Here are a few highlights of the new theme:

• Fully Mobile Responsive – No need to enable the Smart Phone plugin, this theme will automatically adjust according to the screen size you are using. The content remains exactly the same as on a desktop, it is simply presented in a mobile friendly format.
• Custom Slider options – This theme features a custom slider that you can add virtually anywhere on the site (even in multiple locations!) and instead of pre-populating the content, it allows you to tailor the content to your specific needs. Add a custom image, text, title and background to each slide!
• Custom Home Page – This theme offers a completely customized home page with beautiful widget areas, columns and content boxes. Want to promote your upcoming carnival or PTO Registration!? No problem it’s simple with this theme! You pick what you want displayed on your home page and the theme will plug it in beautifully.
• eCommerce ready – This theme is ready for our new ecommerce functionality and looks beautiful right out of the box!
• Different layout options per section and page. Some pages look better with sidebars, some look better without! This theme allows you to specify your preferences on a page by page basic (or globally!)
• Customize fonts, colors, backgrounds, icons and much more. The sky is the limit with this theme.
• Hundreds of additional features and options – you have to see it to believe it, it’s quite an impressive theme!

Would you like to see a working example of this theme? Head to http://shoppingtest.digitalpto.com/

How can you get the new theme? It’s already available and activated for all of our Premium Plus members. Just head to your themes page and you’ll see the new Brix Theme. (not a Premium Plus Member yet? Click Here!)

PLEASE NOTE: This theme is much more advanced than our standard themes and will require some time to get it set up. While you can simply activate it and let it go, to take advantage of the majority of the features, you will need to take some time to set things up. You can learn more about getting the Brix theme set up here: http://help.digitalpto.com/knowledgebase/brix-premium-tutorial/

We hope you enjoy the new theme and we look forward to seeing what you can create!

Want to take a look at the new Mobile Theme right now? Head to http://hillvalleypto.com/ on your mobile phone!

Our new mobile theme is easy to read, easy to set up and provides a beautiful browsing experience. We highly recommend using Featured Images in your news posts to take full advantage of this beautiful mobile viewing experience. You can see in the example above the new Home Page with easy to navigate News Posts. On the right, you can see a specific news post. Note that the green color, the image and the content can all be controlled by a super easy set of controls.

Gone are the days of Text Only pages and old clunky fonts and designs. As you can see from our Older Version above, the Mobile theme has come a long way!

We are excited to share this new Mobile theme with you and look forward to your feedback!

In addition to making design modifications to the home page and inner pages, we also have a much cleaner navigation system that allows for quick customization with icons and arrangement. Now your Parent Group’s Families can access your site with ease from just about any screen imaginable.

This Smart Phone View is available to our Premium and Premium Plus Members. If you would like to upgrade to take advantage of this amazing theme, please visit our Upgrade Center.

To get started using these new features, you can visit our Smart Phone Theme Help Center Here:

http://help.digitalpto.com/knowledgebase/wptouch-pro/

It’s very simple to use. Each News Post can be controlled individually or you can set a default expiration time in your general settings. You determine the time and date to expire the post and then the method of expiration. You can set the post to switch to a draft post, a private post, you can delete the post entirely or you can change and add categories to your post at a certain time frame. There are a lot of options and ways to use this plug in, especially with some of our more advanced themes that have more post category options. Have fun with it!

If you would like to learn more about the News Post Expiration Plugin, please visit our Help Center Tutorial at:

http://help.digitalpto.com/knowledgebase/news-post-expiration-plugin/

This enhancement is available for Premium and Premium Plus Members. It is not activated by default, so please visit the link above for activation instructions (it’s simple). 

Fall has started off with a bang at Digital PTO and we are all off and running! We hope you have all had a smooth transition back to school and that your membership and registration drives were a success! For those of you that had PTA and PTO registrations and sign ups on paper, don’t forget that for only $249 you can have access to high end online family registration forms that will save you days of work re-typing from paper forms. You can check out our Premium Plans Here.

What’s New with Digital PTO this Fall?

This summer was exceptionally busy for us at Digital PTO! We fought off thousands of hackers, speed up our website load times significantly, added even more security, added professional grade email delivery to our high volume schools sending emails, released our top level events calendar to every single one of our members and started paving the way to even more technology and features.

So let’s take a quick look at everything:

Speed. Or Lack of Speed..

Speed was a MAJOR issue this Fall and unfortunately, our page load times (how fast a page loads when you open it) were frustratingly slow. We spoke to many of you about this issue, but we wanted to let the rest of you know what happened and what we’ve done to address it.

