More 2BuxMall Progress

Store Owners can now add Custom HTML to the footer area of their Stores. You can put ads there. You can also put in any kind of widget. See sites like WebBuilderZone for links to lots of free stuff for websites. You can see the HTML that other Store Owners have used by right-clicking on their Stores and selecting "View Source". Scroll down to the SPAN tag that contains this: span id="lblFooter" The HTML inside this span tag is the Custom HTML that the Owner of that Store entered on their Customize Footer page in Store Settings.

We added Custom Backgrounds a while back. There are many websites that offer free background images. Just search for "free backgrounds" to find them. I've used Free-Backgrounds.com and the Absolute Background Textures Archive. The later has a cool Texture Maker that I used to make the "cells" background for the 2Bux Store.

Store owners can now Remove Comments on their Store and can Block Users from commenting on their Stores. If you are logged in and on your Store page, you will see (Remove) (Block User) at the end of each comment. Click Remove to delete that comment. Click Block User to keep that user from commenting on your Store. You can also Block/Unblock Users from a page in the Store Settings menu.

The main Mall page now has a custom Google Search Engine that lets you search the Mall. Tags have also been implemented. Add Tags to describe your Store on the Add/Edit/Delete Store Tags page that you can get to from Store Settings. Your Tags will appear under the text in your About module on your Store. The first 6 tags will also appear under your Store name on the main Mall page. Click on any Tag to see all Stores that use that Tag. There is also a Tag Search page where you can enter Tags to search for. TIP: Use % as a wildcard! For example, enter sing% and it will find sing, singer, singers, singer/songwriter Tags.

We also implemented a feature which will help to drive Search Engine traffic to your Store. Your About module text is automatically added to your Store's meta Description tag and your Tags are added to your meta Keywords tag. We have used this technique very successfully on other websites. If you don't understand what these tags are and how Search Engines use them to see what your page is about, don't worry! There is nothing that you need to do, this is already implemented for you. The point to take away is that this will help Search Engines like Google and Yahoo to find your Store and include it in Search Results.

A new file upload system has been programmed and tested internally. We'll roll it out first to upload MP3s (songs) for sale. That should be ready for testing very soon. Check the Songs page in your UserHome for that.

Thanks to everyone who has been to the Mall. Whether you have visited our site to see what it's all about or if you are our wonderful Testers, we appreciate your time spent in the Mall!

2BuxMall testing progress

The 2BuxMall has been in testing for about a month now. Store owners are able to set up links to websites and to items they have for sale. Store owners can put PayPal buttons on their Stores and money can also be transferred internally from one user to another. Store owners can customize the Background Image and Colors of their Store. Next week, we'll add the ability for Store owners to put any kind of ads on their Store. All proceeds from these ads will go directly to the Store owners.

The video auction system has been tested. Users have been able to upload videos and auction them off. Other users have been able to Bid on videos and watch them when and if they win the auction.

The ability to buy and sell MP3 songs has been tested. Users have been able to upload MP3s and provide a Title, Description and Price for each one. Other users have been able to buy and download MP3s.

Certain parts of the Level system are being tested. Internally, we are testing a new method to upload files that are larger than 4MB in size. Soon, we'll add the PayPal plumbing so users can get real money into and out of the system. After that is tested, we should be ready to open!

Huge thanks go out to all of our wonderful testers! I hope you all have a great holiday weekend!