We've just released a major change to how saving works on Webon. We've adopted the model made popular with Google Docs and other popular Web 2.0 applications.

Webon now auto-saves once every 2 minutes. There is also a 'save' button in the upper right corner. You can manually save any time you like by clicking this. Webon will also save whenever you switch pages or close your site.

This change speeds up the editor considerably and should give users a better sense of security about their changes being saved.

What has been removed with this release is the "Undo" function that used to pop-up when you would move a picture or delete an object. You will now be given a warning when deleting items about whether the item can be easily replaced from the Add-on Manager or the Media Manager (such as Guestbooks, Maps, Photos, etc) or if it will be permanently deleted (such as Custom HTML).

Leave any questions you have about this here in the comments and we'll answer.

Hey everyone. Got some cool new features and some important information for you.

RE-CAPTCHA
We are so pleased to inform you that we have switched from our in-house Captcha to the more common, industry-standard "Re-Captcha" technology used by many popular Internet sites. Instead of a jumbled collection of letters and numbers that users are as likely to get wrong as to get right we now have a display of two words that are easier to read and get correct. It will still serve to filter out a majority of Spam posts and will make it a lot easier for you and your users to leave comments on Guestbooks, bodys, and Photo Albums.

WEBON DATABASE SERVER UPGRADE
This morning we moved the Webon database to it's own, dedicated server machine. This is something that has no visible effect but will serve to help the Webon Editor move a bit more quickly as it switches between pages. It's part of a broad series of changes we are making to speed up the Editor. We are also about to release a change to the way Webon auto-saves pages that will further increase the speed of the Editor. We will do a body post all about it next week when the code change goes out.

NEW STYLES
We released 5 new styles yesterday. And there will be many more in the coming months. We brought in a dedicated employee for styles this summer and he is really getting the hang of things and beginning to turn them out faster and faster.

• Coffee Smoked: a cool, loungy style with smoke-curl accents
• Floral Clover: featuring an attractive illustration with dusty green tones
• Scratched: grungy and urban with a heathy dose of attitude
• Skooled: will appeal to site owners with a focus on education
• Woofers: a bright, happy style built for dog lovers

MIGRATION APPROACHING 100%
You may have seen, heard, read about the Migration that has been occuring on Tripod.com where users of Trellix can move their sites onto Webon. After various fit and starts we've finally reached almost 100% availability of the process to Tripod users of Trellix. Working on this occupied almost all of our development resources this past summer and really affected the pace at which we have been able to do bug fixing and roll out new features for Webon. We are SO pleased to be almost done with this because we want to do some serious upgrades and enhancements to Webon this fall and winter and we're just about at the point where we can.

We are aware of some of the bugginess around Fonts, Photo Albums, and other parts of the Webon Editor that have crept in in the last months and we want to assure you that we will be fixing them and bringing Webon back up to the standard that you should expect.

More information coming soon about some of the upcoming projects.

Thank you so much for using Webon!

Hello Webon users!

So you may have noticed the change to the homepage and we want to take a few moments and fill you in on what's going on. First off and most importantly... nothing bad.

In fact, it's great!

As you may or may not be aware, Webon is made by Lycos and Lycos also owns the Tripod and Angelfire hosting properties. Webon is as of now the official new Site Builder for Tripod (http://www.tripod.com) and is replacing the Trellix Site Builder. The "big project" we've alluded to in recent blog posts is the migration process from Trellix into Webon and many of the features that have appeared in Webon over the last few months were things that Trellix did that Webon also needed to do (table tool, audio, documents, etc).

What this means to you is that Webon's future is more secure and exciting than ever.

Now that Webon is on Tripod our userbase will be growing dramatically over the next year. To meet this challenge we have brought on some new programmers to add to our excellent existing team. We will be doing rounds of bug fixing and usability improvements throughout August and some of September. At the same time we'll be starting work on a host of new features and services.

Some of our ideas for Webon include:

• PayPal Shopping Cart (this is almost complete and should become available soon)
• GREATLY expanded Template Library (we're holding interviews this week for a person to become the main go to person for Templates and expect to start cranking out new ones every week beginning later this month).
• Easier options for customizing Styles
• Improved connectors to various Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, etc
• Many new Add-ons (like a wiki tool, a forum, various other widgets, etc)
• Better integration of Webon with Angelfire.
• Lots of other stuff

At some point later in the year we will roll you, our existing userbase, into either Tripod or Angelfire and you will pick up additional functionality and features. Your sites will NOT be affected negatively.

We are so appreciative of your loyalty and we really want to reward our existing users for that by continuing to improve Webon in myriad ways. Thanks so much for choosing Webon!

We are so excited to be releasing many powerful new features today.