Toward the beginning of August, an automated group of computers (called a bot net) started attacking the Digital PTO Network. They were simply trying to log into the system. We have great security and the attackers were locked as soon as they tried to log in with fake or guessed credentials. Things were running nice and smoothly but the bot net continued to grow. By the middle of August we had over 10,000 different computers trying to log in at the same time and each one of them was averaging 8 attempts per minute. They were shifting IP addresses, so they were very hard to block. Doing the math, that comes out to around 80,000 log in attempts on our network PER MINUTE. We’ve got great servers, but that kind of volume brought our processors to their knees.

We immediately went on the offensive and started blocking IP addresses that we’re trying to log in automatically so that they could not even get to the log in screen, but even then, our servers had to still look at the IP, determine if it was black listed and then either send the log in page or the blocked page. At times we even went so far as to shut down the log in functionality for 30 minutes at a time to give our servers a rest.

After consulting with some of the internets’ top security firms we have now added two more layers of protection to our system and they have been working beautifully. We are now blocking access from the majority of the countries around the world (which is where 99% of the hackers were coming from) and we also have added an outer shell, think of it as a mote in a castle, that blocks attackers before they can even get to our walls (the servers). Ever since the new security has been installed, we have had virtually no speed issues!

In addition to security, we spent a great deal of time getting our internal speeds up, regardless of hackers. The major change we made was the integration of page caching. Prior to our new caching technology, every time a page would load it would contact the database, get the information, contact the image folders, get the info, go back to the database, see it it missed anything and then finally deliver the page. That’s how a typical website works. Our new technology now allows us to have “saved” pages ready to go before a visitor even arrives. So in the background, the website goes to the database and image folders, grabs the information, turns it into a webpage that is already ready to display and saves it. When someone visits that webpage, the pre-made page is displayed and is delivered super fast. Don’t worry though, we want to make sure that your website is always up to date with the saved pages, so every 5 minutes or so, the website will go through and re-save all the pages to make sure there are no changes. In addition, any time you PUBLISH or UPDATE a page, the cache will automatically be deleted and a new page will be created.

We have also added professional grade email delivery service to some of our high volume members. This kills two birds with one stone because it takes more load off our our servers as they are no longer sending blast emails and it also provides incredible delivery rates for those schools using our Automatic Email Blasts. We will gradually be adding this service to more accounts, but for now we have targeted our high volume senders and added it to their accounts. This will also improve delivery of other emails (like form confirmations), etc.

The final change we made was for our employees logging in. We now feature two step authentication for our team, so when we log in, we enter our username and password and submit,  then a text is sent to our phones with a one time code that we have to enter on the next screen before we can get into the network. It’s one more added layer of security that helps keep our network safe and sound.

As you can see, we are extremely committed to our schools and parent groups. You are our top priority and our goal is to provide you with the best technology and service available. We appreciate all of your patience as we battled our attackers, we know that the speeds were terrible, but we know you’ll be happy with the ultimate outcome.

Looking forward we are also planning some major work on our database this winter. We do not want to touch anything during this critical time of back to school, but once that rush is over, the work on the databases will begin and we anticipate that it will boost speeds even further! So look forward to that.

30,000 Events on our Network!

Earlier this summer, we made the decision to release our top level events calendar (normally only used by Premium Plus Members) to our entire network at no additional charge and the new calendar has been extremely popular! You have all collectively added 30,000 events already! If you are not using the new calendar yet, we would highly advise you to do so and if you need any help setting it up or replacing your outdated calendar, please let us know, we’d be happy to help.

Paving the way for an exciting future

Our development team has spent a better part of the summer locked in a closet coding. Actually, they have really nice desks, but the point is that they have been working hard on new technologies. We have some MAJOR technology releases coming this year and we can’t wait to show them to you. We can’t say a whole lot more at this point, but we guarantee that the new features will be popular :)

Thanks so much for being a part of the Digital PTO community, we’re so glad to have you on board and look forward to helping your group for years to come!

The update will be rolling out on July 28, 2014 throughout the afternoon.

And this isn’t just any high end calendar, this is the calendar that our Premium Plus Members have been enjoying for years. It’s our top of the line calendar – and now it’s built in to every website on our parent group network!

This Premium Plus Calendar is loaded with features like event categories, customizable sidebar widgets, recurring events, multiple views, event venues, featured images, organizers and tons more. Your advanced users will love being able to subscribe to your groups website calendar with the click of a button. The events are easy to manage and maintain, you are going to LOVE this new feature.

