Category: WMS

New WMS Feature: Search Text

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

We have just launched a new WMS feature that make it easier to find any text in your WMS managed site.

Simply click “Find” in the menu when editing Pages or Components and you will be able to search for any word, phase or sentence.  This includes text that is not currently published to your live site.

 

Note that the search is NOT case sensitive (upper or lower case does not matter) and it uses an exact match (spelling, spacing etc has to be exact).

We hope you like this little extra tool and that you find it useful while managing your site using the Ezone WMS.

 

Mastering your Mobile Web presence

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

As everyone is aware, a mobile/tablet friendly web presence is vital to successful business. This is especially true in the hotel and hospitality markets as evidenced by this ehotelier article.

Photo of very old phone

Here at Ezone we are acutely aware of this and are constantly working to ensure that we have the technical solutions to enable you to meet the ever rising mobile demands.  Of course, it is more than just keeping up with the newest buzz words in the industry, we must understand the technology that allows us meet your online mobile goals and stay within your budget!

One of the fruits of our work in this area is a new mobile website service to add to our existing options!  Here is a quick summary of 3 options we offer new and existing clients:

1. One site to fit them all

The first option is to update your existing site so that it adapts depending on the device, for example changing width and menu layout for small screens and resizing images.  This is often referred to as “responsive design”.

This is the most flexible option, and results in a new site which is a much more useable, manageable and powerful site going forward. How complex this is depends on your existing site’s design, complexity and age.

A complete redesign can be included.

2. Divide and Conquer

The second option is to create a second “version” of the website that is displayed on mobile devices only. This results in a clean, very focused site on mobile devices.  One disadvantage of this option is that it results in a completely separate website that must be updated for future technical changes and or redesigns.

3. Simple but effective

Our new offering is a simpler and cheaper version of the Divide and Conquer approach. We use our tools to create a simplified, mobile friendly site at a lower upfront cost. The on-going costs are also lower.

The major difference is that it is not content managed. The mobile site is updated on an agreed schedule (for example monthly or every week).

As usual, if you have any questions about the above or would simply like to find out more please contact us at [email protected].

WMS Tips: Editing images in your WMS library

Posted on by Ezone Interactive
Did you know you can edit your images after you’ve uploaded them to your WMS library? You don’t have to do everything in an external editor before uploading. Here’s how:
On your site, click on the Libraries tab. Select the image you want to edit (only click once, a double click will open the image). In the toolbar, the Edit Image button on the right hand side will become active. Click on the Edit Image button. The image will open in the image editor.

 

From here, there are many features you can use to edit your image. There is a zoom tool in the top right and along the bottom there are various menus. You will need to click on them, not just hover over them. The one you will probably find the most useful is the Adjustment menu. Here you can find features such as crop, resize, rotate.
You can also add Effects, Borders and Text to your image. The Overlay allows you to inport another image and place it on top of the image already opened. The secondary image has to be saved on your local machine or cloud drive, rather than in the WMS.
When you’re ready, click the Save button in the top left corner. In the new box, name your image and click save again. Now click Okay. Your image is now saved in your WMS library. Note: when you edit an image the original file is still saved in the WMS library, along with your new file.
As usual, email [email protected] if you have any questions.

WMS server upgrade – UPDATE: WMS unavailability period is now Friday 7th September 2am to 9am

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

Dear WMS Users

**Update** As you may have seen from our initial blog post and email last week we are upgrading the server the WMS runs on this week. The time that this upgrade will be carried out has changed to between 2am and 9am on Friday 7th September. During this time none of your websites will be affected however you will not be able to edit them through the WMS.

If you use the WMS IP address in your firewall then we will supply a new IP address early next week.

If you have any queries relating to this please email [email protected]

Best Regards

Stuart Ferguson – WMS Support

Having problems with your website emails?

Posted on by Ezone Interactive


If you are having issues with emails sent from your website contact or enquiry forms please read on…

Email that is sent directly from your website works differently from email sent from Outlook, gmail or other provider. Most  websites send email directly from the server where the web site is hosted.  This is common practice and works fine in most cases, and is separate from normal email.

However, there are a few potential downsides:
  1. Email from the hosting web server is more likely to get wrongly identified as spam by the recipient system. Correcting this is  pretty complex.
  2. When email is sent from the website server there is no easy way to track sent emails or analyse issues with bounces (for example incorrect/old email addresses or their system being down).


