vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 vFlyer Blog http://www.vflyerblog.com Online Marketing, Websites, and Social Media Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 Facebook Integration, Mailing List, Domain Name, and OLX Bug Fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/#comments Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:29:37 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2418 Facebook listings integration, which wasn't available in all accounts before, is now showing up as an option for everyone. You'll find it on your Marketing Dashboard, under "Facebook Listing Application." Click the Connect to Configure button to automatically import your active vFlyer listings into your Facebook page. vFlyer Facebook Listings Integration 2. We fixed a bug that was affecting updates to email lists in users' accounts. Subscribers should now be able to save and update their mailing lists with no problem. 3. We updated the domain name renewal process, making it easier to renew a domain name after the expiration date has passed. 4. OLX syndication is now working again for housing and vehicles. We do have some exciting new features in the pipeline that we're planning on rolling out in the coming weeks, but we hope these bug fixes improve your vFlyer experience in the meantime. And thanks to all our users for the helpful feedback you give us--keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/22/facebook-integration-mailing-list-domain-name-and-olx-bug-fixes/feed/ 0 New Facebook Listings Application Integration, Video Layout and Vimeo Video Support! http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/#comments Sat, 09 Mar 2013 02:19:58 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2390 Facebook Listings Application Integration  After a momentary hiatus, our listings application is back in action and easier to configure than ever! The new format of the Facebook listings application displays a tab right on your Facebook page to showcase your listings. Below is an example of the new application on our Facebook page. Adding the vFlyer listing application provides more exposure of your listings to your Facebook followers. The application makes it really simple for your followers to view and share your listings with other Facebook users. You can find an option to connect your vFlyer and Facebook application on the home dashboard of your vFlyer account. New Video Layout for Flyer Landing Pages We all know how important video is becoming as a marketing tool on the web, so we’ve created a new layout for your flyers which will allow you to display your video more prominently. So whether it’s a virtual tour, client testimonial, or product video, you can easily showcase it on your flyer. Here’s an example: To use the new layout for one of your flyers, click the Layout’s link under Quick Links in the flyer editor and then click Change Layout. From here you will be taken to the flyer preview mode where you can choose from the drop down menu options for Standard, Premium, and the new Video layout. Select Video, click the Re-publish button, and you’re good to go. Now supporting Vimeo video Just in time for the new video layout, we are now supporting videos that have been uploaded to Vimeo. Vimeo is an awesome video site, similar to YouTube. You can check out more about Vimeo here and sign up for a free account here. We hope you enjoy the improved Facebook Application integration and other new features.  We are always looking to make improvements and make vFlyer even better so please continue to share your feedback and feature requests!  ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/03/08/new-facebook-listings-application-integration-video-layout-and-vimeo-video-support/feed/ 0 vFlyer Marketing 5.0: New Branded Mobile Flyer Format, Mailing Lists, and More http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:38:58 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2383 vFlyer Marketing 5.0, the latest version of our award-winning marketing service. We made a conscious decision to focus on expanding our listing marketing features and capabilities in 2013 and this release is the first step in that effort. With it, vFlyer users can more effectively promote their listings across multiple channels, including their own websites. Here's the lowdown on what's included in the new version: 1. New Mobile Format and Branding Capabilities We've long offered mobile landing pages for all flyers, but we're psyched to introduce a new and improved mobile format that's better optimized for today's smartphones. The new format displays a toolbar at the top and bottom with buttons to call or email the listing agent or share the listing via social media. The photos from the flyer are shown below that; viewers can flip through them simply by swiping their finger. And all the text from the flyer is displayed on the main listing page, rather than on separate pages as before. vFlyer Mobile Listing Format Even better, vFlyer users can now create their own custom mobile themes in the Theme Editor, and business subscribers can upload a branded mobile header image to display on their mobile listings. As more and more consumers access the Web primarily through their phones, having well-branded mobile content becomes essential. 2. Mailing List Support By popular demand, we now support the creation and storage of mailing lists. Business subscribers can add a group of email addresses to their account and email their flyers to that list with a single click. Visit our help center for instructions on creating a mailing list. 3. Better Listing Integration and Slideshow Display in vFlyer Sites vFlyer Sites users now have multiple ways to display their listings on their website: in a gallery format, a slideshow, a mini-listings module, and a comprehensive search module among others. Having this array of listing integration options means that you can make your listings the focus of your website rather than an afterthought. With this release, we've also improved the layout of images and the loading of photo slideshows on listing detail pages. 4. Facebook Registration and Login We now support Facebook Connect, enabling people to register for vFlyer and log in to their accounts through Facebook. This not only makes it easier to sign up, it also makes sharing listings on Facebook easier, since you're logged into Facebook already when you log in to your vFlyer account. Together with the addition of new syndication partners Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com, the features we introduced in this release will help vFlyer users market their listings more widely and effectively than ever before. And we're not finished--look for more listing marketing features and capabilities in the coming months. Thanks to all of our users for your questions, comments, and feature requests. Your feedback helps us continue to improve vFlyer, so keep it coming!