Doodlekit | Website Builder | Website Maker | Website Creator - Latest Blog Entries

Scheduled Maintenance this Sunday

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:32:00 -0500

We will be upgrading the servers this Sunday, the 31st in the morning around 9am.

There should be limited downtime. We'll post an update when it's complete.

New Statistics Engine on the Way - Reports Temporarily Disabled

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:50:00 -0500

We are currently working on a new statistics reporting engine to provide website usage information in a more convenient format. This will also improve website performance by moving to a nightly report process.

While that's going on we need to disable the current reports to ensure everything runs smoothly. We are currently targeting the first week of September for the new reports.

Website usage will still be tracked during this time, so once the new reports are ready, you will be able to see the data for this period.

Thanks to everyone for their patience.

Recent Downtime

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:45:00 -0500

UPDATE: 8/16 - We are still working on our long term solution for this. We know exactly what to do, it's just taking some time.

We had a problem with the systems today and the servers weren't responding for a few minutes. We have a number of plans to keep things speedy and up as much as possible. Namely we/ve almost doubled the number of processes, we're looking into improving caching, and working an alternate statistics engine to take load off during the day.

Just wanted to let you know we're keeping an eye on things, and to apologize for any inconveniences the downtime may have caused.

Doodlekit Form Builder Updated

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:47:00 -0500

We just released three new controls on the form builder:

HR (Horizontal Rule) - Now you can add a horizontal line to help 'break up' your form into sections.
Text Paragraphs - Now you can insert paragraphs of text between form controls to help explain sections of your form.
Password Field - Now you can have a textbox that allows people to enter in a password without showing what is being typed.

These new updates really help improve the look and usability of your forms.

If you have any other suggestions for form builder improvements, post a comment here and let us know.

New Doodlekit Website Builder Forums

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:30:00 -0500

Today Doodlekit released a new version of our forums tool. This version has more of a standardized look and feel to it. It should be more familiar to those who have worked with forums before. You can see an example of the new design by going to our forums:

http://doodlekit.com/forum

I will update this post later with more details.

Doodlekit Partners With Grassroots.org to Provide Free Website Builder Plans to Non-Profits

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:11:00 -0500

Doodlekit Online Free Website Builder has teamed up with Grassroots.org to provide free websites for valid 501c3 non-profit organizations. Doodlekit will provide qualifying organizations with a $14 a month voucher which can be applied to one of three website building plans we offer:

Simple Plan (normally $14 monthly) - FREE for non-profits
Business Plan (normally $29 monthly) - $15 monthly for non-profits
Advanced Plan (normally $49 monthly) - $35 monthly for non-profits

See Doodlekit's pricing page to compare features for each plan.

We have had a lot of requests by members for discounted or free websites for non-profit organizations. We are proud to be able to provide that now with the help of Grassroots.org.

Grassroots.org will validate that all applicants are valid 501c3 non-profit organization as well as procure their domains for them. They will also provide customer support regarding questions on how to use Doodlekit. All applicants must meet the Grassroots.org membership terms to qualify.

Organizations wishing to get Doodlekit vouchers will need to fill out an online application through Grassroots.org. They will then have access to Doodlekit through the Grassroots Toolbox.

Grassroots.org is an organization that serves as a catalyst for positive social change by leveraging modern technologies and best business practices. Grassroots.org provides nonprofit organizations with free valuable technologies and resources to increase their efficiency and productivity.

Top 10 Content Mistakes Made On Amateur Websites

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:09:00 -0500

Once you have decided to embark on a journey to create your first website, there are a few things you should consider before creating your content. Most amateur website owners think they can just log into any website builder they want and start typing in whatever content they want. What they don't realize is that the simple mistakes made when creating their website can make visitors leave it as soon as they see it - and not want to come back. But this doesn't have to happen to you.

Before we begin, here is good Rule Of Thumb to always consider when creating content for your website: Do professional periodicals and magazines do this with their articles? If the answer is 'No', then chances are you probably shouldn't do it on your website either.

1) Centering All Your Text

Most people new to website design seem to want to center all of their text. Not only does this make for an unattractive website, but it is the hallmark of an amateur. According to extensive research done on website design, usability and user surfing behavior, visitors read web text from left to right. Knowing this, it only makes sense to align your text this way. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part you should avoid centering all your text.

