TotSites

TotSites is all about showing off your fun photos, memories etc with friends and family. This does not mean you are *limited* to these items and in fact we encourage you to expand the possibilities.

For example: Pregnancy / Birthday tickers

Tickers are a fun way to add more flare to your forum signatures, emails and you guessed it…. your TotSite!

Adding a ticker to your TotSite is relatively easy but does take a few extra steps.

1) Go ahead and create a ticker of your choice from one of the many ticker sites: lilypie.com, tickercentral.com, tickers.baby-gaga.com, and www.snugglepie.com/tickers.html (if you know of another good ticker site please let us know)

2) Locate the “HTML” code provided once your ticker is generated.

3) Login to your TotSite

4) Navigate to the “General” page and look for the homepage text box.

5) Click on the icon.

6) A new window will open where you can paste the HTML code provided in step 2 above.

7) Save the changes in the new window, then save the changes for the “General” page.

Depending on which design you are using you may need to play around with the location of the ticker so it fits well with the design. It might be as simple as adding a couple new lines before or after the ticker. In any case it gives you the opportunity to add fun new elements to your site while adding a personal touch.

Have fun!

Brian

Just a quick note to let you know the Airplane Design is now live. With this new release we now have 21 adorable designs to choose from. Thank you to the design team for keeping ‘em coming!

Enjoy!

Brian

The newest edition to our website designs is nearly complete. Many people have been asking when it’s going to be available so I wanted to at least give you a sneak preview. (Over the past several months this has been the most popular design request.)

Airplane Design 

The majority of the design is completed but we expect some minor changes.

Our goal is to release a several more designs before the end of the year. Please continue to send us your requests so we can use your input to create the most popular designs first.

We will also be premiering a new “forum” in the next month that will have a dedicated section for everyone to talk about future designs. The goal is to have a more interactive dialog with everyone so we are sure to create designs that are most appealing to everyone.

Stay tuned!

Brian

Many of you enjoy posting the link to your TotSite in your signature files in forums, blogs and other public places. Unfortunately this increases the likelihood that random “spam bots” can find your site and then start signing your guestbook with unwanted messages. We already have a robust spam detection tool in place but it did not stop those pesky “empty” guestbook entries. (If you do find spam on your guestbook please be sure to click the “report as spam” button so we can continually improve our anti-spam tool.)

To combat those random empty messages we added a great new feature to the guestbook section of your TotSite yesterday. In addition to our spam detection tools we now have an image verification check. It looks something like this:

People who sign your guestbook are required to enter the text in the image before their message is saved. You might have seen something similar on many popular websites such as MSN, Yahoo and Google. Each time the picture loads a new random set of letters are displayed making it very difficult (in not impossible) for “spam bots” to guess the right answer. Now you are ensured that a human is the one signing your guestbook and not some random computer!Your privacy is very important to us. Thank you to those who recommended adding this feature to our growing set of tools designed to help you create a fun, and easy to use baby website!

Brian

Over the weekend we finalized part 1 of the movie upload process.

 1) We have had many requests asking for the ability to “link” to other home movies that people have uploaded to services like Google Video or YouTube. Premium Plus members can now upload movies directly to TotSites and link to external movies uploaded to services such as Google Video. This gives you greater flexibility with your home movies. Instead of sending out a series of movie links to these external services, your friends and family can simply visit your TotSite and view these movies along with your photos, journals and fun facts; all in one place.

 2) You can now upload Flash Video (flv) files to your TotSite. These types of files are more streamlined and will provide a much more elegant experience for your friends and family. If you’re not sure what “Flash Video” is, go to Google Video or YouTube for a brief example. You can download the Free Riva FLV Encoder 2.0 for this type of video at http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?downloads&L=3 . (scroll to the bottom).

So this is part 1, right? The next update will help automate the conversion process to Flash Video (for most movies) as well as some other fun tools.

Hope you enjoy!

Brian

A quick bit of October news.  I’m heading off on a photo excursion to Ecuador for the next few weeks.  I imagine it’ll be just like Rain Forest TS design, except with more bugs.  Hopefully a journey to the Galapagos and the Amazon will provide additional inspiration for some new designs!

Speaking of which, though I’m leaving the country, this doesn’t mean our loyal TotSites members are left hanging.  I’ve actually completed the layouts for two more premium designs.  These new themes should be published in the next couple weeks!

Everyone have a safe, enjoyable October.

Max