If you're looking for a little something to spruce up your Jimdo site, maybe today is your lucky day! We've added 12 new header images. Some of them are submissions from the photo contest!

After the new JimdoBusiness layouts last week, we've also got some fresh JimdoPro and Special Layouts for you. Maybe you've already discovered them, but if not, take some time to try them out. The preview galleries below give you a small taste of the new layouts!

Preview -- Screenshots of the new JimdoPro Layouts

Preview -- Screenshots of the new Special Layouts

You seem like a very impressive guy. For sure, running such a long distance is no walk in the park! Please tell our community a few stats about yourself:

Certainly. My name is Dustin Hucks, I'm twenty nine, and was born in West Texas. I've lived in Southern California for almost ten years. I'm not sure how impressive that all is, but those are the basics. I've been running since I was eighteen, lost a few years to injury, and hopped back on the running wagon about a year ago

Dustin, you’ve almost reached your goal – running to your home town in Lubbock, West Texas. Who or what inspired you to run in the first place?

My Aunt Debbie has stage four lymphoma, which is inoperable. She's currently in remission however, which is fantastic. She was one of the major catalysts in getting me out running for the American Cancer Society to raise money for general cancer research. The other inspiration was simply my love of running. I've always wanted to challenge myself, and running halfway across the United States during the hottest month of the year seemed like a good opportunity to see what I was made of.

Dustin, your perservance and drive is amazing!
The entire Jimdo team wishes you the best of luck in reaching those $1 million soon.
Thank you very much for this eye-opening interview!
- Lisa

The Twitter widget in action!

If you need a Twitter icon for your Jimdo page (linking it to your Twitter page would be one way to get more followers) take a look at this Smashing Magazine bog post. A little further down you'll find a whole slew of free twitter-related icons you can use!

Haven't heard of Twitter at all? Sorry to have gone on so long without asking! If you're interested in finding out more about microblogging and this latest social web site, the Wikipedia article has a nice overview... or just give it a try. Sign up for a free Twitter account and start tweeting today!

Don't forget to follow Jimdo while you're at it :)

Our designers just released some sparkling new layouts for JimdoBusiness. There are ten great new layouts, you can take a look at them all in the gallery below. They're ready to use, so if one looks right for your site, go for it! You can use it on your Jimdo site right now.

Make way for the new layouts!

Header Surprise: Transparency!

It's not just these layouts that are new -- there's also a handy new function you'll be sure to like: for all the new JimdoBusiness layouts (for certain other select layouts if you're a JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness users, too) you'll be able to set the header graphic to "transparent" so that your logo appears directly on top of the background.

Not sure what we mean? Just follow the "before" & "after" example below to see what a cool effect this can be!

Before

After

All that's left now is for you to try it out. Have fun with it! It's definitely worth it to play around with the new layouts, new backgrounds, and your logo. Your site will get a fresh new look! :)

We've got a nice update for all our JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness users: many new background patterns for you to use on your websites. They're fresh, they're eye-catching, they'll look great on your site! Take a look at the new backgrounds - one of them (maybe one of the wood textures, damask or floral patterns, among many others) will be the perfect finishing touch for your website. And you can change it in just a few clicks!

We've got a preview of the backgrounds below. Have fun trying them all out and sprucing up your websites!

Preview of the New Backgrounds

Our developers are unbelievably and hard-working! They almost never sleep, they basically live in the office, they're basically thinking 24/7 about Jimdo, and about ways they can improve Jimdo for you. We haven't talked a lot about their work behind the scenes, since it's not really new features or new designs. But now we've thought about it more, and we've decided that it'd be cool to share and recognize the little things they're doing to improve Jimdo. After all, the devil is in the details! So we're taking a moment to say thank you and recognize the work our developers are doing!

1) New Help Section in the Site Admin

2) Jimdo supports these browsers

Important! We're talking about the browser with which you can edit your Jimdo site. The visitors to your site can, of course, use any other web browser (or an older version). So, these are the ones you can use to change and update your Jimdo site:

• Internet Explorer (version 6 and higher)
• Firefox (version 3 and higher)
• Safari (version 4 and higher)
• Opera (version 10 and higher)
• Chrome (version 2 and higher)

3) Site Admin - Expand and Retract

4) More Possibilities for the Copyright Footer

Until just recently, your copyright always had to have the (c) in it. That's no longer automatically in there, so you have more freedom to determine what your footer and copyright lines look like.

• Multiple-line footers
• Use custom HTML
• Linking from the footer section

Here's how to edit it: go to Settings, the Website subsection, then click the Copyright Bar icon. You can see it clearly in the screenshot:

5) BMP image files now usable in the Emotion Header!

Die headline says it all - up until now you couldn't use images in the bitmap (.bmp) format in the emotion header. If you want to read more about the recent updates to the emotion header, take a look at this blog post.

6) Flash Image Galleries - Sorting and Canceling

When you're creating a new image gallery (more precisely, when you're uploading the pictures) the sorting works correctly  now. And now you can cancel your photo uploads at any time (that didn't always work before).

JimdoPro users have one email account and three email aliases (forwarding addresses) included in their package; JimdoBusiness users get five accounts and unlimited aliases. To make it easier for you to manage all these email accounts and aliases, we've completely revamped the email management and made it much simpler!

1) How to manage your email accounts

How to edit, create, and delete email accounts

In Settings, specifically in the Email Accounts view, you can modify existing email accounts, delete them, and create new accounts. In the example, there are two existing email accounts and at the bottom a new account is being created.

On the left side of the window you'll see the account. On the right, you can delete the account or change the password. To create a new email account, just click on "Add a New Account". As in the screenshot, a form drops open. Fill out the name of the email address, choose the domain (if you have more than one domain associated with the account), and create a password. When you're finished, click on "set up".  That's it! You can also log into your new email account directly through your Jimdo site's management interface, so you can get started emailing right away!

2) Email Aliases

How to create, edit, or delete email aliases/lists

This is how it works! In Settings, go to Email Forwarding to edit your email lists. In this example, there are already two email lists. You can simply change these or delete lists whenever you need to.