2) Too Many Fonts

If you have seen all the unique fonts available in Word or other programs, you may think that using a lot of those fancy writing styles is a way to make your website more popular or impressive. The truth is quite the opposite. When a variety of different fonts are used on a website, it makes the page look messy, and even hard to read. Use fonts that are clear and easy to read, like Verdana (which is a common font used for web text). You can use different fonts for headers and sub-headers; but they should be consistent throughout your website.

3) Over Bolding

As you build your website, you may be tempted to try and make a lot of your content stand out by putting it in bold print. Avoid the temptation. If you really have a certain phrase or key sentence that you want to make stand out on your page, you can bold it. However, be aware that bolding a lot of sentences and words does nothing but lessen the overall impact of the bold type.

4) Over Capitalizing

In order to emphasize your website content, you may think it's best to capitalize many of the words you are typing. This is another nasty habit that many novices to web design get into. Putting your content in all capital letters is equal to yelling at those reading your page. This will annoy visitors, dilute your message and will likely send them away.

5) Over Enlarging All Your Fonts

Avoid the overuse of large fonts for the same reasons above. Enlarging too much (or even ALL) of you content dilutes your message and throws off your design. If you make the content text larger than the headers, you are really messing up your website.

6) Too Many Exclamation Marks!!!!

Order Now And Get A FREE Sushi Knife!!!!

People will feel like they are in a infomercial - enough said.

7) Too Many Font Colors

It's amazing how colorful you can make your website nowadays. If you have been doing typical store-based marketing, you may also equate all those bright and dazzling colors with signs used to get customers into a store. The Internet is different. When people bring up your website, it's the first, and often only, impression they will get of your company. If you have too many font colors on the screen, it will look cheap and amateurish, plus your marketing message will be hard to read and will send your prospects away.

8) Spinning Logo / Animation Images

For some reason, back in the 90's when web development was first coming out, everyone thought having lots of animation on your website was really cool. It only took a few years for web designers to figure out that this was not the case. Today, amateur web designers make the same mistake. Spinning logos and animation distract people from the most important thing about their website - the content. Over the years, advertising banners on peoples websites have had lots of animation put into them. They do this so they can do just that - get your attention AWAY from the content on the site to look at their ad!

9) Too Much Data to Load

While most website builders will allow you to add a lot of things to your web page, that doesn't mean you need all of them. If you overload your site with pictures, music, videos or other graphics that have long load times, you will send some users - especially those with slower connections, away.

10) Too Much Content

While you may have a lot to say about your company, most people don't want to read that much. They want to know who you are, what you do and if you can help them. Then they want to know how to contact you for that purpose. If they have to read a novel to find the information they need, they will probably go elsewhere.

Make sure to keep these ideas in mind when you log on to your Doodlekit website and create your own online masterpiece.

Backend Upgrades and Maintenance

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:00:00 -0500

The past year has been very good for us, our signups are through the roof! Of course with this type of growth we have to ensure that everything is operating at top efficiency, and to look down the road to make sure we'll be good for a while.

Over the past two months we've been spending a lot of time fixing smaller issues and tuning the system. You probably haven't noticed much of a change, but that's the whole point.

If you're wondering what's coming, we've finished our re-design of the forums. All we have to do is finish up some testing and we'll be deploying that very soon. Heath's done a great job with them, and I know everyone will like it.

We have some more great things to come, including more ways you can use Doodlekit to make money yourself.

Stay tuned.

New Cool Doodlekit Coffee Mugs!

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:52:00 -0500

I designed some new Doodlekit coffee mugs for Ben and I, and then I thought, "Hmmmm... why not let other people order them as well?". Of course, they are little more pricey than I would like because I designed them through Zazzle and not through a 'bulk' retailer. In the future, we plan to offer them fairly cheap and give away a lot of them for free. But for now, this will have to do. If you can afford it, we would love it if you would order one of our Doodlekit mugs. The design is awesome (that's because I designed them of course!). Seriously, I would love to hear some feed back on the design. I hope you like them!

Doodlekit's new Partnership with Orange Soda

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:31:00 -0500

We are very excited to announce our new partnership with Orange Soda, the local internet marketing provider. Among other things, Orange Soda provides Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to small businesses at prices our customers are used to.

