North West Chamber Award 2007 Impact of Technology on your Business. We were pleased to receive this award in October. It shows the high standards we reach using technology to benefit our customers.

You can now upload video to your home page. Why not leave a little welcome message for your readers. Note: You can upload these file extensions to the home page: jpeg, giff, tiff, png, flv, bmp, flash, swf, avi, 3gp, wmv and mpg.

Flash Intro page. You can upload your own Flash Intro page. This was requested by several users. For business users we would not recommend adding such a page. Although they look great it means your visitors are one page further away from the information they are seeking. Also if this takes a while to load then visitors will click away from your site.

Jokes Page. Check out the new jokes page, with a database of over 400 jokes. Edit, add your own, or get viewers to submit theirs.

On many text areas now you will notice a ‘Word’ style control. This will make formatting your text much easier.

Login Session Time out. When building your website it is possible your login session is timed out. This is a security measure used on many websites. If you leave a computer without logging out it is possible someone can follow behind you and get access to your information. By timing out sessions this makes your site more secure. A session can be ended by inactivity or if a server is being uploaded to during a maintenance period. The site returns you to the home page. This is called being ‘kicked out’. The downside is that if your session finishes whilst you are working on your website then work can be lost. We recommend that you write your content in a document and then you copy and paste it into your website. As a precaution you will now see an auto-save feature in the Page-Builder. When a session nears the end you will get a warning that it is near the end. If you get kicked out of a session then log back in within 15 minutes it will still have the information on the page you were working on.

In DIY templates you can now upload your own buttons, this is in the modify navigation area. Likewise for controlling colour we have added the addition function of inputting the hex code, rather than just choosing from our web-safe colours.

The shopping cart has been developed further. Now each product has its own pages, and metatags can be set for these individual pages. You can have subcategories as well.
We also offer the option of using Google Checkout and No Chex as payment providers in addition to PayPal. You can offer all of them if you want!

Want to make a little extra money from your website? Sign up to Google’s Adsense campaign, generate the code and paste it in here. You will have Google ads on your navigation bar. Every time some one clicks through a Google ad, you get money!

We have added a Headers and Footers section to the following pages: Contact, Games, Puzzles, Photo, Video, E-cards, News, diary, guestbook and Links. This now means you can add short comments at the top and bottom of any of these pages.

Want more traffic to your website? Want an easy way to distribute your news? Then you need an RSS feed. The feed can be seen from your website, or hopefully on lots of other websites. Website owners can choose which feeds to show on their site, and yours may be one. These news items are then clicked on and the visitor then clicks through to your website to read your information. The subtle advantage is that you are creating more links to your website, which search engines like.

You can have more than one RSS feed page on your website, and remember these don’t have to be news items. It could be about products, reviews, interests – blogs. Creative use of this could boost customer traffic to your website.

On the Contacts pages we have set up an auto responder. A message is sent out to those leaving you an e-mail to reassure then that the email has been sent. You can edit this message.

The Download Page allows visitors to download files from your website. You may want to put different types of files here ranging from simple application forms to instruction PDF’s to music files. If you have a lot of files you can setup categories for each type.

In the DIY area there are lots of banners and patterns to help you make your own website. If you want to upload your own banner we have made it so you can set the banner size yourself before uploading.

A Metatag is information that relates to your website. Normal visitors can’t read it but visiting search engines can. These are very important for those that want search engines to find their websites and appear highly up the searches. This is part of what we call optimising a webpage. As a WebsiteBoffin user you probably already have metatags on your site. You put some in the Title page when you first set up the website. These are currently the metatags for every page of your website. If search engine optimisation is important to you can refine this further. This is in the Advanced level of PageBuilder. What you can now do is have a different set of metatags for each web page. This allows you to concentrate on a different set of key words or phrases per page. Click on Metatags in PageBuilder and you can now set different metatags for each page on your website.

Improved Navigation Text

The Text in the navigation button previously picked up on the Title for that page. If this was long it could result with navigation button text ending in …. It still defaults to the Title text, but if you want to change it you can using the Navigation Text box. This is on step 1 on every page. Some of our templates should have a maximum of 8 characters on the button, whilst other can have 14 characters maximum with out the …. appearing. Experiment!

PageBuilder v.2 was finished early December and this new builder has been systematically applied to everyones website. Those building websites since Christmas are automatically on PageBuilder v.2. The PageBuilder was changed to build websites faster, those from the early stage should notice the huge difference and the amount of time saved. Those using the advanced level in PageBuilder will notice the look has changed to bring it in line with the rest of the levels. It still retains all the functionality – and more.

Video album and Photo album

When you add a video or picture you can now give it a title at the upload stage. If you already have uploaded the images and want to add a title to any current videos or photographs then you can add them in. Log in to the appropriate album and go step 3. There you can edit the images by adding in the title.