At the bottom of the screenshot, see how a new forwarding list is being created. Fill in the name of the forwarding list in Alias. You can choose anything, like redteam@yourdomain.com, but in this sample we chose buddies@yourdomain.com. Below the alias name, you can enter the email addresses to which you'd like us to forward the messages. Click save when you're finished, and you're all done!

It's that easy.

So even though this blog post is rather long, we hope you'll see that the new email management is really easy to use. Just give it a try, create a new email accounts and email aliases. You'll see how simple we've made it for you!

Cheers,
The Jimdo team

• see which domains you're already using with your Jimdo site
• order new domains
• check domain name availability
• see domain name status (if it has been successfully activated)
• change the default domain (if you're using multiple domains)

The Domain Assistant: Connect your Domain Name with your Jimdo Site

The domain assistant is there to help you if you already own a domain and you'd like to use it with Jimdo. If you already have a domain registered, it's no problem at all to set it up for your Jimdo site -- and the domain assistant is there to help you make it happen. It'll help you figure out these things during the set-up process:

• how to use an existing (previously registered) domain name with your Jimdo site
• print out instructions for working with your domain registrar
• determine, through some simple questions, whether you should transfer your domain or set up a forwarding mechanism (don't worry, the domain assistant will explain!)

It's really quite easy to set up a domain name with Jimdo. The following screenshot is a quick preview of the domain assistant:

Take a look at this video that shows exactly how to do it (video shots done on a German Jimdo site, but there's no narration anyway, so just look at the pictures)

But you don't have to take our word for it!

These customers are using Jimdo for their business websites, and if you take a look, you'll see just how well it works to make your business' site with Jimdo!

JimdoBusiness makes it easy for everyone!

For additional information about JimdoBusiness, take a look here. Discover the details of the features included in JimdoBusiness. Of course, we'll be working on improving the package, adding more features and making sure that JimdoBusiness stays the best all-around deal for a successful internet business!

If we've managed to convince you, that the JimdoBusiness option is right for you, go for it! You can either order it right here, or upgrade through your existing Jimdo site's control panel. Log in and click on the "upgrade" button. You'll be taken through the upgrade process step-by-step.

How about three personal stats/facts we cannot find on your site?

1.  I have two sisters and three brothers: and they are all to varying degrees techno-proficient and into multimedia. It must have been a geek gene.
2.  I hate fairground rides.
3.  I adore babies. Love them, love them. But I sure am glad all my kids are now too old to have their bottoms wiped.

Did you have a website before starting your Jimdo site?
My very first website was built when I was a bored young mother while trying to avoid washing dishes. It's still up there. Mumatwork.co.uk. Building it taught me that I had a lot to learn about websites and design. I've kept a blog NotesfromtheSlushpile.co.uk since 2005 and CandyGourlay.com is just the latest incarnation of my homepage.

How did you find out about Jimdo and what do you like about it especially?
I actually found Jimdo through another website making service which we will identify as W. I was trying to help a friend build a website on W and it just wasn't working for my friend. I did a search for other content management sites and found Jimdo. I much preferred the toolset and I liked the usability. I also liked the personal and friendly service. I now build websites for my website clients using Jimdo.

You are a mother and a career woman. Do you see any conflict in that?
Motherhood is the oldest profession in the world and I'm just lucky that I can work from home, keep my own hours and be with the kids (who contrary to popular belief often prefer quantity time rather than quality time from their parents). One of my mottos is: Let's do it all ... we're already tired anyway.

And boy, am I tired. But happy.

What motivates you? Where do you get your creativity from? Any trick to share?
Everything is motivating when you're open to change. I find that people have varying degrees of receptiveness to change - change meaning learning new stuff, trying other things, getting out of your comfort zone. And you're more receptive when you are not afraid to play around with stuff. A lot of older people I know develop a fear for change ... but they are surprised when they embrace change and discover that they enjoy it!

Has your Jimdo site helped you get your message across? If so, how?
Apart from the fact that Jimdo is so easy to update, it also provides the ability to add contact forms on any page. I think this is crucial in an age when the audience is no longer content to merely receive your information but to participate in it. I think the comments forms create that easy link between the author and the reader.

Is there anything you would like Jimdo to improve? Is there a certain feature you're missing?
The number one killer feature would be an UNDO button - or better yet, a versions app. Having the ability to go back to a previous version of your website would be so cool. You can also create the ability to save ‘skins' for your website that you just click on when you feel like changing - white and snowy in winter, green and fresh in spring, that sort of thing.

Interview with multi-talented artist Candy Gourlay

Candy, best of luck to you with your upcoming book Tall Story and many more projects to come!

Thank you so very much for this smart and funny interview!

- Lisa

Wohoo! We've got a reason to jump for joy - we've just reached a BIG milestone:

1,000,000 Jimdo Sites!

Jimdo's Here for You!

By the way, if you want to stay up-to-date on what's going on at Jimdo, follow us on Twitter and become official Jimdo fans on Facebook! Just click on the icons below.

Jimdo Celebrates 1 Million Sites with Schnitzel and Salad

Dear Jimdonauts, we've got great news for your photo galleries!

It was always been easy to link to other pages or sites from single images... and starting immediately you can do even more with image galleries - you can set a link for each image in a photo gallery! We hope those of you with online shops and similar sites will find this particularly useful.

Please note: as soon as you set a link for one or more photos in any photo gallery, clicking to enter enlarged (slideshow) mode won't work anymore - but that makes sense, right? :) If you don't have link any of the images, then of course you'll be able set the gallery to behave as it always has: pictures expand when you click on them. The links themselves are simple to add - you can do it in the gallery editing interface (see below).

Enjoy the newly updated photo gallery!

I wrote previously that Jimdo was nominated in a few categories at the Europas Awards (TechCrunch's European startup awards). Many thanks to all of you who voted for Jimdo, and the judges who also helped winnow through the nominees in each category.