After creating a website, our customers first question is usually, "Why am I not showing up on Google?". Unfortunately the answer to this is not an easy formula we can apply to everyone. Orange Soda does the dirty work by putting their expertise to work on your website.

Orange Soda will among other things...

Submit you to search engines
Submit you to business directories
Perform keyword optimization

This is a perfect match for our existing SEO tools.

In addition, very soon we will be releasing extended SEO tools for more finely grained control of keywords and other information. This will allow you to add keywords, descriptions and titles to individual pages.

And this is just the beginning folks, stay tuned for more exciting developments.

Doodlekit takes on Business 2.0

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:39:00 -0500

Two years ago Doodlekit Online Free Website Builder was nothing more than a vague idea in the back of our minds. Ben and I had just started our own web development company (Doodlebit Web Solutions) a few months earlier, and we were selling small custom websites on the side when we had the time.

As more and more of our clients started requesting the same tools, we started to develop a custom, reusable framework. We immediately saw an opportunity – why not just sell this framework to the masses? The currently accepted philosophy at the time (a.k.a. Business 2.0) stated that in order to be a successful internet startup you had to have several millions of dollars in venture capitalist funds, resources, and business connections. The assumption back then was that software and web companies should break even after $20 million in investment. Not to mention you would need to move out to Silicon Valley (*see How To Build A Bulletproof Startup).

Then one day we came across a blog post from a small internet startup company called 37Signals that changed everything. The blog post, How To Shoot A Bullet Through Your Startup, railed against Business 2.0. It defied Corporate America’s view on how to run a web company. It denounced the waste, bureaucracy, and mindset of these entities that limited others from pursuing their dreams.

We loved it.

37Signals explained that you could start your own Web 2.0 company with hardly anything down and just one or two people. They had done all this themselves and had great success. Ben and I raced out to their website and purchased their online book, Getting Real, that explained in more detail how to achieve this type of success. We sat down and read the whole thing in one night.

Heath: "It's gonna take a few years to get Doodlekit up and running. We got 2 clients, $600, a refurbished PC, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
Ben: "Hit it."

The next day we started Doodlekit. We scrounged up $300 each, grabbed an old refurbished PC from Ben’s basement, slapped in some extra memory from my old computer, and we were off ‘getting real’!

A year and a half later (just 4 months ago) we had our first major release of Doodlekit. Since that time our membership base has increased to over 15,000 and our revenues have gone up 10 fold. We have zero debt.

Most of our competitors are multi-million dollar startups from the Business 2.0 way of doing things. Many of them still have yet to break even. We compete head-to-head with these companies and hold our own. How? Because Doodlekit is a much better product than what they offer. I find it rather humorous that a small company of two employees can successfully compete against so many multi-million dollar startups. If you put what we offer next to what they offer and let a consumer pick which one they want, they will pick Doodlekit. The only thing Doodlekit lacks right now is the budget that these larger corporations have for marketing. That’s all going to be changing very soon.

We aren’t out to be the next MySpace or YouTube. We aren’t measuring our success based on millions of dollars. We just want to make a decent living doing what we love doing – building websites! Doodlekit and 37Signals has given us both this opportunity, and for that, we are very grateful.

If your interested in helping us get the word out, please feel free to promote Doodlekit via a banner on your website. Ben and I would really appreciate it!

On a side note, I just wanted to let everyone know that 37Signals will soon be coming out with Getting Real (Second Edition). Ben and I will be the first in line to buy a copy!

Doodlekit Layout Forums Re-Design?

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:44:00 -0500

I have had several request to make the forums that come with Doodlekit look more like regular forums – basically make them a little more ‘compact’ and easier to read. I am looking into redoing the forums for ALL the layouts – so this will affect all our users that use our forums.

I would like to simplify them even more and make them easier to follow. Any suggestions from the community are appreciated and will be considered.

Doodlekit now supports external domain hosting

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:04:00 -0500

For those of you who already have registered your domain name, setting that up with Doodlekit just got a whole lot easier. All you have to do now is setup your Nameservers to point to our new DNS servers, and you're done. This will automatically setup your website and email DNS.

I recommend that anyone who has already setup your existing domain name using a CNAME take the time to change to this new method.

