Chris's dashboard

Chris replied on November 07, 2008 17:49 to the question "I'd like to add a shopping cart WITHOUT payment option." in Yola:

Very cool, Boomer. Good luck with the site!

Chris replied on November 07, 2008 03:38 to the problem "Blog posting is not working" in Yola:

Hey Clouda, We don't have a commenting system that comes default with the blog, but you can find out how to add a Disqus commenting system to your blog at http://www.synthasite.com/tutorials/b... .

Sorry about the error earlier - you may have tried posting while we were performing an update!

(as always, thanks for the help Emmy!)

Chris replied on November 07, 2008 03:34 to the question "I'd like to add a shopping cart WITHOUT payment option." in Yola:

Hey Boomer and Minoinaire - sorry to raise an old thread if you guys already figured this out; I just happened along it and thought I'd give a suggestion.

Have either of you tried out Wufoo's service? You can find them in our "forms" folder in the site builder. They're constantly adding functionality, and I've seen some people do some pretty tricky things with their form.

If you get the Wufoo form to work, or if you figured out a different way to do it, please let us know!

Chris replied on November 07, 2008 03:14 to the question "New Beginner needs help" in Yola:

Hi Rae - If you followed the instructions in our Webmaster Tools tutorial (http://www.synthasite.com/tutorials/g...), then you submitted the sitemap that we created. I just checked and that sitemap only has one page in it which is correct.

I've heard that Webmaster Tools has been giving some odd errors lately...my suggestion would be to give it a few days and try logging in again to see what it says.

Chris replied on November 07, 2008 02:55 to the question "I NEED MORE INFO ON PUBLISH DOMAIN FEE" in Yola:

Hey Andy - Here's the response I just posted on the other thread:

You are correct that the $14.95 is the price it costs to register your custom domain for a year. When we near the time to renew the domain about a year from now, we'll contact you with information on how to do that. If you decide not to renew it at that time, you can [edited for this thread] unpublish your site from the custom domain and republish it to a SynthaSite subdomain. I should note here that any links on other sites pointing to your custom domain would be broken - it may not be a huge issue for you, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned it.

Thanks to everyone for all of your questions about custom domains - we're currently working on making the switch to a custom domain easier and adding a bit more information to our interface.

Good luck with your new domain name!

A comment on the idea "Purchasing a custom domain if I have already published my site?" in Yola:

Hi Andy1 - You are correct that the $14.95 is the price it costs to register your custom domain for a year. When we near the time to renew the domain about a year from now, we'll contact you with information on how to do that. If you decide not to renew it at that time, you can basically follow the opposite of the process I outlined above - unpublish your site from the custom domain and republish it to a SynthaSite subdomain. I should note here that any links on other sites pointing to your custom domain would be broken - it may not be a huge issue for you, but I wanted to make sure I mentioned it.

Thanks to everyone for all of your questions about custom domains - we're currently working on making the switch to a custom domain easier and adding a bit more information to our interface. – Chris, on November 07, 2008 02:50

Chris replied on November 06, 2008 22:03 to the question "Any plans for more professional-looking content?" in Yola:

Hi CL - I don't have much to add to Monique's response, but did want to reinforce that we (both offices) are listening and that we are working as hard as we can to turn our dreams into reality. If you have any more specific feedback, please keep it coming - we hear you and your requests do help drive our development process.

Ed, thanks for jumping in.

Chris replied on November 05, 2008 18:16 to the question "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola:

Hey Boomer - your sitemap can be found at yoursite.synthasite.com/sitemap.xml. We update it when you publish, so I suggest just giving Google the URL of that as you won't have to worry about updating it when you update.

Regarding the verification, I suggest confirming that the meta information is still correct and give Google a little while to catch up. If you're still having issues, you can post your question to the Webmaster Google Group and see if others are running into the same issues.

Good luck!

(Paul, sorry we hijacked your thread - I hope this answered your questions)

A comment on the question "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola:

Hi Boomer - I just took a quick look at your site; it does have the Google Webmaster Tools verification tag in it. It still seems like either (1) the code you put in here got modified by accident recently, or (2) Google's having a hiccup today.