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/21/vflyer-marketing-5-0-new-branded-mobile-flyer-format-mailing-lists-and-more/feed/ 0 Using PicMonkey to Create an Image-based Website Menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:58:46 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2367 make a website that's visually appealing and easy to navigate. vFlyer Sites makes linking an image to a page on the site super simple, but often having the right image or creating one that complements the look of your website requires some photo editing skills. That's where PicMonkey can help. It makes it easy to crop an image, add a filter and shapes to it, and even overlay text. I was recently playing around on PicMonkey and found a great way to enhance images for my vFlyer site. Just by adding a border and text to some pictures, I was able to create these great images that I then linked to the associated pages on my site. To create enhanced images like these, follow the instructions below or feel free to try other frames and banners to get a different look. Start by going to PicMonkey and choose the option to Edit a Photo. Find the image you want to use on your computer and upload it. You'll notice that there are tons of tools you can use from the menu on the left hand side. I started by adding a frame around the image. You can adjust the thickness of the frame and the color. Once you've gotten the frame how you want it, click Apply. In the example below, I used the Simple Edge frame. Next, add a banner to your image. Click the overlay button and select a banner that you like. You can adjust the size of the banner by dragging the white box that appears around it. To finish off your image, add some text and layer it over the banner. You can drag and drop the text box to center it or align it left or right. Once you've done all this, save the image to your computer. Now, to add this image to your website, go to the Site Editor and add a Picture Module to the page of your choice. Once you've uploaded the image, you can link it to a page on the site or an external page in the module settings. Repeat the above steps for any other images you want to use, and soon you'll have a great-looking image-based site menu, as in the example below: ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/15/using-picmonkey-to-create-an-image-based-website-menu/feed/ 0 New Syndication Partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:20:24 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2359 Creating exposure for your listings has always been a focus of our business. One of the ways that we do that is through listing syndication. This week, we're psyched to welcome four new syndication partners: Trovit, PennySaverUSA, Lovely, and REALTOR.com. While Lovely and REALTOR.com will be serving up our rental listings, Trovit and PennySaverUSA will provide exposure to nearly all our users' listings. In addition, we're excited to announce that we will be sending apartment rentals to Zillow! We think it's only polite to acquaint you to our new partner sites, so here's some information on each: Trovit Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, Trovit is the leading search engine for classified ads in Europe and Latin America and has built up a strong presence in the U.S. market. Trovit aggregates listings across a multitude of classifieds sites, making it easier for consumers to find what they're looking for. PennySaverUSA The Original PennySaver was founded over 50 years ago as a free classified ads publication. While it continues to be printed and mailed to a large audience, it has moved into the online classified ads space and is becoming one of the leading classifieds sites in the country. Lovely Lovely is a map-based apartment rental search engine that was designed to make the apartment search process easier for renters. Users can view a map of a neighborhood they're interested in renting in and see where the available apartment rentals are. Lovely also has a great iPhone app, which is perfect since often people looking for an apartment are out, well... looking for an apartment. REALTOR.com REALTOR.com, operated by Move Inc., is an enormous real estate and rentals portal, covering over 800 MLSs nationwide. We're excited to be syndicating apartment and condo rental listings to REALTOR.com as they expand their rentals inventory. Again, we're thrilled to be sending our users' listings to these four great sites. We've just begun sending them our data feeds, so it will likely take a couple of weeks before the listings appear on each of them.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/02/13/new-syndication-partners-trovit-pennysaverusa-lovely-and-realtor-com/feed/ 0 Improve Your Website’s Photos by Cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:04:28 +0000 Doug Ramsay http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2342 my images. “Cropping” is fancy photography-speak for trimming your photo--either the tops, the sides, or if you want to get really loco, both. You might crop an image to get rid of ugly bits, refine the image’s composition, or match the size of other images on your website. You can even crop an image to create a kind of ersatz panorama. (I'll demonstrate all of these examples below.) Often, cropping an image can make a huge difference in its quality and presentation. Hopefully by the end of this post you’ll feel like an image samurai, ready to slice up your images with careful precision and a hearty “Hiyah!” Getting Rid of the Ugly Bits Have you ever captured more with your image than you intended? Perhaps you took an impromptu picture of a beautiful vista and when you downloaded the photo on your computer, you realized there were some ugly power lines running up the side of your image. You only took one shot, so what do you do? You salvage the photo through cropping! Below you’ll see a photo I took while in Ecuador. It’s a fairly decent shot of the Amazon River basin, but it’s marred by the corrugated tin roof which I accidentally included in my shot by not zooming in enough: By cropping it out, the photo is greatly improved, showing just the view I intended to capture: Refining an Image’s Composition Sometimes you may want to change, tweak, or refine an image’s composition. This too can be achieved through cropping. Take this fantastic picture of a donkey...err, burro...that I took in Peru: Cool photo, but I wanted to emphasize the donkey's expressive face against the surrounding landscape. I achieved this effect by cropping the image to focus in on the donkey’s head and changing the picture’s orientation from landscape to portrait: Hee haw! Matching Image Sizes Matching image sizes by cropping has the effect of making a website look more professional, especially if the images are laid out in a gallery format or displayed in a slideshow. Here’s an example: Not bad, but the page could be greatly improved by cropping all three images to the same size: Simulate a Panorama Panoramic shots are imbued with drama as they encourage the viewer to sweep their eyes back-and-forth across the photo. While there is software available to stitch together a series of photos, it’s not always perfect and it can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s easier to just fake a panoramic, as I did with this shot of a winery and its lavender fields. It can be done by simply cropping the image to a wide aspect ratio--more high-falutin' talk for an image that's much wider than it is tall. Before cropping: After cropping: Taking this approach can be especially beneficial when creating a splash image for your homepage, which is best when it has the wide and short dimensions of a panoramic shot. Tools and Resources for Cropping Adobe Photoshop is, as they say, the Cadillac of photo editing software. So if you can get your hands on it, you’ll not only be able to crop images but do a million-and-one other adjustments as well. It’s also incredibly expensive and most likely overkill for everyone but image editing professionals (or wannabes like myself). There are other much more reasonable options, such as Adobe’s stripped down version of the program called Photoshop Elements, or a slew of other similar programs like Corel Paintshop Pro. There’s even an excellent open-source/free image editor called GIMP which is really powerful but also has a pretty steep learning curve. Cropp.me is a free online tool that works great and has a really attractive interface that allows you to crop multiple versions of an image automatically and then download them in a nicely compressed zip file. Picmonkey is another awesome, free online tool that provides even more image editing options than just cropping. Not to mention its interface is so freakin’ easy and intuitive that I’d be relatively comfortable suggesting it to my Grandma, or even my dad’s precocious puppy, Alf. So there you have it. Cropping is an effective tool to have in your photo editing arsenal and there are enough image editing programs out there to ensure you don’t have to live with an imperfect image on your website. Now go out and get cropping!]