In other great news, Jimdo's currently #18 on the newly launched TechCrunch Europe Top 100 Index! TechCrunch explains

"This is a new, constantly updated Index of the most innovative and highest-potential European tech companies, as compiled by our partner YouNoodle."

Take a look, watch Jimdo climb up to #1! :)

The recent big update that affected all Jimdo pages that were created BEFORE January 2, 2009 was finished a few weeks ago. Now we want to take the opportunity to introduce you again to the new "emotion" header interface. Since the update, it's been available to all Jimdo users, even those with older sites. Exciting, right? Keep reading to learn everything about the new options it offers...

New Possibilities!

We don't want to speak too poorly of the old header tool, but the new one can do so many more things, it's way better. A site's header really makes it individual and distinctive. We already offer a gallery of headers for you to choose from -- a gorgeous variety of choices, if we do say so ourselves. If you want to upload your own picture, that's a great way to add a unique touch to your Jimdo page.

When you're editing the header, click on "Settings" on the new toolbar. You'll see the new menu (see right). Depending on the size of your photo, you can change the height of the header area, zoom into a particular section, and even shift the image horizontally or vertically. Just try it out, and click "apply" when you're happy.

We've got an example ready for you and more detailed information about the new header in our header help article. There's also a short video below the two example images that shows everything the header can do!

Enjoy!

Before & After: Get the Full Effect of Your Photograph

Video of New Header Features

Jimdo's Nominations

Your favorite web site creator has been nominated in two categories. The two links below take you right to the voting page. You only have until Thursday, July 2nd to choose, so do it now!

• Best Web Application or Service
• Best Design

Jimdo needs your help! Vote for Jimdo so that everyone can see what a great service we are :) Tell your friends, ask them to tell their friends. Every vote counts (and think about the Jimdo founders, who would love to go to London for the award ceremony!)

We're really honored to be considered for the Europas and the chance to prove how great Jimdo is. Thanks for your support!

Server Updates

The Jimdo developers (see them on our team page) have been working really hard the last few months to create new features & all sorts of improvements for Jimdo users. In order to make these future changes go more quickly and smoothly, we're doing a system-wide update. It started over the weekend (at the end of May) with a server in China, and it will, in total, last around 2 weeks.

Not to worry -- your site will still be online for everyone to see. The editing function will be temporarily disabled for the duration of the update. In fact, it's only when our migration team is working on the specific server that your site lives on, that you won't be able to make changes. We're estimating that can be anywhere from 24-36 hours.

The first servers with English-language Jimdo sites are getting their code tune-up as I'm writing this post. We're keeping a thread in the forum updated, click through below for the latest information.

Forum Topic with latest updates:

Important System Updates [May 27 - June 10, 2009]

Statistics Downtime

Jimdo has grown very quickly, and we've got so many amazing Jimdo sites that are attracting a ton of visitors.
This is great and you all deserve a huge congratulations, but it also means that our statistics system is overloaded and can't handle the traffic right now.

At this time, visitor statistics are not being updated anymore. Our engineers and developers are already trying their very best to get the stats up and running again. You are not going to lose any stats or counts, not even from the time period (right now) when the statistics aren't being shown. Phew! What a relief!

If you don't want to miss out on using a statistics system, you can add a free statistics tool to your Jimdo Page: Google Analytics. We explain how to add it to your site in our Google Analytics help article.

As soon as our tech crew has fixed this problem we will notify you in the forum topic on the statistics module!

To all the Jimdo users, thanks so very much for your incredible patience during our growing pains!

But first, get a personal impression on Spencer and his mission:

Interview with the founder of 6:8 Ministries Spencer Boulter

Can you describe 6:8 Ministries in three sentences?

6:8 Ministries exist to provide affordable life-changing mission experiences. We want to allow interested individuals to use their skills, talents, gifts and passions to bring hope to the hopeless, food to the hungry, and to love the unlovable.

Who came up with the original idea for 6:8 Ministries and motivated you to start the organization?

I'm the founder and now the executive director. The idea was to provide affordable mission opportunities for those who are looking to make a difference.

What do you personally do at 6:8 Ministries?

I oversee the daily operations in Costa Rica and Guatemala.

How many children do 6:8 Ministries support with the donations and what do you use the money for?

We currently provide educational sponsorships for over 100 children. The money is used to provide the necessary items for children to succeed in school (uniforms, books, registration, etc...).

We believe that education is a key element to these children escaping the grips of poverty.

Why should someone support 6:8 Ministries instead of the many other charitable organizations that exist? What do I "get" out of sponsoring a child?

None really. We are not trying to develop a big child sponsorship program. Our focus is more about providing our participants the opportunity to keep giving and helping after their experience ends.

You live in Costa Rica; we don't have many users there yet.

I live in Alajuelita, Costa Rica with my wife and four children.

How did you find out about Jimdo?

We were having web-site woes.We had a site professionally built using Dreamweaver. It looked great but wasn't very user friendly. It was hard to make changes and updates for a non-tech guy like me. We then tried to use GoDaddy, and Blue Voda, but they were very limited and complicated. Finally, I noticed a friend of mine (Brock Johnson - Deepstream Guatemala) had a great looking web site. I knew he wasn't a tech guy either so I asked him about his web-site. He then told me about how great Jimdo is...and he was right!

Best wishes to Spencer and his entire team!

We hope you will have lots of success with what you do and would like to say:

Thank you very much for this interview!

- Lisa

As the news that GeoCities made the rounds today, with stories on TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, ReadWriteWeb, and CNet, and as well a veritable tsunami of tweets, we here at Jimdo have been trying to figure out how to help rescue the people whose sites have been on GeoCities and are soon to be jettisoned.

We decided we're going to work on a way to help GeoCities users move their sites over to Jimdo -- free accounts of course, and a discount for JimdoPro if they want to do that. We're calling it...

The Jimdo Lifeboat

If you know of any friends or family who are affected by GeoCities shutting down, just point them over to the Jimdo Lifeboat (http://www.jimdo.com/geocities) and we'll help get everything straightened out.