For those members that are currently using one of our older calendars (Standard or Premium Calendar) you will have the option to continue to use your current calendar for the time being, or you can transition to the new calendar with just a few clicks. Please note that you will need to enter your events onto the new calendar, the older calendars do not share data with the improved calendar.

To learn more about transitioning to the new events calendar visit:
http://help.digitalpto.com/knowledgebase/transitioning-to-the-premium-plus-calendar/

Digital PTO has been the leader in providing Free Parent Group websites for the past 4 years and this major enhancement to the service is one more example of our commitment to PTA and PTO groups across the country. Digital PTO takes parent group communication and organization to the next level.

We hope you love the new Events Calendar as much as we do. We can’t wait to see what you can do with it!

The most common question we get at Digital PTO (besides, Really? You offer FREE PTA websites?) is whether or not a PTA or PTO group can accept credit card payments. And the answer is YES! It’s extremely simple to accept credit card payments both online and in person with your PTA or PTO community.

The next natural question is, “What about the Fee’s?”

To get things started, it is important to understand that if you accept a credit card payment, you WILL be charged a fee. It’s unavoidable. Apple pays fee’s to process credit cards, Amazon pays fee’s and so does the local flower shop you purchased a gift at with your credit card. Fee’s are a part of accepting credit cards, but once you grasp that concept it’s really easy to navigate your options.

The only way to not pay a fee is to accept cash or checks only. If you take this into consideration though when you establish your pricing, it can be as simple as raising your prices by 3-5% and you’re covered. Or you can take the approach that the fee’s are a part of the expenses for the year and add a new line item to the budget. It’s up to you.

Now that we have established the fact that there are fee’s, let’s look at your options.

There are a number of ways to accept credit cards online for your parent group, and we will cover the major options.  In addition to a variety of options in companies, there are also a variety of ways that the processing can be presented to your visitors. The three major options are Credit Card Processing directly on your PTA or PTO website, Credit Card Processing via logging into a Paypal account and offline (in person) credit card processing.

Accepting Credit Cards Directly on your PTA or PTO Website

Think of this as the most common and traditional way to accept credit cards online. Your visitors fill out a form (registration form, donation form, ticket order form, etc) and then your visitors are presented with a billing screen with their address, credit card info and contact info. The transaction is processed and the visitor never leaves your website. This type of processing can be handled by Stripe, a Traditional Credit Card Merchant Account or by using the Paypal Payments Pro service. I’ll cover each option in detail below.

Accepting PTA / PTO Credit Cards online by re-directing visitors to Paypal to make payments

This route functions very similar to the option above with one major difference. Instead of completing the payment transaction on your PTA or PTO website, your visitor is sent to Paypal to make their final payment. Your visitor can log into their paypal account if they have one, or they can make payment with a major credit card on Paypal’s servers. This option works just fine, but many PTA and PTO groups do not want to re-direct visitors to Paypal from their own website. Additionally, parent groups have less control over what’s being presented to their visitors once their enter the paypal payment screen (delayed billing promotions, encouraging users to create a paypal account, etc), so that’s something to keep in mind. Again, I’ll explain details below.

Accepting Credit Cards in Person, not online

The final option is a great option for at-event sales (carnival ticket sales, meet the teacher donation drives, etc). This option does not include an online component but can be used in conjunction with online options to provide a great way to collect funds in person. Many groups will offer online as well as offline payments. The best option for in person transactions is Square.

Comparing the Credit Card Processing Options for PTA and PTO Groups

As we’ve outlined, there are a number of companies that can help provide payment processing for your parent teacher group. Let’s take a quick look at some of the major options.

Paypal (Standard Paypal Payments)

Paypal has been around for a long time and was one of the first alternative ways for people and groups to collect payments online without a traditional credit card merchant account. There are other options now, but Paypal still remains one of the most common ways to collect payments online. Another advantage that Paypal has over most other payment platforms is that Paypal does not require security on your website because all payments are made directly on Paypal’s own secure servers. This means that even simple websites can use Paypal for payments because they do not need advanced servers and security.

The biggest disadvantage of using Paypal for processing is that you do not have complete control over messages and experiences your visitors may have when they are making their payments because Paypal is in control of those pages. They may (for example) present your visitors with an option to sign up for a Paypal account, or they may promote additional services they offer, like Bill Me Later. This isn’t a big deal, but if you want complete control over the entire experience you may want to look at additional credit card processing options.

At the time of this writing, Paypal charges 2.90% per transaction and a $.30 fee per transaction. There are no monthly fees.

Paypal payments are built into our Digital PTO Premium Plus Paypal Plan.