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/31/improve-your-websites-photos-by-cropping/feed/ 1 Adding a Weather Widget to Your Website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:14:39 +0000 Skai Kang http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2329 weather widget to your vFlyer website! Fortunately, it's really easy to do (unlike shoveling 3 feet of snow from your driveway). By adding a weather widget to your website, you can display live updates of the current weather in your area. It's a useful way of providing relevant local information and keeping your site content fresh. There are tons of weather widgets out there but the two that I like the best are from Weather.com and Weather Underground. They're completely free and you don't need to sign up for anything to get one. Let's use the Weather Underground widget (or sticker, as they call it) here. Visit the Weather Stickers page, where you'll find a form for your widget. Simply fill out the different parameters, choose the color and sticker type, and click the sticker to get the embed code. Copy the code. Now go to vFlyer and open the Site Editor, then navigate to the page where you want to place the widget. Pick the section on the page where you want to add the widget and add a new Freeform Module. In the editing window, click the Source button and paste the embed code, then click Save & Close. And there you go. Your site visitors will now know whether to put on snow boots or flip flops just by going to your website! ]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/23/adding-a-weather-widget-to-your-website/feed/ 0 On Last Weekend’s Site Outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=on-last-weekends-site-outage http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:52:10 +0000 Aaron Sperling http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2324 The Cause We have multiple servers supporting our services and customers’ marketing content and websites. One of the servers is the dedicated database server for all applications. It is a powerful server that tends to run at about 10% capacity. On Friday morning, this server experienced a RAID Controller failure that corrupted part of the file system. Consequently, our database wasn’t able to come up in read/write mode (the normal mode). The Response By late afternoon on Friday, we were able to get the database up in recovery (read-only) mode, which allowed us to bring online our customers’ marketing content and websites. We then looked to our database backups to restore to one that would take over. However, the series of backup files that were available were all invalid due to the backup having failed over the last week (probably due to the RAID Controller). We then needed to try to extract the data from the crippled database. The normal database backups wouldn’t work, so we worked with our data center to develop custom scripts to extract as much data as possible. This resulted in the development of a few scripts that extracted data table by table (there are over 350 tables). Working through the night on Friday, by Saturday morning, we had the data backed up and restored for about 325 tables. Still, there were 10 critical tables that we weren’t able to extract from the crippled database. Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I retained a high-end firm that specializes in mySQL database management and recovery efforts. They offered a tool that works differently than the mySQL backup program and often enables complete or partial recovery of data in situations like ours. They initiated their program on Saturday morning. It is a multi-step process that was expected to take 8-10 hours. However, it ended up taking closer to 24 hours. I personally monitored the progress through the day, evening, and early the next morning, taking 4 hours off Saturday night for some rest. While monitoring, my team and I worked to verify the data that was restored to the new production database. This recovery program completed early Sunday morning and we then evaluated the results. We were disappointed to discover that it wasn’t able to recover the important data that we needed. I concluded that we needed to focus on the most important data: those associated with active listings, followed by recent draft and expired listings. I decided to write a program to query the crippled database for this listing data and then write it to our new production database. The tricky issue was that the database would close the connection used by the program whenever it requested data in an area that was corrupted. We had to develop a way to handle that exception (when the connection is closed) and get a new connection. I brought in a close friend to write special components (Java wrapper classes) to handle these issues. On Sunday night, we were able to start testing the program first with staging data and then production data in a local environment. After a successful test, we started extracting and restoring active listing data early Monday morning. This program completed successfully by 6 am PST and I brought up our site on the new database. All but about 18 active listings were recovered. That evening, I ran the program to recover draft and expired flyers. It completed successfully late Monday night but some recent drafts were still missing. I then updated the program and ran it again on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening, almost all draft and expired flyers were recovered. Conclusion Hardware problems are going to happen to everyone eventually. What is important is the preparation and plan to deal with these issues when they occur. Regretfully, our response plan wasn’t as robust as it should have been. In addition, we didn’t have any alerts in place in case the database backups failed. I personally don’t want to ever have to go through that experience again and don’t want our customers to either. We will get a contingency database up on one of our other servers within the next two weeks. We are testing our new backup scripts tomorrow morning and will be monitoring them daily until we have an appropriate alert system in place. We will then look at other areas that need backup capabilities. Again, we apologize for the length of this outage and the impact it had on our customers. We also appreciate your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve it and get the service back up and running.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2013/01/11/on-last-weekends-site-outage/feed/ 0 5 Free Web Design Tools You Shouldn’t Miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:58:30 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2298 1. PicMonkey Got a photo that you want to spruce up? If so, you can't go wrong with PicMonkey. It's one of the simplest photo editing apps we've found, and you don't even need an account to use it. Just upload your photo and use the editing tools provided to add effects, change the colors, or overlay text. You can also create cool looking photo collages in a variety of layouts.