The detailed instructions are in the forums.

Network Upgrade Complete

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:48:00 -0500

Our network provider has just completed their network upgrade. This upgrade will mean better performance and uptime for all Doodlekit Websites.

Thank you for your patience.

Doodlekit Gets A New Layout!

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:42:00 -0500

Ok – I finally got a new layout out! We have had lots of requests for more layouts, so that’s been my focus for the last few days. The new layout currently only has 5 color themes, but I will be adding more throughout the following week.

I will also be adding more layouts here shortly. These will be more ‘generic’ and ‘simple’ for those that want less complex looking sites. They will also make good starting layouts for those that know CSS and want to customize their own look and feel.

As far as color themes go, if you have any suggestions I would love to here them! Post a link to a website that has color themes you like and I will see If I can incorporate a few requests into the color theme selection.

Doodlekit's Website Builder Gets Funky Fonts!

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:17:00 -0600

Now available with all Doodlekit layouts, you get the option to change your Header, Page, and Sidebar title fonts – and these aren’t the boring ‘web safe’ fonts either! Using a new version of sIFR technology, we were able to incorporate fonts outside the normal limits of use for web development. Most browsers support this technology - for the few that don’t, it gracefully degrades down to a web safe font.

Here is a sample of what your font selection looks like from the website builder admin tool:

Here is what a Doodlekit website looks like with the default font:

Here is the same website with a new ‘Funky Font’ selected for the title:

Check out our demo website to see a live example.

Try out all our fonts! Find the one that right for you. More fonts coming your way soon!

Doodlekit Website Builder Goes International

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:09:00 -0600

Today we pushed out internationalization options for our Doodlekit Website Builder! You now have the ability to:

Change front-end labels to different languages
Pick a preferred date format
Pick your time zone for timestamps
Pick a currency for use with the Shopping Cart.

Right now you can only switch to one of the selectable languages provided. However, we will soon be releasing a properties file that you can customize to any language you want.

More cool stuff coming soon!

We’re still here!

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:39:00 -0600

We have been super busy since our new release of Doodlekit a few months ago. We have been spending most of our time optimizing and bug fixing Doodlekit to make it more reliable, faster, and better. These thing, while not noticeable to our users, have kept us pretty busy.

Well – we are close to wrapping that all up! We should start releasing some new cool tools and extras by next week! Multi-language labeling is on the way, as well as more layouts! We are also working with http://grassroots.org to set up a system for them to use Doodlekit for non-profit websites! Also in the works: Doodlekit reseller and affiliate programs! We will post these updates as they happen on our blog, as well as through a monthly email. We have lots coming your way… so stay tuned!

Server Outage - 1/9/08

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:19:00 -0600

Today our hosting provider had some issues with their provider which caused our servers to go down for a couple of hours. Everything is back to normal now.

We of course realize that this can be very frustrating, and are researching different hosting options to keep problems like this from happening again.

I apologize for this inconvenience. Please contact us if you have any further concerns.

*Update - We got this email from our provider:

Earlier this morning one of our data centers suffered a major power
outage. I have not received an explanation of the nature of the outage
and why the UPS backup and generators did not fail over properly. I
assure you I will investigate this thoroughly and understand what is
being done to prevent it in the future.

Unfortunately, this caused a large number of our virtual machine host
servers to reboot bringing down about 500 virtual servers and
additional causing network issues on half of the inbound routes. As
some noticed, this affected our internal sites as well.

Over the past few hours, we have been working diligently to verify and
check everyone's server.

I apologize for this major inconvenience and appreciate your
understanding and patience as we restore service to everyone as fast
as we can.

Multi-Language Labeling For Doodlekit

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:15:00 -0600

Doodlekit is currently working on a multi-language labeling system for the front end of all Doodlekit websites. We have had a lot of request for this, so we have decided to move forward with a solution. This will mean that you will be able to change your website's 'labels' to whatever text you want, in whatever language you type in. Static website text like 'subscribe', 'more', 'search', etc are examples of the labels you will be able to reword.

We will also be including time zone support options so that your timestamps will match up with your selected location. You will also have the option to select a desired timestamp format.

Ben and I take all suggestions on how to improve Doodlekit seriously, and we hope this demonstrates our flexibility in accommodating requested features by our valued members.