Our customers often ask whether having a local site with a local extension is better for SEO. Unfortunately there is no clear answer to this but the general rules of thumb on international are:

• Having a local domain (.co.uk, .fr, etc) helps but isn’t crucial. A .com can tank well in the UK and a .co.uk can rank well in the US. Obviously the localized domain is easier to rank.
• Having local hosting helps as well. A site hosted in the targeted country will rank better in that country (as well as have faster response times for your target audience).
• Your links play a large role in localization. If your links are primarily in the UK, Google will weigh you better for UK searches.

Google introduced relatively new policies regarding the use of Google places and top-level domains, so things may change in the near future but as general rules, the above should still stand.

We’re happy to announce the release of a new addon for WHMCS allowing you to automatically issue promotions to your Facebook fans.

Open up your products to the largest social network ever. Fans liking your company page will be issued automatically promotion codes they can use on your WHMCS portal. All they need to do is ‘like’ your Fan page. In turn their friends will hear about you and you will be adding new customers to your site every single day.

The addon is simple to install and configure and comes with extensive documentation. The addon is free to use for up to 5 promotion codes. Purchasing a license will remove any limitations.

Download the addon now and once you’re happy with it, purchase a license to unleash its full power.

We’re happy to announce the release of version 1.8 of WHMCS Bridge, our popular WordPress to WHMCS Bridge.

WHMCS Bridge integrates your WHMCS support and billing software into WordPress, providing a seamless and consistent user experience to your customers.

Release 1.8 is marked by the introduction of pretty permalinks, integrating the WHMCS URL’s seamlessly with the WordPress URL’s. Knowledgebase links, announcements and downloads are all supported.

WHMCS Bridge is a free product but a Pro version is also available adding various features:

• Single sign on: thanks to the single sign-on feature, your customers can sign in once on your site and comment on your blog postings, share information with their peers, order hosting plans and pay their bills.
• Multi-lingual WHMCS support: fully integrated with qtranslate.
• IP address resolution ‘patch’: shows your customer’s IP address instead of your server’s IP address during sign up.
• Choose your WHMCS portal: fully compatible with the WHMCS v5 ‘default’ template

And now of course pretty permalinks.

Find out more about WHMCS Bridge now!

As announced a couple of weeks ago, we just got the heads up from Apple about the release of our Zingiri Bookings User Manual for iPad. So if you’re an iPad user, don’t wait any longer, go and get the manual now.

We also have the manual available for download as a PDF in case you prefer that format.

Don’t hesitate to post comments and suggestions about the contents and the format.

And if you want to find out more about Zingiri Bookings, the online reservations & appointment scheduling solution, you can check it all out here.

We’ll be launching Bookings, our online reservations manager, for non WordPress websites soon. Whether you are running Drupal, Joomla or any other content management system or building html sites, you will soon be able to use Bookings on your site.

Planned release date is second half of March, we’ll keep you posted.

It’s been long overdue but we’re happy to announce the release of our new Zingiri Bookings User Manual. It’s currently released as a PDF book available for download here: http://www.zingiri.com/portal/?ccce=downloads&action=displaycat&catid=6

It will shortly be followed by an iPad version, we’ll post the link once available.

We hope it’s useful in helping you discover Zingiri Bookings.

Enjoy!

Version 1.5. of our popular Bookings software introduces two new schedule type templates. These schedule templates allow viewing availability for all resources in a schedule. There are 2 templates available.

schedule1

The schedule1 template presents the customer with a date picker (like in the standard template) and lists availability for all resources in the schedule.

schedule2

With the schedule2 template, the customer can search between dates (and times) for availability. After pressing the search button, the customer is presented with a list of resources available between the chosen dates (and times) and the customer can pick the one they want to reserve.

To select a template in your bookings page, use the short code [bookings template=schedule1] or [bookings template=schedule2].

We’re very excited to announce that as of version 1.5, our Bookings software is now a perfect solution for Hotels and Bed-and-breakfasts. With this new version, setting up Bookings for full day bookings is a breeze. With the 5 step set up process, you will be up and running in no time:

1. Set up your Hotel or B&B as a Schedule
2. Set up every single room as a Resource
3. Set up as many Products as you have different types of rooms (e.g. Standard, Family, Luxury, Executive, etc), set your price here as well
4. Create a new page and enter the short code [bookings template=hotel1] anywhere on the page
5. Set up and activate a payment option (e.g. Paypal)

And that’s it, you’re up and running!

Find out more about Bookings right now!

We’re happy to announce the release of version 1.5 of our popular Bookings software. This is an important upgrade, including various new templates to accommodate Hotels and B&B’s, Events, etc.

As usual there are a number of enhancements and fixes. The full list of new features and fixes is:

* Added ‘event mode’ allowing to define a schedule active only on certain dates
* Added new template ‘schedule1′ for the [bookings] short code displaying a calendar with availability for all resources (similar to the schedule calendar in the back-end)
* Added new template ‘schedule2′ for the [bookings] short code displaying a calendar with the possibility to search by date, showing availability for all resources
* Added new template ‘hotel1′ for the [bookings] short code tailored for hotels and B&B’s
* Added ‘daystoshow’ parameter for the [bookings] short code allowing to display more than 1 day of availability in the front-end calendar
* Implemented WordPress short code API, allowing to manage multiple bookings pages and multiple short codes on the same page
* Added reservation details on checkout page
* Fixed issue with selecting Japanese language
* Added new colors.css style sheet with the colors of the reservation statuses
* Fixed issue where when clicking ‘Add’ to add another product or service after having added one, the link takes you to the set up screen
* Removed loading of news info in sidebar, providing more space for other functionality
* Included local image files
* Fixed issue with back link when an error occurs creating or modifying a schedule
* Added new styling to front end buttons
* Removed seconds display from time on confirmation messages
* Displayed am/pm in lower case for consistency
* Changed default order of reservations seen by customer to show most recently created first
* Fixed issue with tooltip being offset from mouse position
* Changed Paypal item time to show reservation date instead of reservation id
* Changed Paypal invoice id to show Bookings invoice id
* Moved to same checkout form for both standard and pro users
* Fixed issue with month selector on front end calendar
* Removed showSummary javascript action from front end calendar
* Centered calendar and date jumper on front end
* Show loader icon when saving schedule or resource

Find out more about Bookings now!

As we have many years of experience integrating payment gateways in some of our other plugins we thought that Bookings Pro could benefit from this as well. So we’re happy to announce that the latest release of Bookings (1.4.0) now supports payment gateways. The first payment gateway to be available is Paypal. In combination with the newly introduced Products & Services concepts, you can now start selling your products or services online!

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