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OCWS: News & Updates [February 2012]

February 15, 2012 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

We are off to a great start in 2012 and have a few exciting announcements and celebrations to hand out this month.

New websites for local authors!

Old City Web Services recently had the great fortune to launch new websites for two of St. Augustine’s great local authors.

In conjunction with the publication of her book “Lodgings of St. Augustine” St. Augustine’s Elsie Carr launched her new website with Old City Web Services in December 2011. The new site offers a sneak peek at her comprehensive guidebook to St. Augustine’s accommodations as well as a chance to read Elsie’s novel, “The Legend of Abigail Rose.” Visitors can take a look at the Featured Lodging of the Month, purchase a paperback copy or purchase eBook versions of the guidebook or novel.

Visit Website: www.lodgingsofstaugustine.com

Karen Harvey, author of nine non-fiction books detailing parts of St. Augustine’s incredible history, also launched a newly re-purposed site from Old City Web Services this month. We helped Karen gain some additional function out of her website by adding a content management system. Now she can easily update her site with reviews and excerpts and information about her tenth book, due out soon!

Visit website: www.ancientcityechoes.com

New advertising available!

We’re just over a month into the new OldCity.com and things are going great! Our overall site statistics continue to show growth in our daily visits and our Where to Stay, What to Do and Calendar pages have joined the Home page of OldCity.com atop the Google rankings. This week we’re debuting our new hit reports for advertising clients that include not only the total number of clicks and unique clicks per ad, but also the total number of views and unique views for each page. These new statistics will help our advertisers see exactly how much exposure their ad is receiving.

Limited space is available for our new advertising options: the special expanded listing and super expanded listing. Reserve your spot now for the busiest times of year and we’ll help you create the ad for free! You can even beef up your super expanded listing with a video. What other site in St. Augustine offers you so many advertising options at competitive rates?

Call or email us if you have questions about advertising on OldCity.com, adding a content management system to your website, or any other web, design or marketing needs!

OldCity.com: A New Era

January 11, 2012 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

As of January 10th, 2012, Old City Web Services has launched the new era of St. Augustine’s most popular web portal. The new OldCity.com is now completed and has been launched in place of the old website. The remodel is complete!

So what does that mean for residents and tourists who visit the site?

We’re still the best source of St. Augustine information on the web!

All of the resources and tools that make OldCity.com Northeast Florida’s most popular web portal are still available on the new site. We’ve reorganized things a little bit just to make the site a tad more user friendly. Now you can easily search through one of our three main categories: Where to Stay, What to Do or The Community. In each section you’ll find details that will help you plan your next vacation to St. Augustine (if you’re visiting us from out of town) or find important community news and updates (if you’re a local). Either way, OldCity.com is here to help you get the most out of St. Augustine!

Directories have been transferred to the new site as well.

One of our most popular tools, our informational directories, have also been moved to the new site including our lists of hotels & motels, restaurants and places of worship in the St. Augustine area. You can find quick links to them below to update your bookmarks:

You’re now able to add events to the OldCity.com calendar.

Our interactive “Submit an Event” tool now allows businesses and community organizations to easily submit upcoming events to our free community calendar. Once our staff looks them over and approves them, they will be added to the website for visitors to see. This is an excellent way to promote local events to thousands of visitors to OldCity.com.

So what does that mean for our advertisers?

Your existing advertising is live on the new website.

All of the advertising that was on the old website has been transferred to the new website, but we’ve made all the banners and expanded listings even bigger to get more attention for your ads. We also have new advertising opportunities available (including video ads), call if you’re interested in more information.

New statistics will be available for advertising.

Your February hit reports will be a big change from what you’ve received in the past–in a very good way. Not only will you see the number of clicks on each of your advertisements, you will also see the number of times the page your ad appears on was viewed. Customers with Listings will also be able to see the number of clicks and views their basic listings received on the site.

Some pages were redirected to increase advertising views.

We studied our statistics for OldCity.com meticulously in the process of developing this new website and noticed that many of the sub-pagesweren’t getting a lot of traffic. As a result, some sub-pages under a few of our categories have been redirected to the main category page in order to keep traffic more concentrated on the main category pages.

For example, the sub-pages for each business type under Area Businesses have been removed but all the listings that were on those pages are now categorized on the main Area Businesses page for easier use.

Our search engine rankings will be closely monitored.

Our SEO Specialist has gone through the website with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that our keywords and descriptions are transferred over to the new site. We have covered all of our bases and will closely monitor the stats after launch.

We hope you enjoy the new site and would love to hear your feedback through ourFacebook or Twitter pages. It’s been a long journey to reach this point in the process and we’re so excited to bring a new site with new features to all of our supportive fans, visitors and advertisers.