As with the great tradition of buses, we add one set of new pages and around the corner another set appears. Last week we added the Profile, Table and Fixture pages whilst separating out the custom pages in to Text, Text/Images 1 and Text Images 2.
Today we add two more exciting easy build pages to the range. We have the Contact and Video Album pages.
The Contact page is a simple form for visitors to the site to fill in. This is emailed to you and alternative email addresses if you wish. For businesses you can add you address, phone, fax, VAT number, Company number, hours of opening etc.
The Video Album allows you to create an album of your videos. We have created this with common phone video formats in mind. You can upload your phone video (3gp and wmv) and the format is changed into Flash automatically on site. We change to Flash as most users will have this format installed on their computers. The formats we allow uploaded are 3gp, wmv, avi and mgp.
We made minor modifications to the Template area last time. We have continued to develop the DIY area by adding banners. Customers are now allowed to choose from one of our professionally designed banners to top their website.

Today sees the addition of many more features inside WebsiteBoffin, including extra pages and simpler navigation. This could be great news for sports fans!!
Three exciting new pages are in Page Builder; Profile, Table and Fixture:
Profile is set up to allow easy profiles to be set up of people or events. Upload a photo of the person or event. This is available in two formats, standard or tabular. Tabular allows lots of people to be added and each profile appears in a pop-up from your website. This could be used to profile people in your family, business or club. It could even be used to profile products or services for small businesses.
Table allows you set up your own sports tables. Add the teams to your table and come back and fill in the latest information each week. The Page Builder then calculates the total number of points for each team and orders your table for you. This ordered table is what displays out on your website. Table can also be used to make simple non-sport tables, for example a simple price list, this is the custom option!
Fixtures makes pages showing sporting fixtures. There are three different styles you can choose. The fixtures can be edited at a later date to include, score, scorers and team.
The Custom pages have been separated out in Page Builder to allow simpler access to the three different page types. We have even improved our demo area!!
The Template area has been rearranged to allow a more visual way of choosing templates.

The winners of the National Business Awards Regional Finals for the North West and North east of England were announced on 11th July at The Palace Hotel, Manchester. Fisher Educational was once again Highly Commended in The Best Use of Technology Award.

In the Reebok Stadium Premier suite, the first BEN Bolton and Bury Business Awards were staged 29 June 2006. The Awards highlight and reward individuals and businesses that have achieved outstanding results over the past year. Fisher Educational won the Innovation and Design Award for the outstanding ventures 10ticks.co.uk and websiteboffin.co.uk. Dubcnn.com and T3D (part of the Tickle group) were highly commended.

WebsiteBoffin has just increased its affiliate referral fees. All WebsiteBoffin website users automatically join the WebsiteBoffin affiliate scheme. This scheme allows both the referrers and the referees to benefit. Both now receive £5 off the purchase of their next website.

The scheme really is win-win.

The winning designs for the Bolton Evening News competition have been made up and are now in our template system.
Take a look at the winning designs and templates below:

Hayley Cheetham Crazy Chick Sophie Brown Chick 1

Robert McCarthy Basketball 2 Natasha Wiggans Outer Space

The winners in the Bolton Evening News Design a Website Competition:

Hayley Cheetham, Walmsley CofE Primary School
Sophie Brown, Radcliffe Riverside High School
Robert McCarthy, Harper Green School and
Natasha Wiggans, Sacred Heart RC Primary, Westhoughton.

Congratulations to the winners. The judges thought the winning designs were well thought through and showed great promise. Certificates have been sent to your schools, along with the promotional codes needed to claim your free website.

The designs are now being made up and will be placed in our template system. Watch this space to find out more.

Today we release the latest update within our Template section of Page Builder. If you don’t want to use one of our professionally produced templates you can now make up your own template.

Simply decide the layout of the website, where you want the Title, Navigation and Body of the website. You can then change these different areas of the website with blocks of colours, our patterns or even upload your own images! The options of limitless!! Why not be on the website yourself as a navigation image? Take a photo of yourself with your tongue in and one with your tongue out. Upload the two images in the Navigation area as ‘Mouse Out’ and ‘Mouse Over’. Every time the navigation is moused over you can pull tongues at your visitor. You are only limited by your imagination! Enjoy.

The dangers of free websites have been highlighted in the Sunday Times by Matthew Wall, reiterating the reason why WebsiteBoffin introduced Secret Pages within the Parental Controls.

There is a growing band of websites offering free highly adverted webspace. Supposedly you have to be over 13 to access this space, but it is just a matter of clicking through the ‘I am over 13’ button to gain access. The priorities of these sites are to gain advertising revenue through high sign up rates, so little time is spent endorsing the age limits. The children are then free to innocently post whatever they like…and they do. In a 5 minute search we were able to find out a child’s name, school, photograph and future meeting place. Children are encouraged to post their own web addresses in each others areas, leaving them open to further abuse.

