AAI’s EverWeb End of Year 2023 Review! The Best Website Builder Gets Better!

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s that time of year where we take a look back at what’s happened with EverWeb over the past twelve months!

EverWeb 2023 Product Updates
In 2023 EverWeb had four release updates taking the product from version 3.9.2 to version 4.0.1:

• EverWeb 3.9.5: March 2023
• EverWeb 3.9.6: May 2023
• EverWeb 4.0: October 2023
• EverWeb 4.0.1: October 2023

Although it’s not a big a list as in previous years, it’s notable because of the big 4.0 release!

The Big Release of 2023: EverWeb 4.0!
The big news for EverWeb in 2023 was the release of version 4.0 in October. This release packed in quite a few new and updated features, expanding EverWeb’s capabilities as well as making the product even more user friendly. Here’s a quick recap on the most important new features…

EverWeb Introduces Membership Sites for Everyone
The introduction of EverWeb 4.0 featured the launch of the brand new Membership Sites feature. Now any EverWeb user can create their own Membership Site for free. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on macOS or Windows, or if you host with EverWeb or have your own hosting provider, you can still use Membership Sites. It’s also easy to create a fully featured membership site as the new feature utilises both EverWeb itself and your EverWeb Client Area. This enables you to easily create a front end, user facing membership site and a fully featured ‘backend’ that enables you to easily manage your membership site and its membership.

When you sign up for EverWeb Membership Sites, you get sent a special pack of widgets to install for exclusive use with Membership Sites. These widgets are powerful, yet easy to use, and act as an interface for your members (e.g. for membership sign up, member login and member profile administration) as well as being the link to the backend administration side of things provided by the EverWeb Client Area.

Membership Sites is a great addition to existing EverWeb services such as Contact Forms Enhanced Addon, SEO PowerUp and Site Shield Addon.

Working with Fonts Becomes A Whole Lot Easier!
A big change to how you work with EverWeb came with the updated Text Inspector.This change in version 4.0 makes using fonts in your website easier than ever due to a new word processor look and feel that makes adding and managing the fonts in your site easy. In addition, you can also your save font settings as Paragraph Styles that can be used throughout your site. The advantage of this is that if you change and save a Paragraph Style, any text using that style will also be updated. This is a big win when updating your site as it will save you lots of time and effort!

There’s also the new minimum font size feature that’s been added to the Text Inspector. This new feature allows you to add scalable text to your site. When using minimum font size, as you reduce the browser width, your text will automatically scale seamlessly! It’s a great new small, but big, feature in EverWeb 4.0.

EverWeb for Windows Officially Launches!
Towards the end of 2022, EverWeb soft launched EverWeb for Windows with the release of EverWeb version 3.9.1. Now, with the release of EverWeb 4.0 in October 2023, EverWeb 4.0 for Windows is officially launched! The Windows version of EverWeb has all of the features of its Mac counterpart and works in the same way. There are, of course, a few things, such as a couple of menu options, that had to change due to the differences in operating systems, but rest assured, EverWeb works in the same way whichever OS you’re running on!

Other EverWeb Highlights in 2023
In addition to the main highlights of 2023, EverWeb also added the following great new features!

1. The Contact Form Advanced Widget Gets New Divider and Columns Controls: You can now add new styling options to your contact forms with these great new controls. Dividers let you add separator lines to your contact forms whilst the columns control lets you have more than one field per line in your contact form. Both Controls are easy to use controls and are also fully customizable.
2. Site Shield Addon is now for Everyone!: Yes! EverWeb’s Site Shield Addon can now be used by everyone! If you don’t host with EverWeb you can still easily protect your site in one click! Just make sure that your Hosting Provider has a valid SSL Certificate and you’re good to go!
3. Check Pages for EverWeb SEO PowerUp: EverWeb introduced a new, easy way to add SEO to your website with the new Check Page feature! Simply select the page you want to SEO check, then click on the Check Page button in the Toolbar. You’ll get a list of SEO suggestions and you’ll will be taken to where you need to add them to your page! It’s super easy and a boon for anyone using EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp addon!
4. Default Styles for Text and Colors: We mentioned the improvements to text and the Text Inspector above, where you can add and manage your Paragraph Styles using EverWeb’s Format-> Default Styles… menu option. In addition, though, there’s also a section in Default Styles where you can define the colors you want to use in the Color Swatch panel that’s used whenever you click on a color swatch in EverWeb. Just change the Document Colors to suit your website then save! As with Paragraph Styles, if you use any of the colors in the color swatch panel, then update any of these colors in Default Styles, your website will be updated automatically with the color changes!

Looking Forward to EverWeb 4.1 End 2023 or Early 2024!
At the time of writing, EverWeb 4.1 is in beta test and looks likely to drop either in the last few days of 2023, or in the first few days of 2024. We’ll keep you posted as to when the new version will arrive!

In the meantime… Happy Holiday season to all our AAI readers!