Kelly Smith, founder of Inkd.com, recently dropped us a line to ask us to take a look at the site, which recently launched. Inkd calls itself the world's first market for original print design. Inkd is basically a marketplace for print materials like flyer templates, brochure templates, newsletter templates, etc.

Why is this interesting for Jimdo users?

I've noticed that a significant number of people are using Jimdo to create a website for their businesses and organizations. It ranges from small businesses just getting off the ground to long-standing stores to non-profit and community organizations want to get themselves online now. That really makes us happy, since our goal has always been to put the internet, web design, and making your own homepage in the hands of regular people.

Inkd is doing something very similar with print design! You can download fully editable design files like brochure templates, business cards, flyer templates, newsletter templates, which were uploaded by professional graphic designers. Each is unique and is examined by the Inkd team before ending up in the marketplace.

What's also useful is if you don't find what you're looking for, you can put out a request to Inkd or email graphic designers directly on the site.

Jimdo users out there who do marketing, design, and related creative work can submit material to the design collection. If you do so, you are paid a royalty fee on the total retail sale for each transaction that ensues, but in the future Inkd plans to debut an ‘exclusive’ membership with a higher commission fees.

Inkd print templates (of which 900 are already present) are made available for download immediately. There's quite a variety of designs in many different file formats -- page layout files such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign along with photos and artwork. Everything is fully editable; you can customize it to go with your Jimdo page, no matter what kind it it.

You can get some free samples from the Inkd website (hover over the ‘Learn’ tab) to see what they're like:

Big in Japan!

Last Thursday Christian, Fridtjof, and Matthias left on a trip to Asia. They met the Jimdo Team in Shanghai, China and landed in Tokyo on Monday.

To see what they've been up to, take a look at the site that they've been "lifestreaming" with Twitter updates and lots of photos. It's a mix of German and English, but the pictures are worth more than a thousand words!

But that's not the big announcement today, this is:

the Japanese version of Jimdo is now online!

The launch took place today at a joint press conference with our Japanese partner KDDI Web Communications. KDDI Web Communications is a subsidiary of the second largest telecommunications company in Japan, and they've put together a great team in Tokyo that's going to take care of all the new Japanese users. Here's a big thank you to all the work that the Japan Jimdo team has done preparing for the launch. You guys are great!

We're really excited here about unveiling Jimdo in Japan and we're really looking forward to see how the Japanese users like it. Here's something fun -- "Japanese for Jimdonauts":

すべての人にホームぺージを

Pronounced like this: Subete no hito ni home page o. It's Japanese for "Pages to the People!" :)

One final treat before we wrap up this post -- here's an awesome video that the Jimdo team in Japan put together. Three cheers for Jimdo!

All the best from Hamburg and Tokyo :D

- the Jimdo team

Interview with jewelery designer Jolie Mack

Describe yourself in five words:
Neurotic, slightly (this word doesn't count) obsessive, melancholy, moody, awkward maybe? Five words aren't enough really, there's a lot more. And better ones too, like focused and then there's distracted easily, and chatty.

How old are you?
Old enough to know who the Smurfs, the Golden Girls, and The A Team are.

Was this your original choice of career or how did you end up designing jewelery?
Let's be fair and say that I have never actually chosen a career. It has never occurred to me to do that. I have been many things: a band member, a wedding planner, a waitress, a bartender, a makeup artist, an advertising hustler, a marketing developer, and over the last 8 years, a Mom of twins.
Having the steady hands of a veterinarian, making jewelery was a natural choice. It has allowed me to quit the bar job that I "loved" so much and keep my own hours.

Like most things, my business came to be by necessity and accident: I knew I needed to change careers but discovering my designing ability was a happy accident (kind of like my kids.) Putting the two things together seemed the thing to do at the time.

What makes Jolie Mack jewelery so special and why does the world need it?
Anything that is made with care and attention is very special. The technicality or finishing of a jewelery design is crucial - paying attention to the tiny details. I hand-file every wire end, I am very aware of the balance of the design, the way it hangs or lays, and the comfort of the piece. Proper assembly ensures that all of components stay together. The only way to achieve this kind of quality is to produce every design by hand, myself.
Although my designs are certainly unique, competitors are everywhere. There is a designer out there who can recreate my jewelery and perhaps even improve upon it! But because of the ethics I believe in, my business is a breath of fresh air to those who choose Jolie Mack Designs. Customer satisfaction, personalized communication and fair business practice are values that set my business apart from others. These philosophies make my clients feel special, keep them coming back and ultimately, add a bit more sparkle to the jewelery.

However, it's much more work!

Who are your customers?
Those who purchase are usually closer to home, here in Canada. My demographic leans toward the 30-something professional woman. Interestingly though, it seems that each individual design grabs its own micro-demographic, depending on its colour, shape, length, materials and price point.

How did you find out about Jimdo in the first place? Do you have a favorite Jimdo-feature?
Facebook is a very important tool for professional exposure and so I spend a lot of time on there. About a year ago I searched the Facebook applications for websites and Jimdo popped up. I was curious because the name was so perplexing (I always want to say Jimbo (...surprisingly enough, quite a few other people do too! Who would have known...?!)) and the little logo (I'm a logo junkie) was so...smiley. I committed myself to using what Jimdo offered and as I began to work with its abilities, I quickly realized that having my own website for only time and no money was a reality! Good news, considering I had a fancy website quoted for $8000!
Gosh a fave feature? I get along with them all! I like how easily it is to move things around, add and remove pages, build pretty picture galleries and edit my content.

What features would you like to see Jimdo develop next? What updates would help make your site better?

The only thing that I truly wish for every night when I go to bed is a Jimdo shopping cart! Oh yay, what a dream come true would that be!! The world would be my oyster if I could sell my jewelery like an internet gypsy through a Jimdo feature.

