Business Catalyst Blog

As some of you may have noted, some of the websites hosted with BC have been showing a downward curve for the analytics section in the timeframe of April 26th to April 30th. Upon reporting from some of our Partner Advisory Board members, the engineering team has investigated this issue and discovered that due to our proxy system put in place for our planned move to Amazon Web Services, some of the analytics calculations were not performed and displayed correctly. 

This issue has now been resolved, and the calculations and reporting have been fixed. 

However, the data from Apr 26 to Apr 30 is irretrievably lost and unfortunately cannot be reinstated. 

We apologize for this incident and will do our best to prevent any such occurrences in the future, as we continue our move to the cloud. Also, we would like to thank our PAB for the help in noticing this particular incident, and promptly raising the status of the tickets submitted through support. 

The BC Team. 

The team over at BC Gurus have been busy updating their already extensive library of Zero to Hero video training courses. They've also added great new content that will help familiarize you and your team with how DNS works inside Business Catalyst.

New DNS course
Just in time for our upcoming infrastructure migration, Zero to Hero now also includes an in-depth series on setting up DNS with Business Catalyst. Make sure you review this great course ahead of our AWS migration next month so that you're up to speed with managing your DNS records:

• Introduction to DNS
• DNS Basics
• Registering a domain name
• Add your domain name to Business Catalyst
• Managing DNS records
• Setting up MX records and Google Apps for Business Catalyst

Updated getting started videos
In line with our recent Partner Portal updates, the getting started series has been updated and you can check it out at the link below:

• How to use the Business Catalyst Partner Portal

Head on over to Zero to Hero to check out the new and updated courses today.

Join our experienced BC Partner Brendon O'Sullivan from Bosweb on Wed, May 15th for a business session, where you will learn how to add value to clients by upselling products & services.

Wed, May 15th: Adding value to clients by upselling products & services with Brendon O'Sullivan from Bosweb

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

To help you put your learning into practice, webinar participants will be receive a 15% discount on their next website. (*Some conditions apply, see below)

The series continues in June and July with presentations from two of our trusted Partners, Brett Stockley and Brent Weaver, who will teach you how to grow your business into the future. Registrations are now open for those instances as well, and we will be sending out a reminder as we move closer to the presentation dates.

Wed, June 12th: Online Marketing with Brett Stockley from Pretty Pollution

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

Wed, July 10th: Learn how BC Gurus leverages Web Apps to power their popular Business Catalyst community website with Brent Weaver from BC Gurus

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

If you could not join us live, you can click the links below to access recordings of our past webinars:

• Dreamweaver & Business Catalyst integration - with Adam Broadway (Download presentation deck)
• Business Catalyst integration with Muse -  with Daniele Beaumont and Chris Kellet

If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to send them over to BCPartner-Team@adobe.com. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

*15% discount coupon applies for new site upgrades on any yearly/biyearly desired plan. Coupon validity: 31-Jul-2013, only available for the webinars’ attendees.

We are proud to present you New Accounts Resources designed to support you through the accounts most common questions.

Our objective is to offer you easy to use accounts instructions, that any BC Partner or Customer, regardless of his experience on the platform, can use to improve his BC experience. 

What questions do we address:

How can I change the billing email address?
How can I email an invoice to my billing email address?
How can you move a site from one Partner to another?
How can I change a site plan?
What extras can I add to a site?
How can I cancel extras?
Can I transfer hosting fees from one site to another site?
Can I put a site on hold?
Can I cancel a paid site at any time?
Will a payment be refunded if I cancel a site?

The answers to these questions are available for:

Partners -> login to your Partner Portal -> Resources tab -> Sales -> General Resources -> Accounts FAQ 

Customers -> in the Help & Resources area -> Popular Help Resources -> Accounts FAQ

For any questions regarding Accounts Resources, please contact the BC Partner team.

BC Sandpile is a weekly online meeting run by Business Catalyst Partners for the purpose of sharing ideas, best practices, and networking.