“It is difficult for parents to police their children constantly on the internet,” said Ian Fisher WebsiteBoffin Director, “but what cost your child’s safety. We have built parental controls for exactly these reasons. All submissions to the site can be monitored and pages can be made password protected. This ensures only those you want viewing, can view, and parents can override these settings. These free websites are an accident waiting to happen.”

WebsiteBoffin and Bolton Evening News have collaborated to run a competition for pupils in Bolton and Bury Schools. Pupils have been asked to design their very own website.

There are 3 age groups of entry, KS1-2 (Year 0-6), KS3 (Year 7-9) and KS4 (Year 10-11). Entries are to be submitted on one A4 piece of paper by 1st May 2006. Winning designs will be made up as a template in the WebsiteBoffin Page Builder system.

Winners will receive a WB40 package for one year. Judges will include the BEN editor, Head of Graphics at Bolton University and Anglea Welsby, WebsteBoffin’s top designer.

Ssshhh now make your own secret pages. Choose which pages on your website you want to keep secret and make them password protected. This means only those who you share the password with can enter. Change the password whenever you want. For parents it means that you can let your children put up information for friends and family, being reassured that it isn’t being viewed by ‘unfriendly’ eyes. The internet just got that little bit safer!

WebsiteBoffin added an additional service for its customers today. Customers can now buy UK domains direct from the website. The competitively priced £8.50 covers the two year domain name costs.

The domain names can be controlled from the “Domain Name” area in customers “My Account” area of the website. At no extra cost domain names can be pointed at other websites and email forwarded to another email address. Other domain name retailers charge extra for this facility, but not us.

Why buy domain names? Domain names are limited, once bought by someone else you will have very little chance of acquiring them. Some domain names that are sought after can resell for £1000’s. Many websites have several domain names pointing at them. This may have the effect of search engines finding them easier whilst restricting competitors from having those domain names.

Today marks the launch of WebsiteBoffin.co.uk. Website Boffin is built upon the philosophy that every person can create their own attractive, professional websites without any need for any technical ability.

Director Ian Fisher proudly stated, “WebsiteBoffin stems from the frustration of trying to build websites for my children, buying the domain name, hosting the site, pointing the domain name at the host, getting a good looking site and then adding fun content, it all was a nightmare. It seemed you had to be technically gifted to achieve such a thing. I went back and challenged my programmers to put together a simple package that takes all the pain away and builds on the knowledge we have gained from our Award winning website 10ticks.co.uk. We have had world class programmers and designers working on the builder for over a year. The launch today marks the end of this but we have huge development plans for the future.”

Website Boffin’s solution is the intuitive, easy-to-use Page Builder system – a leading solution for creating attractive, functional websites within minutes. Together with the content that makes websites fun and interesting. Features include Photo albums, games, puzzles, e-cards, jokes, news, diary, customised pages and web page special effects. Every family should have a WebsiteBoffin website!

The winner of our ‘Have you Found it?’ campaign was Sue Hughes of Lutterworth. She won a free website for a year. You too can have a website like this from just 18p per day.

Fisher Educational beat off stiff competition to win a prestigious E-commerce award at the national awards gala dinner at The Grosvenor House Hotel, London October 6th 2005.

The awards recognise best practice in the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) by UK business and public sector communities.

Awards are presented to individuals and/or project teams that demonstrate clarity of thinking and development/deployment of an approach that has the capacity to change the ICT paradigm in their particular technology/market sector.

The National ICT Innovators Awards are designed to exemplify the true applied technology innovators in the marketplace today and were open to all sizes of organisations from SME's to large enterprise and the public sector.

Ian Fisher, Director said, "We are absolutely delighted to have won such a high profile award. To win the Innovators Award for Education and Learning reflects the passion and dedication of the team and their commitment to the improvement of Numeracy standards in this country. As a company we exemplify everything that these awards stand for and are very proud of our achievements."

Did you find Polo and Buddy? Pre-launch of websiteBoffin.co.uk we delivered our ‘Have you found it?’ campaign. It featured our two animal Boffins, Polo the dog and Buddy the squirrel. Polo’s vomit gave the clue to the website, where as if you found the website you could enter a free draw to win a website for a year. You would also see Buddy receiving the contents of Polo’s stomach! We hope you enjoyed it! You to can have a website like this from just 25p per day.

The company behind WebsiteBoffin.co.uk, Fisher Educational, have won yet another Award. 10ticks.co.uk, the maths website was runner-up in the ‘Best End-to-End Integrated Business’ category in the North West E-Commerce Awards 2005. The winners were announced at the Reebok Stadium, Bolton on the 16th September 2005. Ian Fisher and Paul Openshaw received the runner-up certificate. Ian said, "I am extremely pleased with the consistency we have shown in these awards over the last few years. Our educational skills combined with knowledge we have acquired in making such a successful website has been applied to WebsiteBoffin. I expect WebsiteBoffin to be winning these awards in the next year or two."