How has your Jimdo page helped you and/or your career so far?
Well, let me count the ways! First off, if Jimdo's templates, fonts, and ease of use weren't so delightful then I would be out a boat load of cash for a pro-designed website - cash that I need to keep the business running. Secondly, Jimdo allows me to present a beautiful site to my clients and world. My site is reliable, updated, and provides fabulous communication with potential customers through its forms, picture galleries and social networking. Third, through Jimdo's own marketing, Jolie Mack Designs receives plenty of European exposure with little effort! That's just one more thing off my busy mind. Jimdo has been instrumental in the success of my business and I say thank you.

Do you have a recommendation of another Jimdo page that you would like to share with us and our readers?
There are so many gorgeous Jimdo pages that I couldn't even go through and pick one. I am attracted to Jimdo pages that are heavy with photos though, because the galleries look great. I do suggest that all Jimdo users take some time now and then to explore the Jimdo environment. Browse the pages to see the other creative ideas used to construct Jimdo sites. The possibilities are endless and you'll likely be inspired to work further on your own special page.

Jolie, best wishes for your future and thank you very much for this interview!

Would you like to be in our next Jimdo User Spotlight? Leave us a note in the comments!

This blog post is a little bit delayed, but I still want to introduce myself and a few of the other new folks here at Jimdo.

Curious about who else "powers" Jimdo? See all of us on the team page.

We're celebrating our 2nd birthday at Jimdo. Is it the "terrible 2s"? We don't think so... Maybe the "terrific 2s"! There's a lot to celebrate, including a really delicious cake and some exciting news to share.

A lot of great things have happened in the last two years. In a nutshell: Jimdo's now available in 7 different languages, is used by people in over 140 countries, and just set up the 500,000th site! We're really happy and lucky to be working with the Samwer brothers and the European Founders Fund (read all about it in the blog post). Our team is expanding by leaps and bounds -- 25 Jimdo enthusiasts at the latest count -- and we're still on the lookout for more (in our Hamburg office).

It's incredible and amazing for us to think about how Jimdo has developed over the last two years. Without our users, of course, none of this would have been possible. That's why we'd like to give you a biggest THANK YOU on this special day. Thank you for your encouragement, your suggestions, your feedback, and all your support!

As always, we're always excited to see your comments. Please let us know what you've liked over the last two years (or however long you've been using Jimdo), what you haven't liked, or just tell us whatever is on your mind!

All the best,

The Jimdo team

Good news for all the JimdoPro users out there - starting right now (or really since yesterday), you can start order add-ons like extra email addresses and additional domains right on your own Jimdo site!

How does it work?

What can I order?

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can immediately order some of the add-ons that have previously only been available by contacting Jimdo support! Please note that these are add-ons like a 2nd (or 3rd) domain for your Jimdo site; you've still got everything that the JimdoPro package includes!

You can choose from the following extra options:

• an additional domain
• an additional email account
• new and great for small businesses: the Email Package: 10 additional email accounts and 20 email forwarding addresses (aliases)! When you order the Email Package, we'll increase the storage for each account to one gigabyte!
  

The waiting is finally over, and after a month of voting, the Jimdo community has chosen the winner of the big Jimdo Photo contest!

You sent in over 8,000 photos, and this one is #1: the little ladybug! And now he's going to be a big star at Jimdo.

Congratulations to the three winners!

If you submitted a photo and didn't make it to the top 3, there's good news for you too! We're going to raffle off the remaining prizes (photo software from Magix, GorillaPods from Joby, and Jimdo t-shirts) among all of the participants.

The winners will hear from us by email.
 
30 photos made it into the final round for the public voting. That's already a huge accomplishment, since we received over 8000 images from you. We'll be adding the "top 30" into the Jimdo photo gallery soon, and then Jimdo users all over the world will be able to use them in their headers. We're looking forward to seeing these beautiful new headers gracing the tops of your Jimdo pages!

Another big thank you from all of us at Jimdo to all the participants who submitted such fantastic photos and shared such great stories about your pictures.

After a couple of weeks and thousands of phantastic submitted photos, the entry deadline for the big Jimdo photo contest passed yesterday.

We're really kind of overwhelmed - thank you so much for submitting such great photos from all over the world! Now it's our (very hard) part to choose the best images and to present them to you for the voting! Of course, we do our best to choose the best photos within the shortest period of time! And soon, you're welcome to vote for your favorite picture!

Unfortunately, we cannot show you any of the pictures yet - but we'll let you know as soon (as possible) as the time for the voting has come! :)

Best regards,

Your Jimdo Team

P.S. Need more information about the photo contest? Please click here!

All Jimdo-Users are familiar with it: the bar on the right hand side of your Jimdo-Page that always appears in editing mode. Here you can set your layout and font image, edit your Jimdo-Friends and work on general settings - in short: you construct the basic framework through the Site-Admin!

Now, the Site-Admin comes along with a completely new look! You can construct or change your basic framework even faster and more stable and get a better arranged overview, starting now!

An overview of the most important changes

At first glance you will notice the entirely new design and also the change of structure - but don't worry about any of these changes, you will find everything as easy and logically set up as you know your Jimdo. Soon you might neither remember nor miss the "former" look. :)

Along with the design for all menu points within the Site-Admin, this is new too: You can pull out the menu point of the Site-Admin that you're working on (e.g. Layout) to make it as large or small as you like. All depending on how much you would like to see at once. In addition, you can open and close the Admin completely, too.

1. Settings = is now "Settings" and "Jimdo Account" all in one!

The menu point "Jimdo Account" does not exist anymore. Partially this separation of "Settings" and "Jimdo Account" has caused slight confusion, therefore all formerly separated menu sub points are now gathered under the new "Settings". From now on, this is where you can manage your e-mail and domains, work on your user and blog settings along with many more functions...

Another very important change: Anyone wanting to upgrade to "JimdoPro" should look for "Upgrade" within the new Site-Admin for this has become its own menu point.

2. Layout and Style

Under "Style" you used to be able to only change the font image for your entire Jimdo-Page. This is a bit different now: in our opinion "Style" does not only include the font - from now on, background image and background pattern for your Jimdo-Page can be selected under "Style" as well.