Weekly Day/Time:

• San Francisco: Tuesdays, 5pm (all times adjusted in relation to this time)
• New York City: Tuesdays, 8pm
• London: Wednesdays, 1am
• Sydney: Wednesdays, 11am

BC Marketing Tactics with Fraser McCulloch - 30th April (1st May in AUS):
Fraser McCulloch from Platonik will share some of his quick fire marketing tactics that can easily be done with a BC site. He’ll also walk us through one of his most recent projects focusing on how BC was used to make the original idea come to life.
http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/post/marketing-tactics-fraser-mcculloch/

Sandpile Think Tank: Email Marketing - 7th May (8th in AUS):
We are dedicating an entire meeting to the discussion of email marketing with Business Catalyst. For those not going to Adobe MAX this is a perfect opportunity to network with other Business Catalyst Partners without traveling to Los Angeles.
http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/post/think-tank-email-marketing/

Enhance BC's Customer Service Ticketing with Scott B Reynolds - 14th May (15th in AUS):
Scott B Reynolds from Thrise will explain how to set up the Business Catalyst's integrated Customer Service Ticketing system, and show how to enhance it to offer better support. If you want a better way to provide customer support that saves you time and money don't miss this meeting.
http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/post/customer-service-ticketing-scott-reynolds/

Testing Business Catalyst Sites with Jared Checkley - 21st May (22nd in AUS):
Jared Checkley from Code Six Zero is going to show us how Selenium can be used as a tool to test Business Catalyst websites. This conversation should stimulate a wider discussion of how BC Partners can deliver higher quality websites to their clients.
http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/post/testing-business-catalyst-jared-checkley/

Speed Dating with Business Catalyst Resources - 28th May (29th in AUS):
With so many Business Catalyst resources it's easy to get lost. We are dedicating this entire meeting to explore as many helpful BC resources as possible.
http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/post/speed-dating-with-bc-partner-resources/

Full schedule: http://www.bcsandpile.com/_blog/Meeting_Chalkboard/
Sandpile Recordings: http://www.bcsandpile.com/business-catalyst/resources.htm

You've asked for more - we delivered. 

Now is the time to take your Creative Cloud site to the next level: add ecommerce, blogs, email marketing and more.  Make your site stand out and start increasing your site's impact.

The 5 sites included in a Creative Cloud subscription are 5 fully functional webBasics sites.
Until recently, the option to upgrade a Creative Cloud site was not available, but since we received a lot of requests from site owners that were hungry for more, with the latest release we launched the workflow that allows a Creative Cloud site owner to move the site to a higher BC site plan.

How does that work?

Access your site's admin area  -> Site Management -> Upgrade Now -> choose the desired site plan and billing frequency -> Add personal and credit card details -> Submit.

 

Please note that this operation will trigger a separate billing cycle for the higher plan, charged at the standard rates, depending on the billing frequency.

The initial webBasics site slot will be freed up instantly so you can use it for other projects.

More than that, you can use this workflow to add your client's billing information so the future site owner can pay for his site's hosting fee from now on.

If you want later on to upgrade the site plan further, you will be able to to this from the Partner Portal that was triggered when you fist signed up for BC.

Since this operation  actually launches a separate subscription, if you decide at some point to not use or pay your Creative Cloud membership anymore, the standalone BC site subscription will remain up and running.

For any questions regarding this process, please contact the BC Partner team.

It's that time again to meet up at the Silo Lounge for a drink, laugh and talk all things BC and SEO with the Business Catalyst Newcastle Usergroup.

Date: Friday May 3, 2013 from 05:30 PM - 07:30 PM (GMT+10)

Location: Silo Bar, 18/1 Honeysuckle Drive, The Boardwalk, Newcastle
View Map

Make sure you rsvp so we can ensure we organise enough room for all of us in the fantastic outdoor lounge area.

Hope to see you there
-Katherine Anderson

We have a jam packed line up of great sessions and interactive labs at the upcoming Adobe MAX conference in May.

To secure your spot in these sessions, it's important that you register using the official MAX scheduler. Seats are booking out fast, so don't miss out - head over to the scheduler and start filling up your schedule.

For a refresher of which sessions we're running, check out our previous blog post and read the BC Guru's guide to MAX 2013.

Thanks to those of you who attended our orientation webinars last week.