2. Design Seeds

This is a blog, not an app, but it's still a great resource for finding amazing color palettes. The author is a designer and color specialist, and each post is a beautiful photo along with five or six colors that she has picked out from it. It's a good place to get inspired!

3. Color Cop

We've long used Color Cop to capture the hexadecimal codes of colors on the web, and it would be great to use in conjunction with Design Seeds. (Here's a tutorial on how to add custom colors to your site's theme.) Note: Color Cop is not compatible with Macs, so if you're a Mac user, you'll need to find another color picker. One option is Image Color Picker, a free web app that allows you to upload an image and then pick out the hex codes of the colors in it.

4. Sumopaint

Sumopaint offers a web-based image editing tool that has a lot of the same characteristics as Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, it's free. It can be a little overwhelming to the beginner, though, so if you're going to use it, it's best if you have some experience with other advanced image editors like Photoshop or GIMP (and/or patience and a sense of adventure).

5. Google Web Fonts

The fonts you use on your website have a big impact on how it looks. Google Web Fonts is a collection of hundreds of free Open Source fonts, and it's amazing. Choose from a wide array of font styles and then copy a short code for each, which you can then add to your website. Here's a Google Web Fonts tutorial from our Help Center. With these 5 tools and vFlyer's Site Editor, you'll be well on your way to creating a website for your business or organization.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/13/5-free-web-design-tools-you-shouldnt-miss/feed/ 0 Building a Website Just Got Three Steps Easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/07/building-a-website-just-got-three-steps-easier/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=building-a-website-just-got-three-steps-easier http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/07/building-a-website-just-got-three-steps-easier/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:01:29 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=2294 enough. That's the conclusion we reached about the Site Wizard, which guides vFlyer Sites users through the process of creating a website. Whereas before it comprised four steps (five, if you include the final review of the information entered and the theme selected), the Site Wizard (shown below) is now a whopping one--yes, ONE--step. When you create a site now, you simply enter your site name, choose your business category, choose a theme, and BAM! You've built your website in under a minute. Just as before, you can easily change the site name or choose a different theme after you've created the site. You can also swap out the stock images associated with your theme with your own pictures, or choose a different photo from our stock image library. We hope the svelte new Site Wizard makes it easier for you to create a website. Of course, if you have questions, you can always check our help center or contact our support team by email, phone, or live chat.]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2012/12/07/building-a-website-just-got-three-steps-easier/feed/ 1