FAQ/Help

• I'm getting domain renewal notices — How do I renew my domain?
• What are nameservers, and how do I register or transfer them?
• How do I manage my mail?
  • Can I manage my email through my website?
  • Can I manage my email from my desktop?
• The website editor
  • What is Scope?
  • How do I start the editor?
  • How do I upload images?
  • How do I upload and link to a file?
  • How do I upload the sample images that appear in a new slideshow?
  • How do I choose other fonts?
  • How do I pre-populate the contact form?
  • Common Problems
    • Why aren't movies loading in IE?
• The Flatpress Blog
  • The Flatpress Blog editor
  • How do I stop spam in my comments?
  • How do I upload images/files?
• How do I search on a single mls number?
• What is the _mls trick?
• XML Feeds
  • How do I submit Trulia xml feeds?
  • How do I submit Zillow xml feeds?
  • How do I submit gBase xml feeds?

How do I renew my domain?

• Go to Find & Manage Domains
• Click the green box Login to an existing account in the upper right
• Login with your account name/domain name and password
• Click on your domain
• The next page has all the details associated with this domain
  • Under Registration Contact Inforamtion, make sure the information is current
  • Under Domain Renewals click on the Renew link to submit your new credit card information
• If you wish, you can change the existing password by clicking on the Account Management link to return to the page you started on, and then on the My Account link in the lower left. From there, you can click on Change Account Password

What are nameservers, and how do I register or transfer them?

Nameservers are the Internet's equivalent to phone books. A nameserver maintains a directory of domain names that match certain IP addresses (computers). The information from all the nameservers across the Internet is gathered in a central registry. This makes it possible for visitors to access your website using a familiar domain name, instead of having to remember a series of numbers. Because the nameservers are basically entered into a global database, changes may take as long as 48 hours to propagate, although it usually takes much less time than that.

   NS1.SNOWALARMINC.COM
   NS2.SNOWALARMINC.COM

How do I manage my mail?

You can choose to manage mail though your desktop mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird, or manage your mail directly from the web

• Can I manage my email through my website?

  Yes! Go to http://webmail.your_domain in order to login to your mail account. Your username will be the first part of the email address, i.e. your_name if your email address is your_name@your_domain. If you do not have a mail account or password, please request one by specifying your site and your requested username and password in the contact form.

• Can I manage my email from my desktop?

  Yes! Follow the instruction below to setup a new mail account.

  To set up Microsoft Outlook Express:

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook Express.
  2. Go to Tools > Accounts.
  3. Click the Mail tab to open a list of your mail accounts.
  4. Click the Add > button and select the item.
  5. Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send, and click Next >.
  6. Type your e-mail address that was given to you (for example, your.name@your-domain.com), and click Next >.
  7. Select the protocol of your incoming mail server.

     Although the server supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols, we recommend that you select IMAP because this leaves your e-mail on the mail server so that it can later be accessed from other locations and by other methods, for example, browser based Webmail.

  8. Specify the mail domain name as the incoming and outgoing mail server (for example: mail.your-domain.com), and click Next >.
  9. Type your e-mail address in the Account name box (for example: your.name@your-domain.com).
  10. Type your password. This should be the password that you initially specified.
  11. Leave the Remember password box checked, if you do not wish to be prompted to enter password each time your e-mail program connects to the mail server to check for new mail, and click Next >.
  12. To complete setting up your e-mail program, click Finish.

  To set up Mozilla Thunderbird:

  1. Open Mozilla Thunderbird.
  2. Go to Tools > Account settings...
  3. Click Add Account. The Account Wizard will open.
  4. Leave the Email account option selected, and click Next >.
  5. Enter your name as you want it to appear in any messages you send.
  6. Type your e-mail address that was given to you.

     For example, your.name@your-domain.com. Click Next >.

  7. Select the protocol of your incoming mail server.

     Although the server supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols, we recommend that you select IMAP because this leaves your e-mail on the mail server so that it can later be accessed from other locations and by other methods, for example, browser based Webmail.

  8. Specify the mail domain name as the incoming and outgoing mail server (for example: mail.your-domain.com), and click Next >.
  9. In the Incoming User Name box, specify your full e-mail address (for example, your.name@your-domain.com), and click Next >.
  10. Enter the name by which you would like to refer to this account (for example, Work Account) and click Next >.
  11. Verify that the information you entered is correct, and click Finish.
  12. Click OK to close the Account Settings wizard.

The website editor

You can control the look of your website as well as the content by using the editor. If you do not have a username and password, please request one by specifying your site and your requested username and password in the contact form.