• Audio Uploads and Audio Player
• File uploading (Docs, PDFs, .xls, etc)
• Linking to any file in your media manager
• Form Creator Tool
• Page Counter

Audio Uploads and Audio Player
You can now upload MP3s and WAV files to your Media Manager and place them on your site. You'll notice a new icon in the Editor labeled "Audio". It works just like dropping a picture on your site. Drop the audio icon somewhere on your page and Webon will let you browse to an audio file in your Media Manager or upload a new audio file and will then place a small, flash-based audio player where you dropped the icon. The player works in any browser that has the Flash plugin installed (which is basically all of them at this point). In a later version we will add functionality for creating audio playlists... similar to albums for pictures.

Support for new file types
When you go to your Media Manager now you'll see two new tabs that didn't exist before. One is "Audio" which is where the files we just mentioned go... and the other is "Docs". Docs is where you can upload and manage Word Docs, Text files, Spreadsheets, PDFs and such.

Link to any file in your Media manager
Now, when you highlight text on your site and use the "Create Link" tool you'll see that you can browse to any file in your Media Manager and make a link to it. This means you can make a link to any document type you can upload. It also means you can make a link to image files and audio files.You can also link to video files but they will be downloaded as .swfs rather than as MPEG or AVI. We will revisit that particular thing in the future and improve it. One other thing to mention is that the filenames of linked media that you link to currently come from our internal numbering system.That's another thing we will improve in an upcoming release.

Form Creator Tool
In your Add-ons box there is a new icon for our Form Creator. This can be used as a survey tool, a contact form, or whatever you like. When users fill out the form and submit it an email containing their answers will be automatically sent to you at the email address you have registered to your account.

Page Counter
Another new addition to your Add-ons box is a Page Counter. Drop this on a page and it will begin to count how many visits that page has had.

Bugs or Questions?
As always we're pleased to answer your questions and definitely want to hear about any problems or bugs you may be experiencing. Feel free to leave comments here... we read them every day... but PLEASE include your username with your comment. It's impossible for us to see your problem if we don't know where to look.

NOTE: If you have any trouble seeing any of these updates you may need to clear your "browser cache".
Internet Explorer users: Tools > Internet Options > General Tab > Delete (Browsing History).
Firefox users: Tools > Options > Clear Now (Private Data).

We are pleased to announce the release of our new Table Tool. With this tool you will be able to easily create and format tables on your sites.  You will notice that the Table Tool has its own text formatting and file insertion controls. With these controls you can insert images and videos directly into your tables. If you click the "Settings Cog" at the top right of the table you will see additional controls for adding and deleting rows and columns, and for changing other style options such as background colors and borders. Feel free to try it out and leave a comment here to let us know what you think about it.

You can also follow us on Twitter at @webon_team and Direct Message us there if you'd like. We do check it often.

Another exciting new feature is the updated Page Manager tool. This update makes it easier to manage your pages and allows you to control the Title, Keywords, and Description meta tags on a per page basis. By using these tags on your sites, you can increase your page rankings in search engines.  Take advantage of it and be found more easily.

We've also released a cool new style called Circuit Board with a very high-tech feel.

As usual we are always happy to hear your feedback.

There are also many other exciting new features in the works, including: audio uploads and player, file uploads, and a shopping cart. Coming soon to a browser near you.

Stay Tuned

We just released a new Add-on. You can find it at the bottom of your add-ons palette labeled "YouTube". Drag it onto a page and then click the settings icon to add the URL or Embed code; both will work. It is also possible using custom HTML  but this makes it a lot easier.

If you make some edits to how the player should look for a particular video on YouTube.com and paste the resulting Embed code into the YouTube add-on Webon will show the player with your styling.

We also made a number of significant changes "under the hood" to the way Webon publishes it's files. Although you won't see most of them, these changes will increase the stability and speed that your pages are served. One change you will see is the removal of the "Owner Options Bar" from Guestbooks on published sites. In order to edit questions on your Guestbooks you will need to be logged into the Webon Editor.

As always your comments and feedback are welcome!

We are happy to announce the release of some new styles and features to Webon close on the heels of the move over to Angelfire. We're still working busily to improve Webon for you even as we integrate it with the new platform.

Today's release contains two new Styles: 

GreyBiz is a clean, simple style designed for businesses or anyone who wants a professional look.

Blue Lounge is a modern style with the flavor of a cool, smoky Jazz club.

There are also some new features that were requested by multiple users and which we hope will please everyone.

1. Password protection for sites. In your Site Manager area you'll now find a new option in your "Actions" drop-down menu labeled "Security" where a username and password can be assigned to a particular site. Only someone with the username and password you assign will be able to access your site. Good for wedding sites, baby pictures, or any type of personal info that you might prefer to keep private.

2. Open in New Window can be found in the menu where you make text into a link. You'll notice that there is a checkbox at the bottom of that box that allows you to specify that a link should open in a new window when it is clicked.

And finally, there were a number of under-the-hood bug fixes to increase stability and in particular to prevent Videos from hanging or becoming corrupted.

As you may already know, Webon is being pushed to full service as a site building tool for Angelfire.com. As a part of this migration, we are changing the URL of published Webon sites from:

http://subdomain.webonsites.com
to:
http://subdomain.ash.com.

