When we started out, we wanted to bring you the absolute best website building software on the planet. Since then, we’ve come a very long way, and yet we have so much more we want to offer to you. Today, we have announced the launch of our “Pro” package - which is the next phase of Yola, focusing on the needs of small business customers.

By offering enhanced features and tools, such as Premium Styles, advertising credits & bigger file sizes as part of our Pro package, we are able deliver real value for your money – while continuing to offer an extremely robust free option. In creating this package, we’ve made some changes to our free service. With Yola Free, you can create 5 websites with unlimited pages with 1GB of storage per site. This is more storage than most of our users will ever need, but in order to ensure that we can maintain a reliable and robust offering for everyone, we will charge for usage in excess of that. The Pro version of Yola will allow users to build up to 25 sites with 5GB of storage per site, upload files as big as 100MB, and upload HTML files to their site. In addition, Yola Pro customers will get a Premium Style, removal of the Yola Link and over $50 in advertising and stock photo credits. For more info, see the package details and our FAQs.

As a result of these changes, we are able to focus our development resources on the needs of our small businesses customers who are using Yola to promote their businesses. We’re excited to be launching Yola Pro and are looking forward to feedback on how we can improve our offering.

Vinny Lingham
Founder and CEO

I want to thank all our users and customers for all the input relating to the launch of our recent “Pro” package.  Your feedback is very valuable to us.  As a result of all the interactions and feedback from our users, we’re considering making some changes to our offering to ensure that everyone sees the huge value in what Yola is doing.  Thanks for all the productive & constructive comments.

We are a small company and are very passionate about our product and our users, so it’s important that we offer a paid package to meet the needs of a certain portion of our userbase in order to ensure that we can offer a free package to those who cannot afford to pay for it.

Right now, we’re in the process of gathering data and analyzing it.  Once we complete this, we will be in a better position to understand what your needs are and customize our Pro package to suit the needs of our paying customers, without significantly reducing the value of our free package.  In order to maintain a free service for everyone, we do need a small portion of our users to pay for our premium packages to ensure that it’s financially viable.

We really value our community and trust that you will understand that as a startup company, we need to experiment to figure out what works and eventually come up with a win-win solution.

So, in the interim, please be patient as we deliberate - we are working around the clock to understand your needs better so please keep sending us feedback!

Regards
Vinny Lingham
CEO, Yola

We know Yola site owners really like being able to modify and personalize their sites to meet their needs, so we’ve added some new features that provide even more choices. We’ve improved banners and backgrounds, added an option to take out the Yola Link, and added new Styles.

Change your background

We’re greatly expanding the number of Styles that let you change the background of your site. We also added Apply to All, so you can easily use the same background and banner image throughout your site – makes it so simple to update everything at once. To learn more, go to Personalize your Style.

Remove the footer

We love the Yola Link at the bottom of every page, but realize it might not be for everyone. With the new Yola Link Removal feature, you can take out the Yola Link from all current and future sites in your account for only $9.95/year. If you choose to remove it, you can do it from the bottom of your page within the Sitebuilder.

Try out a new Style

Check out two fantastic styles that take advantage of the above new features. They are named Flowershop and Victoria – try them out with the next site you build.

We have lots more features coming to give you even more customization, so check back on the blog, or better yet, join our community.

We’re pleased to announce new features based on your feedback and interests - now you can set up personalized email addresses and easily manage multiple domain names – all at no extra cost.

Yes, your very own email address
When you buy a domain name from Yola, or if you already own one from us, you can get matching email addresses for free. It’s ideal for building name recognition for your website.

Your personalized email address works with either Google Apps Gmail or Windows Live Hotmail, so you can choose the service that best suits your needs. When setting up your email, you’ll find it’s handy to print out the tutorial. Get started by downloading, Creating email addresses with your domain purchased from Yola.

Advanced Domain Settings
If you own multiple Custom Domain Names, or want to transfer a Custom Domain Name from one site is to another, you can do it with the Advanced Domain Settings Manager. Find out about it with DNS for your Yola domain

We’re excited to introduce the availability of yolasite subdomains.  Now, when you publish a new site with a subdomain, it will contain yolasite (for example, mysitename.yolasite.com) instead of SynthaSite (mysitename.synthasite.com).
If you currently use a SynthaSite subdomain, now you can choose whether or not to switch to Yolasite.com.

Go ahead, keep synthasite.com
You can keep your site on synthasite.com as long as you want. You do not need to change to yolasite.com. You may want to stay put, if:
•    You have a large user base who knows your web address
•    Your site ranks well on search engines
•    There’s printed materials with your web address

Or change to yolasite.com

Yolasite is a bit shorter and easier to spell than our former name. To switch to a yolasite subdomain, you need to log on to Yola and:

Go to the MySites Page

Fill in a site name and click the Change Now button.