• What is Scope?

  An important concept to understand before you begin is Scope. The website is composed of a series of pages which exist in folders. For relatively simple websites, all pages exist in the root folder, for example

  http://blah.com/
  http://blah.com/foo.php
  http://blah.com/foo1.php
  http://blah.com/foo2.php
  

  For websites with slideshows, additional unique folders exist, for example

  http://blah.com/slideshow1
  http://blah.com/tab1/slideshow2
  http://blah.com/tab1/slideshow3
  

  In this case, there is a slideshow in its own folder named slideshow1 as well as a tabbed slideshow in its own folder named tab1. The tabbed slideshow itself consists of 2 additional slideshows named slideshow1 and slideshow2, each in their own unique folders.

  Scope refers to the page(s) modified by the editor, and follows a simple cascade. Specifically, page content, if specified, overrides folder content, if specified, which overrides site content. This allows tremendous flexiblity in defining content as the following example using the Edit title button shows.

  Initially, the title of your site will be Modify title tag in /includes/title.html, which is not very helpful to your vistors or the search engines. By entering the editor and clicking on this button, you can modify the title tag. To quickly specify a title tag for ALL pages in the site,choose the scope of Site. When your website develops, you can go back and specify a title for an individual page by choosing the scope of Page, which will override any site content.

  For slideshows or tabbed slideshows, you can specify a slideshow-specific title that will override the site-specified title. For example, specifying a title tag for tab1 will show this title in both slideshow2 and slideshow3, which can then be overridden by specifying a different title tag for the folder slideshow2.

  Note that page-specific titles will take overall precedence.

• How do I start the editor?

  Simply navigate to the page you want to edit and add ?e=1 OR ?e=2 at the end of the url. The difference is that e=1 tried to place all of the editing boxes close to where their content appears in the website page, while e=2 moves all the boxes to the bottom of the srceen. For example, if your website is blah.com:

  http://blah.com?e=1
            or
  http://blah.com/page_name.php?e=1
            or
  http://blah.com/slideshow_name?t=tab_name&e=1
  

  Note that this is a password protected area. A lot of the page can be customized through the Preferences button.

• How do I upload images?

  When you enter the edit area:
  • Click the Manage images button. A new window pops up; if it doesn't, make sure that the browser allows pop-ups from your domain.
  • Click the Browse/Upload images button on the pop-up
  • Another pop-up window opens that has 4 tabs at the top: Browse/Upload/Edit/Folders.
  • Click the Upload tab, which should show an empty list, and 3 buttons at the bottom: Browse/Remove/Upload
  • Click the Browse button, which will then open a dialog that will allow you to choose photos from your computer. After selecting the images (typically clicking on an image while holding the Cntrl key will ADD the clicked image to the list, while a range of images can be selected by clicking on the first image you want uploaded and holding the Shift key while clicking on the last image), Click on the OK button. The files should then appear in the Upload area.
  • Click the Upload button, and you should see a progress bar indicating the files have been uploaded. To check, click the Browse button, and you should see the images.
  
  

• How do I upload and link to a file?

  • Click the Edit text button. A new window pops up; if it doesn't, make sure that the browser allows pop-ups from your domain.
  • For Editing level, click on the Images & Links radio button
  • Write some text, like pdf link
  • Highlight the pdf link text, and click the chain-looking icon in the 2nd row of the editor widgets
  • A window named Insert/edit link pops up
  • Click on the Browse widget to the right of the entry box
    • You'll notice in the upper right, there is a Current Folder pulldown initialized to files. Note that this is different when uploading images, where the Current Folder pulldown is initialized to images
    • Click the Upload tab
    • Click the Browse button
    • Choose the file you want to upload
    • Click the Upload button
    • After the file has uploaded, view the file clicking the Browse tab
    • Click on the desired file, the upload window will close, and the file will now appear in the Link URL box
    • Click the Update button, and the link to the uploaded file should appear

• How do I upload the sample images that appear in a new slideshow?

  Currently, new slideshows are created with two non-descript sample images. If you would like to use your own sample images, upload the following images through the Manage images button:

  • sample1-thumb.jpg with dimensions of 50px x 50px
  • sample1-med.jpg with dimensions of 400px x 400px
  • sample1-large.jpg with dimensions that fit your site
  • sample2-thumb.jpg with dimensions of 50px x 50px
  • sample2-med.jpg with dimensions of 400px x 400px
  • sample2-large.jpg with dimensions that fit your site

• How do I choose other fonts?

