vFlyer Blog

We recently completed an extensive review of all the widgets we offer and made a number of changes and fixes that improve the look and performance of the Flash version of those widgets. The Flash version (as opposed to the Javascript version, which we also generate for each widget) is the one most compatible with the largest number of websites. Changes we made include a streamlining of the contact information and photo and logos on Basic Gallery and Basic Flyer widgets; the removal of Price and Location labels when those fields have no values in them; a better display of summary information for each listing; improved alignment of the widget title and flyer titles on the vertical Recent Listings widget; and improvement of the scrolling function on the premium Sliding Gallery widget. Here are a few examples:

Widgets are an effective and (best of all) easy way to create more exposure of your listings because you can easily embed the HTML code for the widget in your website, blog, and/or social network profile.  These improvements we made should give vFlyer users all the more incentive to configure widgets and put them on those sites!

Many of you have probably noticed changes to your vFlyer account homepage since Thursday morning. We did an overhaul of the account homepage and made it into a dashboard where you can access the Craigslist HTML for any of your flyers, email and print any of your flyers, access the HTML for any widgets you’ve created, and more. You can think of your account homepage as a kind of “mission control” for your vFlyer account, which is how it should be! Now you no longer need to go through multiple steps to get the Craigslist HTML for a flyer, track the activity of a flyer, or do other flyer-related tasks - it’s all right in front of you when you log in to your account.

We hope this makes using vFlyer even easier. If you have feedback for us on the new dashboard, let us know.

If you’ve ever had your unsaved work on a flyer lost because your session expired while you were writing a long description, then you know how frustrating it can be. That’s why we recently introduced an autosave feature in the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor that automatically saves any work you’ve done on a flyer after 29 minutes of inactivity (or activity only in the description field). It’s still a good idea to click the Save Draft button every ten minutes or so in case you encounter a network problem or some other error, but the autosave feature provides added security against losing work you’ve done. 

Note: The autosave feature only applies to the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor.

As many of the readers of our blog know, vFlyer launched its beta back in Oct 2006. What many of you may not know is that we opened our private beta in July 2006. One of our earliest users of the service was Eppie AhKiong of Palazzo Realty in Long Beach, CA. Eppie was using the vFlyer service to create Craigslist postings. Over the first few months, we received not only suggestions but also great feedback from her usage of the vFlyer service.  Yesterday, we received a beautiful and tasty fruit basket form the Palazzo Realty crew with a note saying that the basket was from vFlyer’s #1 Fans.

After enjoying fresh pineapple and strawberries (some of which were chocolate coated), we took a vote for our #1 Fan.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank the community that utilizes the vFlyer service. We love the feedback and suggestions. We try to choose the suggestions that are going to benefit the overall community the most and implement those first. Please keep the suggestions coming.