Go to the Sitebuilder

Near the top of the page, click the arrow next to Update My Sites and select Publishing Settings

More about changing subdomains
•    You can use your existing site name with yolasite.com. We’ll hold it until May 31.
•    You can also get a different site name with yolasite.com – they’ll be available on a first come, first serve basis.
•    Any traffic going to your old synthasite.com web address will be redirected to your new yolasite.com web address – which means returning visitors can still find your site. Your new yolasite.com address will appear in the address bar.
•    Whenever you change subdomains, all content on your site always stays the same.
•    You will need to update your settings with your new web address for domain-specific tools, like Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics,.

Find out more
More details are available at the SynthaSite is now Yola FAQ update.

We just released a great little tool that will help you really customize the look and feel of your site.

For any of our templates that have customizable banner images, you can now crop your images to easily create a banner image that looks fantastic.  Try it out.  You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes in your site.

You can find this feature when you’re building or editing your site.  Look for the “Change Banner” or “Edit Banner buttons in the header banner as seen in the image below.

Happy site building!

On Tuesday 21 April we rolled out a round of bug fixes and new features. Here is a summary of what we released:

1) Added tools for editing text with images in the text widget. Many people have requested more layout options for their text and images. Now when you add an image inside a text widget you will see 3 new icons at the end of the text editing toolbar. These allow you to select “no wrap,” “wrap left” and “wrap right”. This way you can have text flowing around your image without having to do any HTML editing.

Tip: make sure you have an image selected in your text widget to see these icons.

2) Security measure to prevent accidental site deletions. We were distressed to find that too many people were accidentally deleting their sites and losing their hard work. In response to your feedback we have removed the “delete site” button from the My Sites page and you will be asked to type in confirmation before deleting a site.

3) We have released a new secure payment service allowing users to use a credit card to easily purchase domain names (in addition to the current option of paying via PayPal)

Thank you for your patience during the release. We hope you enjoy creating even better looking sites with the new tools available!

We’re excited to announce our relaunch today as Yola.  As we’re reaching a global market, we need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Websites.

New name, same company

Our name, homepage and URL are new, but everything else about SynthaSite stays the same.  All the sites you built and their web addresses stay the same, e.g. mysite.synthasite.com.  You will log in just like you did on SynthaSite.

If you have questions about this change, please go to our rebranding FAQ’s. 

Please bookmark www.yola.com so you can visit us easily.

We’ve had a lot of questions about whether the URLs of all of our users’ sites will be changing when we switch our name from SynthaSite to Yola.

Rest assured that the URLs for all of our users’ sites will stay the same.  If your URL today is mysite.synthasite.com, your URL next month (after we’ve changed to Yola) will still be mysite.synthasite.com.

Hope that helps allay any concerns.  We want our name change to have as little impact as possible on our user community.

Many of you have told us you’re interested in making it easier for visitors to find your site, and that you’d like your site to feel professional.  You can achieve both of these goals with your personal web address, also known as a custom domain.

I’m excited to let you know that we’ve expanded our domains product offering so you can more easily find a name for your site, get names with extensions other than .com, and secure your website address for years to come.

• Find a website name: Sometimes the first name that comes to mind isn’t available.  To make it easier to come up with another one you like, we’ll show you a list of available options.

• End with more than .com: You can now register domains with .net, .org, .biz, and, of course, .com extensions.  And we’ll automatically configure the domains for you.

• Get multiple domains: You can assign more than one domain name to your site, which will all redirect users to your primary site.  This can also help visitors find you and improve search engine ranking.

• Lock in your domains: To ensure you keep your web site name for years to come, you can register your domain for up to 10 years.  By doing so, you’ll save up to 20% and save yourself the hassle of renewing every year.

• Keep your registration private: When you own a domain name, your contact details are publicly disclosed via the WHOIS database, which can result in unwanted emails.  With private registration, we place alternate information in the public database — so only relevant messages are forwarded and your junk email is reduced.

To take advantage of these new options, select “Buy my own domain name” when you first publish your site or “Upgrade to your own domain” when you update your existing site.

Enjoy!

We have just rolled out our first new release for 2009. Here is a quick summary:

1) 7 New palettes for our new default style: It is a new year and perhaps a good time to update your website’s look. Go ahead and have a look - You are going to love them!

2) HTML validator: Prevents bad code from being saved. We know our users love adding widgets to their sites from a variety of sources. But when you save invalid code this can break your page and make it impossible to edit. From now on you will get a warning message telling you which widget is broken so that you can fix the code or delete it before you save.

3) Abuse page: Makes filing an abuse complaint easier. Perhaps not a fun feature but a much needed one. Click on the link in the footer of our site that says: “Report Abuse.” We hope people will use our software for it’s highest and best use, but sadly not everyone does. If you would like to file a complaint, please use this mechanism rather than the Get Satisfaction forum.

3) Lots of bug fixes: Thanks to everyone who reported a bug in the last few weeks. Many of them have now been fixed. Please give whatever was troubling you another try. If the one you reported is still not fixed, drop us a note and we will be sure to catch it next time.

This is a first release to get us on the way to a great new year together. There are some big things ahead for SynthaSite, so keep an eye on us. We thank you for your support and as always, we value your feedback.