Adorable Baby Websites in Minutes - Simple to use and fun!

We are pleased to announce a new childrens book review section (http://www.totsites.com/books/), offering reviews of high quality books for infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children. Each review is written by a certified Child Development Professional and will include bibliographic data, the ideal age range for the book, and review of the contents.

Many of you may have already seen a few recommended books when you logged out of your TotSite. After some discussion (and helpful feedback from you), we determined that reading with your child is important enough to warrant a dedicated section on TotSites!

Each week a new book will be added for you to consider. Don’t forget that your local library will likely have many of the selections we feature that you can enjoy without needing to buy the book. Though depending on how much your child loves the book, you might be checking out the book week after week and wishing you would have grabbed your own copy!

If you have a favorite book that you want us to consider adding to the Book of the Week or just have feedback, let us know!

Brian

If you want to learn more about how reading with your child is helpful – check out this article: Why Reading Books is Important

Many parents are concerned about privacy and security when it comes to their children and their TotSite. To help you with this goal, we have consolidated all “security” related features that you can enable/disable into a new section of your TotSite admin panel. You can find the link to the “Security Center” at the bottom of every page once you are logged in to your TotSite. There are several other precautions we take to ensure your privacy but these are the additional items you can choose to enable / disable depending on your preferences.

Here is the list of available security features with a brief description that you can currently modify:

• Add or change a site password: (default: disabled)
  You can choose to force visitors to enter a site password before they can view your TotSite. This is extremely useful if you want to restrict who has access to your site. Another added benefit to including a site password will ensure your TotSite never shows up on search results within Google, MSN, Yahoo and other popular search engines.    

  NOTE: Your site will only show up in search engine results if you place links to your TotSite in public areas such as forums or blogs without a site password. TotSites does not publish your personalized URL. My wife and I have had our daughter’s TotSite online for nearly 3 years now (*without* a site password) and it is not listed in the search engines since we never posted links in public forums. If you would like to post your site URL in forum signatures, that is fine, but you might consider adding a site password to your TotSite if you *do not* want your site in search engine results. It really comes down to your personal preferences. Many parents prefer their site to be listed in search results so friends and family can find it easier!
  

• Enable the password to be included in weekly alerts and site invitations: (default: disabled)
  If you have a site password enabled, it might be a good idea to share this password in the weekly alert emails and invitations. Otherwise your friends and family will need to contact you directly to obtain the password.
  
• Add / Remove your site from the public “Tot” directory: (default: enabled)
  The Tot Directory is a way for visitors to search for your TotSite. Visitors will be able to use your first name, last name or totname to search for your TotSite. It will make people finding your TotSite much easier.
  
• Turn on / off the “image verification”: (default: enabled)
  When visitors go to sign your guestbook or signup for alerts, they will be required to enter a “image verification check” if this option is enabled. We highly recommend this feature if you post links to your TotSite in public areas such as forums or blogs, as it *greatly* reduces the amount of spam you will receive. Here is an example image we display:         

  
  

• Prevent Photo Copying: (default: disabled)
  To prevent users from right clicking to copy your photos, enable this feature. It will prevent most visitors from viewing the source code of your site.

 

As many of you know, we store the IP address of each and every visitor to your site. In most cases the IP address will give you the general geographical location of your visitors. We are looking to add a new lookup tool that will give you an overview of your visitors locations. For those of you with friends and family abroad it will give you a good indication of who was visiting and when!

Here are a couple other recent changes at TotSites:

- Added the ability to sort your address book.
- The “Prevent Photo Copying” feature was added
- Floating flowers have been added to Easter 1

What is next? We are working on a new feature will allow you to choose a general “Links” section instead of a “gift registry” for your TotSite. It should be ready in the next couple weeks!

Brian

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’re enjoying our two new Easter themes.  There was so much demand, and I had too many ideas to throw around to just stop at one.

I just wanted to give you an update on what’s in store for upcoming TotSites designs.  Now that we’ve completed a lengthy run of winter/spring holiday designs (Xmas, V-Day, St. Patty’s, Easter), we’ll be concentrating on adding some non-holiday themes.  There may be some spring/summer-related themes in the works for coming months, but I’m also looking to get back into a few more “adventure” and even “generic baby” motifs.

Stay tuned, and enjoy the arrival of Spring!

Max

Today is officially Saint Patrick’s Day and we figured it would be a great time to release the new Easter themes.

Easter 1: A more traditional Easter theme. The top header features children on an Egg hunt with other areas of the design mixed with hidden treasures. This design is available to all TotSites members. (We will be adding floating flowers in the next couple days.)

View Easter 1

 

Easter 2: If you like a more lighthearted design – this Easter theme is for you. Not only do several areas of the site randomly change, you have the choice from a “blue” and a “pink” version depending on your taste. As a final touch, you can choose to have colorful easter eggs floating on your site.

View Easter 2

 

Interested in learning more about Easter? Here is a great online resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter

Hope you enjoy the new designs! Please leave any feedback you might have either here in the blog or send us an email.

Brian

 

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about the downtime this morning. We were performing a network upgrade late last night that took a bit longer then expected. Normally these types of updates take less then 30 minutes and are done during non peak hours. In any case TotSites is now back and available!

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Brian

As many of you already know, you can add multiple children to a single TotSite. Most areas of the site are shared, but each child has their own fun facts and growth chart sections. This is a great time saver for busy parents who don’t have time to update multiple sites and creates a “one-stop” place for friends and family to see all those adorable pictures, fun facts and stories.

While being able to add multiple children to a single TotSite has been a popular feature on TotSites, it has a few drawbacks. Over the last several months we have been talking with parents who had recently given birth to multiples. With their help, we came up with a list of possible enhancements to existing TotSites designs to work better with twins, triplets and in general, for any Family who wants to use TotSites for all their children. The most basic of these features is to add plural versions of non editable graphics. For instance, on the Pink Princess design, if you have a single child it will say “Little Princess” at the top. With the new enhancements it will now say “Little Princesses”.

These changes might seem minor but they add that extra touch to your site. We do our best to ensure that your site looks adorable and professional at the same time, regardless of how many children you want to include on your TotSite!

We are making an effort to start upgrading the existing designs but wanted your help to prioritize which to upgrade first! The Princess design is already in process but the next will be based on your feedback. Please leave a comment here in the blog or send us an email with your wish list.

The process of upgrading existing designs with the new enhanced features will not be completed overnight, but instead between other new features and designs (such as the upcoming Easter theme). This means if you are using a design that needs updating be sure to let us know!

I would like to extend a big thank you to those parents who took the time to send us your feedback. Your suggestions will help improve TotSites in order to be the best baby / toddler website service available!

Brian

 

My wife and I are close to welcoming our second child into the world, and when I saw the article, Real Baby Essentials, it piqued my interest. 

With less then 2 months away my mind started racing with all the home projects and baby essentials we needed to pick up. You would think that since we have been through this once we would be immune to the “baby item marketers” of the world =). It was a nice reminder to see what we really need to prepare for baby. In reality, we had all our essential items covered but the baby bath (Even that can be solved with the sink!).

If you’re expecting in the near future, check it out! Real Baby Essentials 

Remember, you can rate the article by clicking on the “stars” at the bottom of the article or by leaving a comment here in the blog. This helps us better target and rate our authors!

Brian