  This CSS shorthand version will only work if you’re specifying both the font-size and the font-family. The font-family command must always be at the very end of this shorthand command, and font-size must come directly before this. Also, if you don't specify the font-weight, font-style, or font-variant then these values will automatically default to a value of normal
  
  NEW!! Choose any external font from here, click on the heading of the font you like to see all available styles, and cut and paste the font-weight and font-family around the font-size, like
  
  Normal 400 14px Open Sans, sans
  
  

• How do I pre-populate the contact form?

  The contact form can accept an argument that will pre-populate a text area box with that argument. For example:

  <a href="http://blah.com/contact.php?lid=Tell%20me%20more">Tell me more</a>
  

  To enter this in the editor:
  • For Editing level, click on the Images & Links radio button
  • Type in Tell me more, or any other text you want
  • Highlight the Tell me more text, and click the chain-looking icon in the 2nd row of the editor widgets
  • A window named Insert/edit link pops up
  • Enter /contact.php?lid=Tell me more in the Link URL box
  • Click the Update button, and the link to the contact page should appear
  Note that I will create a text area field that will be named Inquiry in the contact form email you will receive. this text area will appear at the top of the form, and all other text areas you may have configured will be supressed.

Common Problems

• Why aren't movies loading in IE?

  Very often, cutting and pasting the URL into the editing box will lead to line breaks that cause some browsers to fail, especially Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). The movie should render if you manually remove the empty space (or whitespace) within the URL. For example:

  <object width="640" height="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/blah?<-- offending whitespace -->
  version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen"value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSKgHlB3k6k?<-- offending whitespace -->
  version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="480"></embed></object>
  
  should be edited to remove the whitepsace after the question marks:
  
  
  <object width="640" height="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/blah?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FSKgHlB3k6k?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="480"></embed></object>

The Flatpress Blog

• The Blog editor

  Flatpress BBCode help

• How do I stop spam in my comments?

  Once logged in as an Administrator, go to the Plugins tab and Enable the Akisment module. After the screen is refreshed, click on the Akismet Config tab in order to enter your WordPress.com API Key. You will need to register for a Wordpress account in order to receive the API key to activate this plugin

• How do I upload images/files?

  Once logged in as an Administrator, go to the Uploader tab, click on Choose File and browse to the file or image on your computer. Click Upload, then go back to your blog entry, and the newly downloaded file appears in the first pulldown above the editing window, while the image should appear in the second pulldown. Choosing either one automatically inserts it into the blog with the correct format.

How do I search on a single mls number

<a href="http://blah.com/search.php?class=res&mls=127813">View this property</a>

• For Editing level, click on the Images & Links radio button
• Type in View this property, or any other text you want
• Highlight the View this property text, and click the chain-looking icon in the 2nd row of the editor widgets
• A window named Insert/edit link pops up
• Enter /search.php?class=res&mls=127813 in the Link URL box
• Click the Update button, and the link to the search should appear

What is the _mls trick?

Any listing can automatically be placed into a slideshow by specifying the property menu link as follows:

.../_mls12345_name

The default property class for the domain is used by default. If you wish to use a different class, add the class as follows:

.../_mls12345-res_name for the residential class
.../_mls12345-lnd_name for the land class
.../_mls12345-com_name for the commercial class

XML Feeds

• How do I submit Trulia xml feeds

  The name of the feed file is http://your_domain/trulia.xml. Submit a feed to Trulia

• How do I submit Zillow xml feeds

  Zillow can read feeds in the Trulia format, thus the name of the feed file is http://your_domain/trulia.xml. Submit a feed to Zillow

• How do I submit gbase xml feeds

  Submit a feed by logging in to your gbase account.
  • Under My Items / Data feeds click the button New Data Feed
  • Under Item type, choose Housing
  • Under Data feed filename, type in gbase_blah.com.xml
  • The data feed should now be listed in the Data feeds tab. Under Upload schedule, click on Create
  • On the Scheduled Upload screen, choose Upload Daily at 7:00 AM. Select your Timezone, and type in the complete URL to the file (i.e. http://blah.com/gbase_blah.com.xml and click the Schedule button.
  • The feed can be validated at Celebird's feed checker OR http://validator.w3.org/feed/ (currently, this one shows errors for g:listing_type, g:mls_listing_id, g:agent_phone and g:agent_email which can be ignored)
  • The impatient can also manually upload the xml file after scheduling by clicking the Manual upload link. Note that you will first have to visit your feed at http://blah.com/gbase_blah.com.xml and save the page to your local computer. The Status column will then show Processing..., and this may take as long as 1 hour. Click on the Items tab to view the recently uploaded listings!