displayed. It is all automatic after you add the special tag to the page.

There are two versions of the special tag as follows:

• To display only the Date (not time), use tag: {{bongo4u=modified_date}}
• To display both the Date and Time, use tag: {{bongo4u=modified_date_time}}

An example: “Last Updated: {{bongo4u=modified_date_time}}”

For more information, please refer to the Bongo4U Help site: http://help.bongo4u.com/kb/content/?anc=modifieddate#modifieddate

Sharing admin usernames is not a good idea for many reasons (security, tracking who made which changes, if the only password becomes known, if the only account get compromised, etc.). The current admin user can now quickly add a new admin username for each person who needs access to the admin area (to update pages, product data, etc.).

If multiple people share your Bongo4U admin username, please add a new username now for each person. It’s quick and easy.

Refer to the new Help entry (click here) that was just created to walk you through this simple process (or add a comment to this post if you have questions!) — Thanks

This new feature has just been added to the Bongo4U system. It doesn’t matter where the RSS feed comes from. You can now add it to almost any location on your site. It can display as a narrow scrolling box in a margin, or it can be put in the main area of page and be nice and wide for maximum effect.

You can specify how many entries to display (the latest “N” entries), and how long it should display each entry before transitioning to the next one. It displays the title of each entry, but it also expands one of the entries at the top and shows the title, author, date and the first sentence or two from the details. It rotates through each of the last N entries, highlighting one entry at a time. All entries are clickable to jump directly to the original article on the source website (in a pop-up window).

It’s a nice addition to a Bongo4U website.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the help entry containing instructions regarding how to display an RSS feed on your website.

Add a comment below this posting if you have any questions about it! (thanks)

Here’s the answer:

There is nothing special to do to make a Bongo4U website optimized specifically for Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, or for any specific major search engine.

As long as a site has good search engine optimization (SEO) characteristics in general, such as most of the following:

• a good site name
• a good domain name
• good page names
• good headings within the page content using the Page Title, Headline or Sub Head formats on each page (not using images for headings)
• good content on each page, the main requirement actually, and this content is displayed as text (not embedded within images or slideshows)
• optional a good Meta Description for each page (not required, but can be helpful)

(where “good” is defined as using words that users will search for in search engines and words which also accurately describe the site/page content).

Then Bongo4U will automatically use this information to generate good, search-engine-friendly code that the major search engines will use very effectively.

Timing

Remember that changes to your website can take many weeks to be reflected in search engine search results. Although the various search engine robots (“spiders”) are continuously scanning the web for updates to websites, they might take many weeks, even months, before they all get back to your website to check for any improvements you may have made. But that should not discourage you from making some of the enhancements suggested above, since they should pay off nicely in the long run.

We have combined all of these great features into a new Bongo4U function called “Slideshow Plus”.

Features

In its simplest form, you just add a Slideshow Plus block to any page, upload up to 20 images, and you’re done. You will have a display area that will fade in-and-out between the uploaded photos on an ongoing basis. Easy.

But there’s so much more you can do.

You can select from over 20 different image-to-image transition effects, set the transition speed, select a portrait, landscape or square shape, select various display sizes, select random or uploaded order, enable pause-on-mouse-over, enable photo numbering, enable links, enable captions, etc.

If links are enabled, then you will be able to enter a URL (a page address) for each uploaded picture. If that picture is clicked when it is shown, then the user will go to the specified URL. The URL can be a page within the site or any external URL.

If captions are enabled, then you will be able to enter a caption or comment for each picture and it will be displayed below each photo when it is displayed.

Mix and match the various features in any combination. Experiment with various transition effects. Have some fun with it! You can easily construct a very professional-looking display area that rotates between any number of your photos to show off what you are presenting.

For help on adding a Slideshow Plus block to one or more of your pages, just refer to the following entry in the Bongo4U Help Centre: http://help.bongo4u.com/kb/content/?anc=addslideshow#addslideshow

Once you have added it to your site, please post a comment regarding which combination of features you found the most pleasing or compatible with your site’s style or your tastes. I hope you enjoy this new feature!

Or do you already have products on your website but don’t know how to add more products or update them?

Problem Solved

We have just created a whole new section in the Bongo4U Help Centre solely in support of Products.

Here’s a list of the topics that are now explained and “walked through” in the Products section of the Help Centre:

• How do Products get Added and Displayed on my Site? (it explains the process)
• How do I Enable My Site for Products?
• How do I Add a Product?
• How do I Edit a Product?
• How do I put a Product on Promotion?
• How do I take a Product off Promotion?
• How do I Delete a Product?

If you have ideas for additional topics that we could add to the Help Centre, please post your suggestions as comments to this blog entry. We’d love to hear from you. The more ideas the better!

Jump directly to the new Products section of the Help Centre: http://Help.Bongo4U.com/kb/products

Thanks.

New Feature

You can now easily (and should asap) create a separate username and password for each person who needs access to your website’s Admin Area. This is highly recommended.

See “My Site” on the admin menu to create new usernames. It only takes a minute.

Benefits

You can set separate permissions for each username.

Logins and Updates are tracked per username, so you will know at-a-glance who last changed each page or area of the website and when (see “Activity Log” on the menu).

Each username has a unique password (better security), and you don’t need to give everyone “the new password” when one person leaves (just delete that person’s username).

Each username is associated with that person’s email address so that the “Forgot Password” function sends their password directly to them (and not to someone else).

Request

Please create a separate username for each person who needs to have access to your website (See “My Site” function). It is easy and fast, and it provides many benefits and better security. If you have any questions about this, please just post a comment to this posting.

Thanks.

And if you’ve migrated your website from elsewhere into Bongo4U, what do you do about all of those old page links in Google, and other search engines, that link to old page addresses that no longer exist on your new website? You don’t want to lose all of that valuable traffic from search engines!

It’s easy to do in Bongo4U!

By default, Bongo4U will display an empty page with an error message that looks like “Sorry, but this page cannot be found: /bad_address…” when a user clicks on an old, stale link from a search engine. That’s a good start; you at least got the user to your website, but you can do much better than this default empty page that only displays a one-line error message.

You can optionally create a hidden page with a special Page Name (URL) of “page-not-found”. You can put whatever you want on this page (e.g. a WYSIWYG block with your own custom suggestions for the “lost” user). You could provide some links to some popular pages on your site or just recommend that they click any of the navigation links shown on your site. But it would probably be helpful if you provided them with some links within your commentary to, for example, your home page, your features or other beneficial page(s), your contact page, etc., just to give them some suggestions to help them get “into your site”.

For advanced users that have Designer level permission to your site, you could also optionally create a custom layout template for this custom page-not-found page, to affect its styling.

Of course, this is all optional. Bongo4U by default will automatically redirect bad links to an empty page with the above stated one-line error message. The suggestions presented here are all optional, but they do provide the user who clicked on a stale search engine link, with more information about your website and some suggestions to get them going (instead of only saying, “Sorry…”).

Try It

Go ahead and create a new hidden page with a Page Name (URL) of “page-not-found”, add a WYSIWYG or other block to it, and enter some comments. Then invoke your website with an invalid ending to your URL (e.g. “www.mycompany.com/bad“) to see your custom error page. If you don’t like it, then just delete the page-not-found hidden page or further customize it until it contains the content that you suits your needs.

The bottom line is to not lose users who click on old, stale search engine links, but provide them with information about your website or organization to engage or compel them into looking further.