9 New Features in the Builder We Think You'll Love

Our update log is the best place to catch announcements of all of our key updates such as new widgets, templates, or major changes in the builder. But sometimes, some of the most useful features are ones that simply result in one highly useful checkbox in a widget you use every day. Even the most unassuming new features can result in huge time savings or solve a problem you’ve been trying to figure out.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been busy adding small features with big potential for saving you time and making your site-building life a little easier. Let’s jump into the details on our latest builder updates!

1. Disable Automatic Image Optimization

Image optimization is extremely important on the web, and keeps our page load speeds zippy while ensuring that our image files sizes are kept in check. Image optimization prepares an image for optimal use on the web by resizing oversized image dimensions, and compressing images so that file sizes don’t slow down page load times.

Optimization is a common process and is available in virtually every photo editing software, including Photoshop and Lightroom. It’s also available in standalone apps and websites such as JPEGmini and TinyJPG. As for the Wocode builder, optimization is built in, and is automatically performed to ensure top site performance; while removing extra steps of optimizing images elsewhere before adding them to your site. 

While automatic optimization is ideal for almost all circumstances, there are occasions when you may not want an image optimized automatically. For example, you may have an image of high importance on your site that you’d just prefer not to compress. And occasionally – even when you’re happy to let the Wocode optimizer do it’s thing, you may notice a visible alteration of the image such as artifacts or tonal change. In cases like this, you may choose to try other optimization options. 

With the “Disable image optimization” option enabled, images will be left original and completely unaltered. 

This feature has been highly requested by our user base, and we’re happy to announce that it is live in the builder now.

2. Greater Publishing Flexibility: "Set as Draft"

Historically, publishing your site meant publishing your entire site – including all of the pages throughout the site – at one time. In June of 2021, we added the ability to publish a single page, greatly improving the flexibility of publishing, even during various stages of the build process.

We’re happy to announce a way to be even more flexible and creative with publishing pages of your site – or in this case, not publishing pages. The new Set as draft feature allows a page to not be published even when performing a general publishing of the entire site. Additionally, “Set as draft” pages will not be seen in the site navigation, nor will they be searchable on your site. 

When you’re ready for a draft page to go live, revisit the Page settings and click Add to next publish. It will go live next time the site is published.

Use this feature to take your time in building out a page on your site while you continue to make and publish small changes elsewhere on the site.

3. Google Tag Manager Integration

Google Tag Manager is a fantastic way to open the door to marketing for your website. The GTM platform is essential for businesses of all sizes, and allows for Conversion Tracking, Site Analytics, Remarketing, and more.

Even though there are dozens of unique benefits of GTM, the best part is that there is no coding involved – even when performing advanced tracking techniques. And even better yet, setting up GTM in your site is easier than ever with our new Google Tag Manager tool. Once you’ve set up your Container ID with Google, you will simply paste that in our tool, and your site will be linked with your GTM account. 

To set up Google Tag Manager and acquire your Container ID, go here

To learn more about the benefits of GTM, go here

4. Upload Custom Sitemaps

A sitemap is a critical factor for any website. It tells search engines that your site is available for crawling, and allows for discovering and indexing all of the pages and resources on your site. Taking advantage of your sitemap, you can even highlight pages that might be hard to find or access otherwise, pages with dynamic or complex URLs, pages with rich media, or pages that are new or updated.

Conversely, not having a sitemap can lead to delays in the time it takes for search engines to discover and crawl your site, in turn impacting your ability to show up in search results. 

Our latest SEO setting allows you to upload your own custom sitemap. Files supported include .robots, .text and .ads.

If you would like to use a custom sitemap generator, there are many available options. See this article from Semrush for a roundup of the top options.

5. More Powerful Bullet Lists

Have a look around the web, and you’ll see that bullet lists are evolving. Much like emojis are becoming commonplace in professional applications on the web, bullet lists are more and more often being made with icons beyond the classic bullet shape.

In keeping up with the times, we’ve added additional options for icons in bullet lists. Use the dropdown menu to access icons such as check signs, stars, arrows and more.

6. Flex Floating Bar Improvements for Easier and Faster Editing

We’ve made some simple updates to the floating bar within the Flex editor to make things a little easier and more intuitive:

• Content and Design Buttons:
  The Content and Design edit actions are now available as text buttons instead of icons, offering a clearer path to access the way you’d like to edit.

• Prominent Widget Names:
  When a widget is selected, its name is displayed more prominently in the floating bar, eliminating any confusion of what is selected and what you’re editing.
  

7. Hide "Back to Top" Button on Mobile

We’ve gotten your feedback on the back to top button, and we’re happy to oblige! While a back to top button is a very handy thing to have on a mobile site, there are certainly times when you may not want to display a back to top button. And it’s for just these times that our new mobile feature will come in handy. To hide the back to top button on mobile, enable the “Hide back-to-top button on mobile” option in the site layout settings.

8. New Follow Options for Buttons

Buttons are of course a great way to direct users to important pages or content. But what if they could do more? With three new attributes now available, you can take control of your button behavior in ways not possible until now. In addition to opening a button link in a new window, you can now:

• Set as "no follow":
  This option asks search engines to not associate your site with the page being linked or crawl the linked page from your site.

• Set as sponsored:
  This informs the search engines that the link is the result of an advertisement or paid placement.

• Set as user Generated Content (UGC):
  This tells the search engines that the link is created by a user and isn’t necessarily reliable. Example: a link someone posted in a comment.
  

9. TikTok, Whatsapp and Google My Business Added to Business Info Options

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added several new options in the Business Info section of your site. Added services are WhatsApp, TikTok and Google My Business.

Icons from all three new services will be available as you display your social media throughout your site. Additionally, these new services will be available to connect to data on connected widgets.