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.

Trying to get more done in less time? Of course. That’s why we recently introduced a multi-photo upload feature for any flyer created on vFlyer.com. It makes uploading gallery photos a snap! Simply click the Setup Photo Gallery link in the Flyer Editor and then click the Upload Multiple Photos link. From there, click the Browse button and select the photos you want to upload while pressing the Ctrl key. Once you’ve selected your photos, click Upload. Voila! Your gallery photos are uploaded in one fell swoop.

With the addition of the new Century 21 design theme, vFlyer now offers six premium broker themes to business subscribers! We have themes for the following brokerages:

Century 21	Keller Williams	Alain Pinel
Coldwell Banker	Prudential	REMAX

Premium broker themes are available to all vFlyer subscribers (vFlyer Starter or better).

Responding to customer demand, vFlyer now allows its users to change their account names! This change is part of a larger restructuring of the Account Profile setup in which we’ve added sections for Settings, where you can adjust various settings in your Account Profile,and Basic account information, which displays your account name, account URL, and the date the account was created.

Premium themes are where its at! I an a big believer that “It’s all about the brand!” and vFlyer definitely allows you to communicate your brand and identity to the world! I have talked about our premium themes in the past. These are themes are available to all vFlyer subscribers (with a vFlyer Starter account or better).

Here are some good examples of how you can really “brand” your vFlyers using premium themes:

• Keller Williams Theme
• REMAX Theme
• Prudential Theme
• Coldwell Banker Theme
• Alaine Pinel Real Estate Theme

This level of brand customization is hard to find anywhere else so be sure to take advantage of it! The examples above also feature the premium layout option also available to vFlyer subscribers.

Tags: real+estate, themes, vflyer

If you’ve published more than a few flyers with us, chances are you’ve noticed a link on all your flyers that either reads More Listings (on premium layout flyers) or View Other Flyers (on standard layout flyers). These links connect to your Account profile where all your published flyers are listed; they allow people viewing one of your flyers to view others as well. Some of our customers asked if we could provide the option of showing or hiding these links and we thought that was a darn good idea, so we’ve made it easy to remove those links from your flyers!

To do so, log in to your account. Then click the Account tab and Profile sub-tab. At the bottom of the Contact Information section is a drop-down menu labeled More Listings Link: with two options: Show and Hide. All accounts are automatically set to show the link. If you do not want the More Listings or View Other Flyers link to appear on your flyers, select Hide from the drop-down menu and click Update. The link will automatically be removed from premium layout flyers; for standard layout flyers and email versions of flyers, you will need to re-publish the flyers for the change to take effect.

We appreciate the feedback that we get from our users. We try to be as responsive as we can especially when it benefits most of our users. By popular demand, photo re-ordering is now available on vFlyer.

We recently received an email from Lyn Sims asking why she could only post the standard layout of her flyers to her Active Rain blog and not the premium layout. Well, you can actually post both Standard and Premium layout flyers. Here are the instructions for both.

Embedding Standard Layout Flyers

Embedding flyers is simple! Follow the straight forward instructions. Simply go to the Post tab of your flyer, copy the HTML in the Other Sites HTML tab, make sure the HTML tab of your ActiveRain post is selected, paste the HTML and voila.

Embedding Premium Layout Flyers

Embedding a Premium Layout flyer requires the use of an IFrame.

First, copy the URL of your premium layout flyer. This URL is available on both the Publish screen and the Post Flyer tab when re-editng the published flyer.

Second, create a new post to your Active Rain blog. Then click the HTML tab above the text box (as opposed to the WYSIWYG tab) and type

<iframe src= “<flyer URL>” height=”1000″ width=”900″></iframe>

Continue with the post and click Post Blog Entry when you’re ready. You should see your beautiful premium layout flyer appear with all the links active! And you can do this for any premium layout flyer that you’ve published!

Here’s an example of a premium layout flyer posted as an IFrame.