Now, because of that, "Layout" simply means "layout only". :) Of course you can still choose between standard layouts, special layouts and your own layout for HTML- and CSS-experts!

As always, we're looking forward to hear your opinions on this! Do your like the new Site-Admin? Everything clearly arranged? Are there any questions, comments, suggestions...? Let it out, give us your feedback right here in this blog or write us an e-mail to support@jimdo.com!

Your Jimdo Team

Good news for all JimdoPro users! As you know as JimdoPro user, an own email account and three redirection addresses (so-called aliases) are components of our service package JimdoPro - and from now on, you can set up your e-mail account easily by yourself - in only few steps!

In our Wiki, the Jimdo Help Section, you'll find detailed instructions and tips how to set up your email account quickly and easily. Don't worry, the article might look a bit complex at the first sight, but it's really not difficult. If you have any questions while setting up your e-mail account, you can of course write us an email to support@jimdo.com.

All the best,

Your Jimdo Team

(Hobby) photographers listen up! The big international Jimdo photo contest has started - and you're all welcome to take part and to win awesome prizes!

Send us your photos – and they’ll hit the road…

The best photos do not only win great prizes, they'll also travel around the world: The top photos will be included in the Jimdo gallery and contribute to Jimdo Pages' appearances all over the world!

Take part and win!

• 1st prize: A Nikon digital reflex camera
• Start of the contest: October 23, 2008 
• Entry deadline: November 30, 2008

Read more about further prizes and the conditions of participation here.

We're looking forward to your photos - and good luck to all of you!! And don't forget to tell all of your friends about the contest - everybody is welcome to take part, even if he or she doesn't have their own Jimdo Page.

Finally, we change over to more easy readable URLs (=internet addresses, please check Wikipedia for further information) that are going to be loved by search engines. Example: The URL of a page called "about me" was the following until now: name.jimdo.comc/about_me.php. From now on, it'll be name.jimdo.com/about-me/. Pages on the second navigation level will be included in the new URLs, e.g. name.jimdo.com/about-me/friends/.

Your advantages:

• For search engines, it's much easier to find these URLs - so the chance that your website is found, increases (the SEOs among you will be happy about that news! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization)
• Looks better and is easier in all ways - If you send the link via email to friends, if you integrate the link on another page of your website or if you tell somebody a link on the phone...
• Info for the pros: URL encoding in UTF-8

Before and after – comparison

Let's assume that the navigation of your website is the following:

What do I have to consider?

First, the most important thing is: Even though the links of your page will change - the old links will still work fine.

Example: Your page name.jimdo.com/sailing.php will change into name.jimdo.com/sailing/ - Friends and Google only know the previous link. But we built it in a way that they are redirected automatically to name.jimdo.com/sailing/. Your friends might not notice the change, but Google recognizes it at once and saves the new link at once (for pros: 301 moved permanently).

You should consider that pages in the second navigation level repeat the name of top page. Example: /skitrip.php changes into /trips/skitrip/ -> check if you like the names of your pages. Otherwise, name them whatever you want to.

When and how are the changes made?

• All new websites get the new names immediately.
• The URLs of older websites are changed directly at the moment, if you change the navigation.
• Within the next weeks, we'll change all existing pages to the new name scheme.

We're looking forward to receiving your feedback!

All the best,

Your Jimdo Team

P.S. Of course, we tested everything in detail, but sometimes we overlook something. So if you should notice any errors or any noticeable problems, please let us know and write an email to support@jimdo.com - THANKS!

At the beginning of July, we asked you to vote for the next Jimdo feature in our forum (take a look at it here). As a little reminder - you could vote for one of the following features:

• Restore/backup
• Own forum
• Poll
• Music player
• Counter
• Customisable fields for your contact forms
• Continuously adjustable image sizes
• Flash banners

The poll was finally closed on September 1st. Actually, it was a nip-and-tuck race between "Restore/backup" and "Own forum". It was so close that, summing up the votes of the English and the German forum, the score was even.

...and the winner is...

We thought about how to solve this stand-off and decided to develop "Restore/backup" as the next Jimdo feature. We really think that this is very useful and might be a great help after deleting something accidentally. Since it is a quite complicated process to develop such a feature, we won't be able to release it tomorrow :) But don't worry, we're working on it!

Those who voted for the own forum: Don't be disappointed! There are other ways to integrate a forum into your website! Several providers offer forum widgets for free - so it's not impossible! In our forum there are some posts in which an own forum is already discussed. Maybe you'll find some good tips here?

So, thank you all for voting! The winners of the JimdoPro packages will be informed by email! Congratulations to you!

Best regards,

Your Jimdo Team

Often desired, long awaited and finally there: The new music player for your Jimdo Page is online! From now on you can enjoy your favorite music on your own Jimdo Page!

That's how it works

And there's more behind it...

Looks promising, doesn't it? :) Great Pages and creative ideas - what do you think?

Best regards,
Your Jimdo Team

We all know this: Almost every day our email accounts are overflowed with spam mails... it's just annoying! And contact forms can be affected, too - unless you put some obstacles in the spammer's way: Captchas! Captchas are little tasks that can usually be solved easily by humans, but not by computers. So if the correct solution is entered, it is presumed that the user was human.

Since we received many questions concerning anti-spam protection recently, we decided to create a little Captcha for your contact forms that should preserve you from spam mails. However, since Captchas rely on visual perception, they offer only limited web accessibility. Users who are unable to view Captchas won't be able to perform the task. That is why you can decide when integrating a new contact form if you want to deactivate the anti-spam protection and offer full accessibility for your website (important for official websites of public authorities) or if you activate the anti-spam protection and get rid off spam mails.

Let us know what you think about it - does it work for you? Those who want to learn more about Captchas can look it up on Wikipedia.org.

Last weekend, our Jimdo packed the bags and to go on a little works outing! Incl. a mudflat hiking tour, barbecue and a night in a "hay hotel" (there were no rooms, we all slept in an old stable on the warm and cosy hay). Employees of other companies might not feel like spending a whole weekend with the company, but we all were really excited and looking forward to the weekend!