Ezone have launched a new service that solves these issues in a very straight forward and easy to implement manner. We can us a third party system that sends the emails (instead of the web site server). This third party tool does all the work to try and reduce spam issues and also provides us with a way to track and investigate issues.

If you are interested please get in touch ([email protected]).

Simple!

The WMS and Booking System Integration

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

Many of our clients websites either have integrated booking systems (or direct links to booking systems). A lot of our clients are hotels whose WMS websites require functionality for site users to be able to book rooms and perhaps also restaurant tables. Some of our clients websites also require to book things like:  golf course tee times and tour ticket bookings.

Here are some of the systems used by websites in the WMS:

Hotel Room Booking Systems:

Restaurant Booking System


Other Booking Systems

  • Ibooking.com (Ticketing and Booking Solutions) 
  • ESP (Leisure Management Software) 
If you don’t see a booking system in this list that you are looking for  – don’t worry! We can work with any booking system. We can also set these up with Google Analytics (and/or other tracking code) so you can keep track of your booking information and maximise your bookings.

For more information please email [email protected].

WMS User Interface upgrade (Tue 12th June) – Videos of the Changes

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

Next week on Tuesday 12th June the WMS user interface will be upgraded as mentioned in our previous blog posts (06/06/12 and 08/05/12).

The video below (which lasts under 5min) compares the current version of the WMS and the new user interface and highlights the changes:

You can also see the above video split into 3 sections:
  1. WMS Login Page

  2. WMS Dashboard Page

  3. WMS Site Page

Also not shown in these videos – your website favicon (if your website has one) will be displayed in the WMS Site page when you access your site in the WMS.

The WMS will be unavailable for approximately 2-3 hours on Tuesday afternoon (12th June) while it is being upgraded.  This will not affect your websites within the WMS these will still be up and working as normal. You will however not be able to update your website content for the 2-3 hours that the WMS is unavailable.

If you have any questions about this please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help.

WMS upgrade – Tuesday 12th June

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

Improvements to the WMS interface and support ticket system

For the last few months we have been working on some improvements to the design of the Ezone WMS. We have also changed the system we use for support tickets. Both of these upgrades will be ready for release on Tuesday 12th June 2012.

So what are the changes? Well…


  • For changes to the WMS User interface please see our recent blog post for more information.

We will be in touch with more information later this week which will include a short video outlining the main changes in the WMS User Interface.

New WMS Support Ticket System

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

As part of the upcoming WMS User Interface upgrade we are also launching a new WMS Support ticket system.

This will have the following improvements:

– Email based Support Tickets – The whole support ticket discussion will be visible within each ticket email notification from WMS Support. You can reply to the support ticket by replying to these notification emails. Therefore a support ticket discussion takes place just like a normal email discussion.

–WMS Support through Social Media – With our new support ticket system you can open tickets using Facebook or Twitter. We can respond to tickets on these platforms so the whole support discussion can take place in Facebook or Twitter through to ticket closure.

–Improved Email Notifications Acceptance – The occurrence of our support ticket email notifications going into your junk mail will be minimised.

And at our end: 
 – Improved ticket management features – we can deal with your tickets more efficiently which will improve our WMS Support service

We will continue to provide the Knowledge Base of articles on using the WMS. This will be called “Solutions” on our new support ticket system.

Watch this space for more news as we near the release date…

Improving the WMS interface

Posted on by Ezone Interactive

For the last few months we have been working on some improvements to the design of the Ezone WMS, these will be ready for release very shortly!

So what are the changes? Well…

Better use of screen real estate

We’ve reduced the amount of screen space that the header and menu options use.

This further increases the amount of space on the screen for the important things!



Simplified main menus
We have reorganised many of the options into an extended tab bar.


The WMS has a huge range of functionality and we think this will make it even easier to find and use the features you need, when you need them.

Moving between sites
If you manage multiple sites in the WMS you may find this change useful.  As well as making the name of the site you are currently working on even more obvious, we have added a new “Switch Site” menu that makes it easier to move between sites.

And more!
There are also a number of smaller improvements and changes as well as some bug fixes in this upcoming release.

Coming soon!
It has been several years since we last made these type of changes and we hope that you will find them useful and the WMS even better as a result!

Watch this space for more news as we near the release date…

This website uses cookies OK Thanks