<iframe src=”http://getaways.vflyer.com/home/flyer/home/638000″ height=”1000″ width=”900″></iframe>

See example on Activerain

So, not only have you learned to post your premium layout flyer to your Active Rain blog, you’ve also learned how to use an IFrame!

Thanks Lyn for bringing this to our attention!

A growing number of subscribers are using the new premium flyer layout! There are a handful of examples of the new layout available as part of the vFlyer Starter, Basic, Premium and Professional subscriptions:

• 2bd/2ba Upscale Condo and Everyday Price (Real Estate)
• 2004 Audi A8 4.2 Quattro (Auto)
• Landlords #1 Home Rental Company (Real Estate)
• 2005 Honda Accord EX Sedan 4D (Auto)

Compare these to the standard layout to see the difference!

If you are subscriber, simply preview your flyer and select Premium layout while in Preview mode:

This new premium layout applies only to the landing page for your flyer. The standard layout will continue to be used for Craigslist postings, Email, and Print/PDF.

You can upgrade today to take advantage of this new premium layout option!

Many of you asked for a better way to manage the contact requests that you receive from vFlyer. As I mentioned in my previous post on email and privacy, vFlyer gives you ability to receive contact requests as an alternative, or in addition, to direct email correspondence!

Some of you may have noticed that we now allow you to access contact requests from the Home page (once you have logged in). This feature is actually very important for accounts that are actively managed by more than one person! Since the new collaborative features of vFlyer give subscribers multi-user and multi-account support, more and more accounts now are being accessed by multiple user!

Some users prefer not to announce their email to the rest of the world! One of the benefits of using vFlyer has been the ability to ‘hide’ your email address on your flyers and use a contact reply form instead. Because we value our user’s privacy, we have always given users control of what information they want to include on flyers!

Contact Reply Form
We have always had a option that allows users to have prospective buyers use the contact reply form as an alternative to email. You can decide whether to include a Contact Reply Form or show your email address in the Contact Information section of Edit Flyer:

Anonymous Email and Partners
As I mentioned in some of my previous posts, a small number of vFlyer partners (Zillow for example) asks for your email address as part of your listing submission. Because our policy is to never give out a user’s email address (even to partners) without their expressed permission, users must give vFlyer explicit permission. As a added privacy measure users can decide to hide your email address by giving partners an anonymous email address or alias automatically generated by vFlyer for each of your flyers! You can select this option under Submission Settings in the Automatic Submission section of your flyer.

Tags: Email, Privacy

I was creating a flyer the other day and remember an important feature that we don’t often talk about – the ability to create any number of custom fields and attributes on your flyer! This is one of the many features that truly sets our flyers apart! In addition to the other 45 product categories we support, we allow users to create their own “custom flyers” by allowing them to add and remove features and attributes on their flyers to create something that is unique.

This feature allows you to modify ANY flyer in ANY category by adding custom fields and attributes, fields and attributes

Simply click the Add Field button to add an custom field or a the Add Attribute button to add a custom attribute (you an also add values to any of our drop down menus as well).

You can remove custom fields by click on the Delete icon next to them. To remove attributes, simply uncheck them. When add custom fields to a flyer in a given product category, vFlyer “remembers” and saves them so that the text time you create a flyer in that same category, your custom fields will appear!  Here is an example of a flyer with custom features and attributes.

One of the biggest problems general marketplaces like Craigslist, Google Base, Oodle, and Vast have to deal with is fraud and scams! Because our flyers are published into general marketplaces, we are not immune to the problem and are constantly on the alert for fraudulent activity.

We have recently added some new features to flyers (only in certain categories - specifically consumer electronics and certain computer items) to warn potential buyers to be on the lookout for fraud and common scams.

A warning message will appears at the top of flyers in the electronics and computers for sale if there is any suspicion of fraud (incomplete, missing or mismatching information, fraud ‘trigger’ words, user complaints or flagging, i.e.). Buyers can remove the warnings by simply clicking on the minimize link to the right of the warning.

You can also visit the vFlyer Support Wiki for more information on avoiding fraud and scams.

Online Selling FAQ