This is actually  not a brand new feature.  It has been around probably 4 months.  However many people might not know about our new Whitelisting feature.

 If you are taking advantage of the Website Forge anti-spam features you might occasionally find that some email you want to receive is getting tagged as spam.

 A "White List" is a list of email address you can specify to ALWAYS get through. 

 Why do supposedly non-spam emails get caught in the spam filter?  There are too many reasons to name.  Usually the server the email originated from was once or currently determined to be a spam source.  Many spam filters are made "aware" if it's IP address.

 I can testify first hand that sometimes people put known good servers on blacklists.  Don't get me started.  I hate spam as much as the next guy -- but I would never falsely report spam.

People that are too lazy to unsubscribe themselves from an e-newsletter will just report that message as spam though they specifically asked for the message previously.  Surprisingly, it happens all the time!  Don't be "that guy" :)

 So, to "Whitelist" an email go to your "Manage Email" area and look for a "White List" button.  Enter any email address you'd like to get through there.  Enjoy!

 Shane Merem
Website Forge
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

Over the last couple years more and more customers have been asking for the ability to provide additional logins with restricted access to their Member's Area.  Generally the reason was to divide the content management tasks among several people in the organization while maintaining the final control over Publishing the site.

 We recently added a sub-account feature that is in beta testing.  So now you can provide restricted access to certain pages and features within your web site.

 For example -- if you would like someone from your order fulfillment center to only access the order list and not access any other portion of the site you can simply create an account with this set of restrictions.

 We are looking for about 10 total beta testers.  Beta testers will receive this feature for free while in the beta testing stages.  We have 3 beta testers so far.  Please contact support@websiteforge.com if you wish to participate.

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

As all of you know, we recently added a left hand navigation to the Member's Area.  This menu is faster and offers an easier way to navigate.  It's also faster and does not require a screen refresh.  For the last couple months we left the older Top Navigation there to help you with the transition.

 Last Sunday we finally finished the transition and removed the Top Navigation.

 We received two support tickets over the last week asking what happened and where certain things were.  Take a minute to click and expand the branches on the new menu.  I think you'll find it faster and easier.  Especially on sites with large numbers of pages and products.

 Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Web Site Design and E-Commerce

Recently a customer of ours selling large volumes of chocolate found that once an order's total weight reached the maximum shipping weight of UPS -- the shipping calculation went nuts.  Since the shipment would not be one large box, but actually several smaller boxes this caused obvious problems.

 We resolved this by splitting the total weight and calculating the shipping as separate containers.  This is an option you can now control in your shipping settings. 

 Contact support@websiteforge.com with any questions about large shipments or split shipments.  (over 70 lbs, over 150 lbs, etc. )

This year my resolution is marketing.  The Website Forge system has matured and grown substantially.  I cannot find anything else like it yet it's like the proverbial "Worlds Best Kept Secret".

 This blog, video presentations, help files, bulletin boards and more will help provide the proper perspective that the Website Forge deserves.

 I'll start writing weekly and hopefully more often.

 2007 should be amazing!

We have recently added a few more flexible discount options:

- Quantity based discounts (example: 0-10 pieces for 1.00 each/11-50 pieces for .90 each)
- Customer based discounts. You can now create a configurable discount on a per item, per category, and
per order basis. The discounts can be given in percent, dollars, and free shipping. Also buy x, get y free.
- More flexibility in terms of combinations.

Contact us at www.websiteforge.com with any questions or comments.

Website forge is pleased to announce upgrades to our e-commerce discounting engine.

- Promote your products with Buy X and get Y Free
- Apply Global discounts on any item, group, price range or quantity configuration
- Apply discounts for specific groups only

Discounts can be applied in Dollars, % discount, free shipping or any combinations.

Website Forge Team
Shane Merem

Hello everyone. We just added a powerful photo gallery module.

You can now dislay thumbnails and then larger views of your images in an easy-to-use image gallery module.

You can provide a category drill down control or just show thumbnails.

Login and check it out.

Shane Merem
Website Forge Team

Well, we had a fantastic 2004. Hundreds of new businesses owners launched their web sites powered by Website Forge.

I look at this as a win-win situation. First our customers win because WebsiteForge is the most complete web site offering on the market. The attraction is the great design in addition to the easy-to-use content management. Our e-commerce users benefit the most. The e-commerce Website Forge offers is second to none. The price of the Website Forge is unmatched. Second, Website Forge wins becuase of all the feedback customers provide.

Look at just a few of the 200+ features and changes added in 2004 because our customers asked for them:
- Coupons
- Wish lists
- Gift certificates
- Search Engine indexing improvements
- Additional Fonts
- Software product delivery
- Multimedia support
- Configurable drop down menus
- Advanced exporting and reporting
- Additional e-commerce layouts
- Additional page layouts
- Pop-up (on enter, exit, and site exit)
- Advanced spam detection and virus scanning
- More link types
- Automatic image resizing for products and pages
- Mass image upload matching image structure
- Advanced menu links
- Improved inventory import
- Paid and Free registration features
- Hundreds of tiny usability changes
- More..

It is important that customers and prospects alike tell us what you need. We want to give it to you!

We also want to give special thanks to Dale Spenrath at POS Processing www.posprocessing.com for providing great priced and well serviced merchant accounts. And Kevin Gannon, our Keyword Expert who is responsible for moving brand new web sites to the top of Yahoo and Google in only weeks.

Happy New Year!
Shane Merem
shane.merem@magnusoft.com
www.websiteforge.com
www.magnusoft.com