If you verify that the verification code is the same in your Webmaster Tools account as it is in the properties tab of your website, then I would just hang tight until the GoogleBot visits again. You're still showing up in the Google index, and Webmaster Tools is rather finicky in my experience.

Good luck! – Chris, on November 04, 2008 23:04

Chris replied on November 04, 2008 22:11 to the question "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola:

Hey Boomer - We don't (yet!) submit the sitemap file for you; this still has to be done manually through Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) although we are working on an automated solution.

If I understand you correctly, your site was verified with WMT, but it is no longer. In my experience, this should only happen if you've moved your site or removed the verification meta tag. Google checks periodically to make sure you still own the site.

Can you confirm that the site hasn't moved and that the verification meta tag is still on your site? If so, please either post or send us the error message Google displays.

[As a reminder to all, the process for submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools can be found at http://www.synthasite.com/tutorials/g...]

Cheers,
Chris

Chris started following the question "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola.

Chris set one of Chris' replies as an official response to "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola

Chris replied on November 04, 2008 21:25 to the question "Sitemap Warning Message from Google Webmaster and robot.txt not found (404)." in Yola:

Hi Paul - I noticed your question and thought I'd jump in to add a bit of additional information here.

When we create your sitemap each time you publish, the page priority is set based on where it is in your site hierarchy. All of the pages linked in your main menu are set with a default priority, and any "subpages" which aren't included in the main navigation are given a slightly lower priority. For more information on creating subpages, please see our tutorial at http://www.synthasite.com/tutorials/c... .

The page priorities are meant to give search engines like Google a nudge in the right direction, but are only a small portion of how they see your pages. It's common practice to only assign one or two priorities in a sitemap, which is why we've set up the process as I described above and not included a way to modify it. I'll explore the ability to change this in the future.

We're also working on the ability for users such as yourself to create a robots.txt file, but don't have that ability at this time. I apologize for the warning you're seeing in Google, but please rest assured that it's just a notification and won't cause any sort of penalty for your site.

In general, the metrics I suggest looking at in Google's Webmaster Tools interface are the crawl statistics to see how long it's been since Google's crawled your pages and how many pages it's found.

I hope this helps explain things a bit further. Keep the questions and feedback coming - we use questions like this to help prioritize the features we add!

Best,
Chris

Chris started following the question "Do we get any emails when you buy a domain through synthasite?" in Yola.

Chris replied on October 24, 2008 16:57 to the idea "check out the full list of syntha-sites" in Yola:

Hi gamedemon - thanks for posting this!

That list isn't currently up to date, so please don't get concerned if anyone doesn't see their site in there. We're working on an updated directory and a better way to display it, and we'll be sure to let everyone know on here when we have it live!

Chris started following the problem "Unfair Customer Treatment" in Yola.

Chris replied on October 16, 2008 21:18 to the idea "Purchasing a custom domain if I have already published my site?" in Yola:

A few users have asked us how they can purchase their own domain name to use for a site already published on a SynthaSite subdomain (yoursite.synthasite.com.)

We are working on an easier solution, but here's a process you can use in the meantime:

1) From the site manager, click the arrow next to "Update My Site" and choose "Publishing Settings."

2) Choose "Unpublish Your Site" and confirm when asked.

3) Choose "Publish Your Site" from the dialog box that's displayed

4) Select the second option and choose your domain name!

**IMPORTANT: By doing this, you will no longer have access to your old SynthaSite subdomain (yoursite.synthasite.com.) Visitors will only be able to access your site from the new domain name, and the old subdomain will not work. You'll have to update any links or references to your site to include the new domain name. If you prefer to wait, we'll release a solution that will redirect your old subdomain to your new custom domain; I don't have an estimated release date at this time but we'll let you know when it's live.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions or issues!

Cheers,
Chris

Chris set one of Chris' replies as an official response to "Purchasing a custom domain if I have already published my site?" in Yola

Chris replied on September 19, 2008 13:38 to the idea "Lets keep Synthasites competitors from appearing in adsense ads placed in our sites." in Yola:

Thanks, Ed, for posting this! If anyone has questions about how the AdSense filter works or how to add sites to your filter, Google has instructions and some more information in their help center at https://www.google.com/adsense/suppor... .

Chris started following the idea "Lets keep Synthasites competitors from appearing in adsense ads placed in our sites." in Yola.