What that means for you is that if you have a site called joesmith.webonsites.com – you will now publish to joesmith.ash.com. Anyone visiting your site will still find you using joesmith.webonsites.com and now also at joesmith.ash.com.

Have more Questions – check out our Q&A below:

Q. Do I have to do anything?
A. No, you do not have to do anything. If you like, you can tell people about your updated domain name but even if you do not the old URLs will still continue to work.

Q. What is ash.com?
A. ASH stands for (A)ngelfire (S)ite (H)osting... ASH

Q. Will people still be able to find my site if I had published to webonsites?
A. We will automatically forward anyone who types in an address at webonsites.com to its corresponding address at ash.com

Q. Can I still publish to webonsites.com?
A. No, that address will be fully disabled for further publishing. However, all sites published there in the past will be automatically forwarded to the new address.

Q. My Webon site is published to my own Domain Name... will I be affected?
A. No, your Domain will continue to work exactly as before.

Q. Will Webon keep getting new features and improvements once it's on Angelfire?
A. Resoundingly YES! We have many exciting and useful features and upgrades planned and are working on them even as this migration is occurring.

Q. What happened to Webon Free Accounts? Can I still get Webon for Free?
A. All existing free users will keep their free accounts. New users will be able to try out the tool but will need to pay to publish. This state is temporary as we merge the Webon and Angelfire billing structures together. Our plan in the near future is to create new payment tiers for Webon that line up with Angelfire and give users basic, intermediate, and advanced use of Webon on Angelfire.

Some Information About The Why and What:

Detailed information about the migration is located here our Webon Team Blog: http://team.webonsites.com

Want to know more about Angelfire?

Since 1995, Angelfire has been a premier website hosting and building community, for more information please visit: http://www.angelfire.lycos.com.

However, (and this is important) we will be merging the Webon payment plans with the Angelfire plans very soon so please hold off on purchasing any services from Angelfire until we make that announcement in the next few weeks.

Anyone can sign up for a free account at Angelfire and if you are logged into Webon when you go to look at Angelfire you will notice that it welcomes you by your Webon username. If you click "login" it would make the most sense to try out the "Angelfire Free Plan". In a few weeks paying users of Webon will automatically be given a plan on Angelfire. We will make an announcement and send out another Change of Service email to all users when that occurs.

Thanks for your patience as we make this switch.

After many months of building and beta-testing we are pleased to announce that Webon is officially moving out of beta and into a new home at Angelfire!

Angelfire is one of Lycos' flagship publishing platforms, with a thriving and active community of builders. Moving Webon here will provide us with some exciting benefits that we'll detail below, and our primary goal during this process is to make the transition as smooth as possible for you. At no point will you need to move your sites, your files, or do anything at all. All existing features and Web addresses will continue to work and a number of new features should become available soon.

What things are changing?

1.) New URL. We are changing the URL of our Homepage to http://webon.angelfire.lycos.com. But the old http://www.webon.com address will continue to work as well... so nobody will get lost.

2.) New Logo. You will notice the Angelfire logo appearing with the Webon logo.

3.) New Publish Location. Eventually, users will be publishing their websites to a new address at yoursite.ash.com (ash = Angelfire Site Hosting). However, all existing Webon Site URLs will continue to work exactly as before. You will not need to worry about updating existing links to your site unless you want to. More on this in a later post.

The Webon Site Builder itself will continue to get upgrades, improvements, new styles, and new functionality added to it going forward.

What are the benefits for you?

1.) Email and Multiple Domain Management. Angelfire's platform already supports email addresses for your Domains, and more advanced management of multiple Domains... so look for those soon.

2.) Google's AdSense. This move will put Webon in a much better place to offer Google's AdSense which will give you another way to make money from your site. Now that we're joining up with Angelfire, we'll be able to meet Google's requirements to offer AdSense sooner and we will work hard to get that out to you as quickly as we can.

3.)  More Traffic. Angelfire is one of the largest website hosts around and receives a lot of traffic from visitors.  Once Webon is integrated, more visitors will be able to find your sites than ever before.

As usual please feel free to leave comments and questions and we will answer them as they come in.

First, thanks to everyone who left a comment on our last post.  We're starting to work on the features you suggested along with some others that we think you'll find helpful in building your sites.

Before we could get started on those, however, we wanted to finish some improvements to Webon's built-in photo albums, which we just released.  As you might have noticed, their background and accent colors now match the ones used for the rest of your site, creating a frame that lets your photos stand out.  To make it easier to work with your photos, we've also added a "zoom bar" to the Media Manager; this lets you zoom in to see larger thumbnails of your media, or zoom out to manipulate lots of them at once.  And as always, we made some adjustments and fixes to other parts of the service while we were at it.

In addition to the features and fixes, we created a new gift-themed style called Gift-Wrapped, just in time for Valentine's Day.  If you'd like a creative, personal, and inexpensive way to show your love, why not take your photos and compose a few words on a website dedicated to your significant other?