Paypal Payments Pro

Paypal offers a service that is similar to a traditional merchant account (monthly fee’s, you need to provide your own security, etc), but there are many other options that are far superior and economical. We do not advise using Paypal Payments Pro, but felt we should mention it so you know that it is an option.

Stripe

Stripe is our favorite website credit card processing option. Stripe is not as simple to set up from scratch as Paypal is, but if you are using one of our Digital PTO web forms, it is as simple as logging into your Stripe account and clicking a “connect” button. If you are hosting your own website, Stripe is probably not your best option.

Stripe payments give you the ability to accept credit cards of any type on your website without sending the visitor away to a separate service for payments and security. Stripe also automatically deposits funds into your bank account (Paypal makes you “request” transfers from your Paypal account to your bank account).

Stripe charges 2.9% + $.30 per transaction which is very reasonable, especially considering that they have no additional fee’s.

Learn more about Stripe and Digital PTO here.

Stripe Payments are built into our Digital PTO Premium Plus Credit Cards Plan.

Traditional Merchant Account (Authorize.net)

The final payment option we offer with Digital PTO is a traditional merchant account. A traditional merchant account is the same kind of account you would sign up for if you went to your local bank. They typically charge a lower rate than Paypal and Stripe, but also typically have very high monthly fee’s (regardless of whether you collect any payments) so traditional merchant accounts are best for PTA and PTO groups collecting at least $40,000 annually or more.

In conjunction with your Merchant Account, you will also receive an Authorize.net account which is the connecting piece between your merchant account and your website forms. One great advantage to an Authorize.net account is that the same account can be integrated into a variety of payment processing tools (web stores, smart phone devices, etc) so they can meet a lot of needs for very busy and active parent groups.

Digital PTO has partnered with Capital Merchant Solutions to offer Merchant Accounts at a low rate of 1.99% + $.20 per transaction. There is also a minimum $26 fee each month to have your account, but be aware that those fee’s can vary (and be confusing). Again, if you are processing at least $40,000 annually with your group, it may be worth exploring a merchant account, otherwise, we would highly suggest using Stripe to process your credit card transactions.

Authorize.net payments are built into our Digital PTO Premium Plus Credit Card Plans.

Square (offline – in-person payments)

One final option we love is Square. Square does not integrate with your website, but offers your group the ability to collect credit card payments at events and other in-person gatherings. Square integrates with your Smart Phone or iPad and with a wi-fi or data connection you can collect credit card payments anywhere. You can accept credit card payments for carnival tickets and more right at the door with Square.

Square offers extremely reasonable pricing at only 2.75% per transaction. No other fee’s are charged.

Learn more about Square here.

So, how to the Credit Card Payment Options Compare?

We made a spread sheet to help you figure it out! The following numbers below are based on an average transaction of $50, so your fee’s may vary based on that variable, but this should at least give you an idea of your typical fee’s over the course of a year to accept credit cards with your PTA or PTO.

$5000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $175
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $510
• Stripe: $175
• Square (offline): $138

$10,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $350
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $629
• Stripe: $350
• Square (offline): $275

$20,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $700
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $870
• Stripe: $700
• Square (offline): $550

$40,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $1400
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $1346
• Stripe: $1400
• Square (offline): $1100

$50,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $1750
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $1585
• Stripe: $1750
• Square (offline): $1375

$75,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $2625
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $2182
• Stripe: $2625
• Square (offline): $2062

$100,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $3500
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $2780
• Stripe: $3500
• Square (offline): $2750

$150,000 in Credit Card Sales (Annually)

• Paypal: $5250
• Authorize.net (Merchant Account): $3975
• Stripe: $5250
• Square (offline): $4125

Hopefully we’ve helped explain your Parent Groups options

We know that payment processing can be confusing, so we hope that our explanation has been helpful for you. If you have questions about any of this, please let us know. If you would like to upgrade your Digital PTO website to a Premium Plus Payments Plan, click here to get started!

Thanks all and have a great day.

There are a ton of benefits to creating an email address specifically for your parent group. Here are the top 5 reasons your PTA or PTO should have its’ own email address.

First of all, email is free. We always suggest Gmail to our groups that need an email address. Gmail is extremely reliable, multiple users can be logged in at the same time to the same account and you don’t need any special software or settings to get it up and running quickly. If you need to sign up for a gmail account you can do so in about 45 seconds. Gmail also integrates beautifully (and quickly) with all the major smart phone brands so you can check email on the go.