On Friday we started our trip in a good temper and spent the first night at Fridel's place (the old farm, where once the idea of Jimdo was brought into being). But before we went to sleep, we had a nice barbecue and celebrated... and so we were a bit tired when we had to get up at 5.30 a.m. :) Finally we made it and started our mudflat hiking tour in time and there was not even a not even a suggestion of fatigue when we arrived at the little island Neuwerk (it actually has only 36 habitants) off the coast in the North Sea. In the evening, we made some hot dogs while we were sitting on the levee, payed a visit to the crowded (and only) bar on the island, had a night-time walk and finally enjoyed our well-deserved sleep in the hay...

The next morning, we made our way back home to the mainland, had a second breakfast at Fridel's place and then all got back to Hamburg... We're already looking forward to going on the next Jimdo Tour! It was such a great weekend!

Enough the talking - we don't want to withhold the pictures any longer... Enjoy! :)

Have fun!
Your Jimdo Team

P.S. Want more? Take a look at our partner site - we started to make a list of great widgets we recommend for your website! If you have any suggestions, which widgets should be recommended, too - let us know! Just write an e-mail to support@jimdo.com

Add new pages, hide them (read more about this in our Wiki), and move them up and down or to the second or third navigation level... - it couldn't be more simple with the improved version of the Jimdo navigation!

A big Blog Beta Update is done! There are some changes concerning the teaser and the RSS feed, furthermore you can create categories > but we'll come closer to the details in a second..

First, we have to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH to all the busy Beta testers! Your incredible feedback, your suggestions and all your support helped us a lot - and is still helping us a lot to improve! Thanks! :)

Closed ends - open begins...

...and we would like to welcome all of you! Everyone who would like to test the blog, is invited to join the Beta! From now on, you'll not be asked to enter an invitation code - just go ahead and set up your Blog! Indeed, we'll stay Beta - that means, errors still may occur and other updates will be made, but everyone who fancies to have a blog should try it! We happily welcome every new Jimdo blogger!

And here are the technical details:

1. Teaser image and teaser concept changed

The figure you enter here, defines how many elements of the blog article's content are displayed as a teaser. Those who want to keep the originally considered appearance of the teaser (small image and introduction text), just choose "Text with photo" for the first element and the 1 for teaser length. But of course, any other element can be integrated after the heading... Just try it out - and we'll work on some good tutorials that will show you all features of the blog element step by step.

All existing teaser texts and images will be transformed into a "Text with photo"-element autmatically, so don't worry: no content will be lost!

Here's an overview of the changes for already existing blog articles:

• The option "Show teaser image" is no longer valid. All teaser images are visible now (because they have been transformed to a "Text with photo" element).
• You can change the size of your teaser image! (The quadratic shape of the image might be lost by changing the size)
• In the overview of the "Blog beta" element: from now on, the first element after the heading is displayed automatically in the teaser view.

2. Categories

Finally, here they are: Categories! Now you can sort your blog articles according to different topics.

And so the articles are sorted and categorized. The readers of your blog see the articles below the heading of the blog article:

3. RSS feed

We would be pleased if you let us know what you think of the update :)

Have fun blogging!

All the best,

Your Jimdo Team

Time for a change? At least, it's summertime and maybe your website needs a refreshing outfit...? ;) What about trying one of the new layouts? Just try them on - you'll find them under "Layouts"

Here you can take a look at the new layouts (click on the picture to enlarge it):

Do you like them? Let us know... :)

Best,

Your Jimdo Team

Some of you may wonder what OpenID actually is. So, here's a short introduction to OpenID: OpenID can get you out of the "account jungle" most of us suffer from on the Internet. It is a decentralized single signon system, which allows Internet users to log on to many different websites using only one username and one password. 

Your OpenID address looks like a www-address and can be linked especially well in different forums or other blogs. What is best: You can also register the URL of your Jimdo Page with your OpenID provider as your personal OpenID. If your homepage is at the same time your OpenID, you'll profit from some advantages:

1.) just remember the name of your homepage as your username for other sites
2.) Your homepage is linked automatically on other websites (e.g. if you login to forums via OpenID)

And that's how it works:

1. Get an OpenID from an OpenID provider

There are several providers you can choose from. Here you'll find a list of different providers, just have a look at them. It's free and easy: wiki.openid.net/OpenIDServers. Once you finished creating your OpenID, you can add the URL of your Jimdo Page in your OpenID account so that you'll be able to use it as your OpenID later.

Of course, you can also login at many other web services that support OpenID with your Jimdo Page (if you have ticked "Use your Jimdo Page as OpenID"). If you don't want to use OpenID, of course it's up to you whether you want it or not.

For more information on OpenID please check Wikipedia

If you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at support@jimdo.com. :)

All the best,
Your Jimdo Team

Finally... They are here! Our long-awaited and red hot Jimdo T-Shirts have finally made their way to our office. Needless to say that we had to jump at them to try them on and to have a little photo-session. Here are the results:

Also good news to the Jimdo Supporters: at least, we'll be able to send out the promised Supporter Package!! :)

All the best,
Your Jimdo Team

Do you like it colorful? Great - we've got something for you! From now on, it's time to explore our Pages Directory! Under "Explore" you can search for different tags - and the pages that fit your search key will pop up and catch your eye immediately!

So you can rediscover the world of Jimdo in a completely new way and see what happens at Jimdo! Just enter your search key under "Explore", e.g. "Jimdo" - and see all the pages that have been tagged with "Jimdo" pop up at once. Discover at first sight how many pages exist for certain topics. If you like one of the pages, just click on it and learn more: who created the Jimdo-Page, what other tags have been given to it? Explore endlessly through different pages and learn a lot - maybe you'll even discover some new Jimdo friends...?

How can you join? If you have already given your Jimdo Page under Jimdo Account > Tags some sensitive and fitting tags, you're automatically in because the new Jimdo Explorer visualizes everything which is a tag ;) So,
go ahead and take a look at your friends' tags - it's a lot of fun to look through the Jimdo-Pages... best thing is, you'll start your own exploration tour...