– OldCity.com

OCWS News & Holiday Hours

November 16, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Old City Web Services Thanksgiving Hours.

It’s hard to believe Thanksgiving is next week! We hope you will enjoy the holiday with your families as we will be enjoying it with ours. Old City Web Services will be closed on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 24th and 25th for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen for business at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 28th. If you have an emergency over the holiday break, you can call our main number 904-867-4112, follow the instructions to leave a message on our emergency line and someone will get back to you.

Other news & notes from OCWS.

We are ready to march forward after Facebook Marketing Bootcamp.

Facebook recently offered a three week webinar series with tips on marketing and advertising effectively on Facebook. We learned a lot from the six sessions and are ready to use those tips to help you promote your business. Soon we hope to begin conducting seminars in house to help pass along our knowledge of Facebook and other marketing essentials to you. If you would be interested in taking one of the courses, email shannon@oldcity.com with your contact information and we will keep you posted on future development.

OCWS launches a new site for New World Realty.

Marcus Wally and his team at New World Realty have a new home on the web. NewWorldRealty.com features a built-in content management system, professional slideshow and a special plug-in that allows visitors to search through the MLS real estate listings without leaving the website. Old City Web Services was excited to work with Marcus and we wish him and his team the best with their new internet home!

New OldCity.com is just around the corner!

If you’re a current advertiser on OldCity.com, you should have received a link to a sneak peek at the new OldCity.com in your hit report message for this month. Just in case you missed it, you can visit OldCityWebServices.com to check out a screenshot of the new site design and read about some of the new features that will benefit your business. Soon we will have a link to share with our advertisers so they can be the first to explore the new site!

Celebrating HAWKE, Raintree and more.

October 19, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

HAWKE’s 14th Annual Dinner for the Birds, Oct. 28th

Support one of St. Augustine’s oldest wildlife rescue groups at their annual Dinner for the Birds event at the Raintree. While you enjoy this exquisite meal you’ll also be able to meet some of the beautiful birds who have been rescued by Melanie Stage and the rest of the HAWKE team. For more information, visit the OldCity.com calendar or the HAWKE website designed by Old City Web Services.

Raintree Celebrates 30 Years this month.

Speaking of the Raintree Restaurant, congratulations to our longtime clients on celebrating 30 years of excellent food and service! St. Augustine would not be the same without the terrific tastes and cozy atmosphere that Lorna McDonald and her family have created at the Raintree. Congratulations and here’s to another 30 years!

The new OldCity.com is almost completed!

In our latest progress report on the new OldCity.com, we have moved into the testing phase of the project. Features both new and old are being tested as we prepare to bring Northeast Florida’s most popular web portal to the next level. You can take a sneak peek at the new site and all it has to offer by visiting the Old City Web Services website.

What’s going on in our neck of the woods?

September 22, 2011 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Congratulations to Revels Pepper Company on a new logo! Earlier this month we helped our friends at Revels Pepper Co. create a logo for their new business. These ghost pepper growers and distributors now have a bright, colorful image that will help them establish their new brand with potential customers.

Join Unity Outreach for the Think Pink Motorcycle Ride! Next Saturday, Oct. 1st, Unity Outreach of St. Augustine will hold its biggest fundraiser of the year–a 70 mile motorcycle ride. Beginning at the St. Johns County Fairgrounds, this ride helps raise money for families in St. Johns County affected by breast cancer. For emotional, physical and financial support, breast cancer patients and survivors in our community can depend on Unity Outreach for help. Sign up for the ride or just come out to the fairgrounds and show your support!

The St. Augustine Center for Living has a new home on the web! Earlier this week, Old City Web Services launched a brand new website for the St. Augustine Center for Living. The look and feel of the new site is based off of a new logo also designed by Old City Web Services. In addition to the colorful branding the Center was looking for, the website also has a built-in content management system so that the staff can post new pictures and events anytime, anywhere! We also optimized the website for better placement on the major search engines.

The Looster Booster continues to wow critics and moms! We’ve been working with the fun folks who created the Looster Booster for over a year now, creating a variety of print and web materials to help promote this ingenious little potty training stool. The Looster Booster has been receiving praise, awards and sweeping endorsements including a segment that appeared on Fox 25 in Boston, Mass. Check out the stool with its bright, colorful label designed by Old City Web Services.

We love sharing news from our wonderful clients and there is so much more to come! It’s been a busy summer and now we’re ready to transition right into a busy fall. If you have a website that needs developing, a brochure that needs to designing or any other marketing needs, give us a call!

– Old City Web Services