If you were unable to join us live, you can access the recordings below:

• Dreamweaver & Business Catalyst integration - with Adam Broadway (Download presentation deck)
• Business Catalyst integration with Muse -  with Daniele Beaumont and Chris Kellet

Also, don't forget to register for our two upcoming webinars:

Wed, May 15th: Adding value to clients by upselling products & services with Brendon O'Sullivan from Bosweb

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

Wed, June 12th: Online Marketing with Brett Stockley from PrettyPollution

• Australian/EU session (17.00 EST / 09.00 CEST)
• US/EU session (09.00 PDT / 18.00 CEST)

To help you put your learning into practice, webinar participants will be receive a 15% discount on their next website. (*Some conditions apply, see below)

If you have any questions or suggestions please do not hesitate to send them over to BCPartner-Team@adobe.com. We will be happy to answer all your inquiries.

Thank you and hope to see you in next month’s webinar.

*15% discount coupon applies for new site upgrades on any yearly/biyearly desired plan. Coupon validity: 31-Jul-2013, only available for the webinars’ attendees.

We’re happy to announce the details of our upcoming April system update, scheduled to be deployed April 22, 2013. This release includes highly anticipated SEO updates to our blogging module, an optimized site import feature inside the Partner Portal, and more.

For a detailed list of included improvements, including bug fixes, please refer to our official release notes post on the community forums.

Feature highlights

Blog SEO improvements
Based on valuable Partner feedback, we’re implemented several SEO improvements that you can take advantage of when using our built-in blog module. These updates include:

• Ability to fully edit blog and blog post URLs
• Option to migrate blogs to SEO friendly URLs, removing the “_blog” in your URLs (see below)
• Dedicated user interface and tags to specify and display blog post metadata (title and description)
• Support for additional, custom metadata inside the blog post detail layout (eg. Facebook “og:title”)

Existing sites are required to enable the new SEO friendly URLs for blogs under Modules > Blogs inside the Admin Console:

Optimized site import feature
We’ve optimized and reinstated the popular “Site import” option when creating new BC sites via your Partner Portal.

You can access the site import tool by simply clicking “Create site”, selecting the option and then entering your desired URL from your Partner Portal.

Please note that in addition to the existing 50mb limit, we've now imposed a cap of 100 pages that can be imported at once, to avoid any performance issues.

Other improvements

Spam protection engine improvements
As part of our on-going effort to combat spam across BC sites, we’ve introduced several new anti-spam measures for comments including enforcing a minimum comment length before the comment is sent to Akismet, and introducing a minimum number of URLs per comment before considering it spam.

Google Maps API updates
We’ve upgraded our Web App mapping feature to utilize the latest version of the Google Map API.

If you’ve set up this feature and generated an API key in the past 2 years, this upgrade will be seamless. If your site’s integration is older than 2 years however, action is required on your behalf. Please see this blog post for details on generating a new API key for your sites.

Workflow enhancements for Creative Cloud members
As freelancers or agencies, many BC Partners also have a Creative Cloud membership, which includes 5 webBasics sites. We’re enabling Partners to better take advantage of these sites, with several requested workflow improvements:

• You can now delete trial sites created via Creative Cloud
• webBasics sites redeemed from Creative Cloud can now be upgraded to higher Business Catalyst site plans
• Dashboard improvements for Creative Cloud sites

Updates to beta InContext editor
We’ve made several updates to the new InContext editor, released in beta as part of our last system update. These improvements include:

• Support for templates
• Ability to allow ice:editable=”html” on links (ie. the A tag)
• Support for section reordering (moving up/down)
• Support for editing Modules

You can enable the new editor from your Admin Console under Site Settings > Beta Features. Once enabled, the new editor will be shown under the “Content” editing section of the Admin Console.

Important note

As announced in our recent townhall meetings, we will be decommissioning our recently launched beta analytics engine as part of our upcoming migration to Amazon Web Services. This is due to a compatibility issue with the new cloud infrastructure we’re moving the Business Catalyst platform to.

Sites that have activated the beta analytics engine will be seamlessly rolled back to the regular analytics engine, and no action is required on your behalf.

We hope you enjoy this upcoming system update and look forward to any feedback you might have in the comments section below.
The Adobe Business Catalyst Team.