Secondly, if you have a specific email address for your parent group, transitions with the board and communications chairpeople are super simple. Pass on the log in credentials and you’re set. It’s that easy. No need to start forwarding PTA or PTO emails to the new people in charge, no need to re-create the wheel every few years when your parent board shifts positions and members.

Third, email has become a very important communication tool on a long term basis and having a consistent email address keeps communication flowing to the right people at the right time. For example, Digital PTO sends out an annual invoice to our paid members. When a group uses a personal email address and that individual is no longer a member of the parent board, the board is at the mercy of that parent to take the time to forward their annual invoice to the correct people in charge. If the individual has since cancelled their account, changed jobs, or left the PTA / PTO with a chip on their shoulder (it sadly happens), the Parent Group may never even see their invoice and after 30 days their site is reverted back to a free plan and no one knows why. If the group has its’ own account, important emails are never missed.

Fourth, it makes it much easier for parents to contact your group when they know the email address. Understandably, some board members may not want to make their email address public (including myself!) so a group email address solves that problem. Make it something that is easy to remember like ParentGroupName@gmail.com. With a group specific email address you can pass out your email left and right and feel confident knowing that your personal information is still private and safe. Plus, Gmail specifically has incredible spam filters, so you can make your email address public without worry of getting bombarded by spam messages.

Fifth, all of the major email newsletter providers (Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, etc) require a “from” email address. If you want to use one of the major email marketing tools (which we would recommend!) you’ll need to specify a reply / from address. It’s always best to use your Parent Groups email address in this situation. Again, for so many reasons..

I could go on and on about the reasons that a specific email address for your Parent Teacher Group is important, but those 5 reasons sum it up pretty well.

I would like to mention another things as well. Many groups want to have email that comes from their domain address. For example, president@yourptagroup.com – while this may look pretty, it’s actually not the best option. Reason being that as time goes on, it is VERY possible that you may need to switch domain registrars or even hosting providers and moving all of the custom email addresses can be very time consuming and difficult. Additionally, if you are using forms on your website (like the Digital PTO forms for example), many domain registrars (who host the custom email addresses) won’t send email from a website to the same email domain. In other words, many hosting providers (godaddy, network solutions, etc) will not send a form submission from the XYZpta.com website to information@XYZpta.com. Again, it’s way easier and more effective to use a third party email, like gmail.

In conclusion, if you do not have an email address for your PTA or PTO group, click HERE and get started now. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

As always, if you have any comments, questions or thoughts, please let us know, we love to hear from you!

We now have 51 different videos ranging from advanced trainings to extremely simple solutions to basic questions. We’ve also re-organized the videos so that you can find them quickly. Stay tuned as we add more videos to help train PTA and PTO groups with their websites!

Check out the new Help Center at help.digitalpto.com

In addition to the new categories and navigation, we have also been hard at work updating our tutorials to the latest version of our software. The majority of changes are visual, but there are a few instances where the actual functionality changed slightly so we are diligently going through every single tutorial we have one by one to update them. If you happen upon a tutorial that looks outdated or has some slightly different language than what you’re seeing on your website, don’t worry, you’re not crazy, we simply haven’t updated that tutorial yet. It’s coming soon.

If you have any feedback about our new layout, we would love to hear from you. Drop us a note.

And if you’re one of the PTA or PTO groups out there that has not started a free website with Digital PTO, what are you waiting for? Get started right now and we’ll have you up in running in about 60 seconds.

Click here to claim your Free PTA or PTO Website!

2014 is going to be a monumental year as well. We are planning on releasing many new technologies and options throughout the year and we started this week with the release of “Statistics” which tracks your website statistics and presents easy to understand reports on your Parent Group’s Website traffic.

We thought that it would be fun to announce a Top 10 List of PTA and PTO websites based on visitors for 2013 as a way to promote the kind of data available with our new Statistics feature. So without further adieu, please help us in congratulating the following schools that were the Top 10 Most Visited Parent Group Websites for 2013.

Bunker Hill Elementary PTA

West University Elementary PTO

Oradell PTA

K-5 STEM PTA

Mark Twain Elementary PTO

Frostwood Elementary PTA

Flint Hill Elementary PTA

Lanier Middle School PTO

Pin Oak Middle School PTO

Floris Elementary PTA

You will see that all of these schools have something in common. Each site is up to date with current information, each site is using a customizable Premium Theme, each site contains a lot of valuable information, and each site is running on the easy to use Digital PTO Platform.

Congratulations to each site above for going the extra mile to create a website that is worth visiting frequently! Your efforts have worked and you are the elite Top 10 Most visited PTA & PTO Websites for 2013!