Receiving feedback from your environment is a great thing. You get recognition for what you're doing or suggestions and tips for improvement. At Jimdo, we have a new comment module for that!

Wow, we're absolutely overwhelmed! So many of you signed up for the Blog Beta and are now busy building up their blogs. Your feedback is just awsome, thank you so much! We almost can't keep up with answering your mails and comments.. :)

We continue to work on the blog features and already finished the technology for the categories. Now, we're working on the surface so that you'll be able to use it...

Furthermore, we added the following features to our list:

• Post new blog articles to Technorati
• Add widgets of blog articles to del.icio.us, mr. wong, webnews etc.
• Teaser image: changing the size

We'll keep you in the loop - thank you so much for your support!

Spring and Fridel,

Jimdo Team

Our new blog tool is waiting in the wings. Starting now, we are launching a so-called closed beta phase, which allows a participating users to test the new functions. Within the next 4-6 weeks, we will install additional functions and (hopefully) encounter few mistakes. If everything goes well, as we anticipate, we will makes the features available to all members.

Jimdo's new blog tool enables you to simply and speedily write you own Blog. (If you're not sure what a blog is, check out the Wikipedia article). What is so special about Jimdo's blog feature is that you can be in charge of your own design: you can integrate all the elements that you use for your Jimdo-Page-wether it's text, photos, videos or widgets...

If you want to be one of the lucky testers and want to test the new blog functions in the beta phase, than act fast. We are handing out 200 test accounts on the quickiest Jimdo Users. Later, however, we will also make more test accounts available-so apply now for a test account!

Already have a blog and want to finally transfer it over to Jimdo so that you can finally have everything all in one place? That isn't a problem- you can import your current blog without losing any of the blogs in your archive. Read on to find out how it works.

We are first and foremost excited to hear what you all have to say about the new blog tool. Simply leave a comment on our new blog :-) We look forward to hearing your opinion. You can also ask any questions by sending an email to support@jimdo.com or using our forums.

All the Best,
Your Jimdo Team

Would you like to find new friends at Jimdo? Or would you like to find out which friends are already Jimdo users? From today on it's very easy to find it out. Afterwards, you can easily invite those of your friends who are missing to Jimdo and so expand your network.

That's how it works

Search friends

You can also search for a single friend - just type in his or her E-Mail address or name. Then you can see whether he or she is on or not and add or invite him/her at once!

Have fun with your friends - find them and get connected :)

If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team and write them an E-Mail to support@jimdo.com.

All the best,

Your Jimdo Team

Dear Jimdo-Fans,

we have just released social features such as adding friends, sending messages and keeping track of friends’ newsfeeds within Jimdo. These features will hopefully help you a lot to make your Jimdo-Page a lot more interactive. You can see in the video down below how the new features work.

Since we launched Jimdo last year we had a clear vision of how the Jimdo-Page should develop. We wanted to enable you to create your own place on the net, a place where you can determine what you want to publish, what your page looks like, and who can access what information.
But it should also be a place where you could interact with your friends and family.

Up to know, you already had the possibility to create your own website. This release now is the first one that is going to make it way easier to communicate with your audience - you're able to connect as friends, send messages and even follow the updates of your friends pages via the newsfeed.

We hope that you'll enjoy the new features - what do you think of them?

Pages to the People,
your Jimdo-Team

The new Features

Quick Start.

1. Visit any existing Jimdo-Page i.e. jimdo-team.jimdo.com and click on "add as friend". Now go back to your Page, log in and check out the button "Friends" on the right side. If the person has accepted your friendship he or she will appear here. Make sure to try all new features under "Friends"!
2. Integrate the new Jimdo-Element into your Page. Just log into your Page, add the new Jimdo-Element and i.e. make your newsfeed public.
3. Search for new friends in the Pages-Directory.

How do you like the new features? We'd really appreciate your feedback in our forum or directly to support@jimdo.com. We're developing Jimdo to give you a first class product - and it's always good to know if we're on the right track.

But now, go ahead and add us as a friend: http://jimdo-team.jimdo.com! :)

Pages to the People,
your Jimdo-Team

Did you ever want to know how often a certain PDF was downloaded on your Page? If you use Google Analytics for more detailed statistics on your Page it'll from today on also show you how often your downloads have been downloaded. See here for more information of how to integrate Google Analytics to your Page.
Best,

your Jimdo-Team

Hard to believe, but it's true: the 7th language version of Jimdo is online! Recently, we launched an Italian and a Russian version, and now we continue with Spanish! As always, we're really excited what different pages will be created and
what feedback the Spanish version will get.

The brand-new Flash Picture Gallery is online and has packed some improvements that the visitors of your Jimdo Page (and you, of course) can enjoy! :)

First of all: Finally, it's there - the long expected full screen mode! In order to make the full screen mode possible, pictures will be saved from now on in a higher solution (for pros: 1024x768), which means: in a better quality. Furthermore, impatient viewers can click through the pictures with the arrow keys on their keyboard.

When editing the Flash Gallery you will not only note that the new technique abbreviates some waiting lines, but also that you'll find a little help section for the new picture gallery.

We would like to thank Jens Krause whose Slide Show is used for the Flash Gallery.

Now, we wish you a lot of fun with the new gallery!

Your Jimdo Team

...and here's a little preview of some of our photos:

Which places in the world have I seen? Where did I travel? Where do my best friends live? How can my guests get to my party? Or how do my visitors reach my company?

All these questions can be solved with the help of our new Google Maps Module! Just integrate the module as a new element, place your marks, define the type of your map, the control of the map and its size.

Furthermore, you're on the safe side using the Google Maps Module, because everyone knows that using card material can be quite delicate and being admonished is not uncommon. However, using the Module, you're on the safe side.

Jimdo's Birthday present: A forum!

On February 19, Jimdo celebrated its first Birthday! As a present to you, our users, we finally launched a Jimdo forum "From Jimdo users for Jimdo users". At first, only the German version of the forum went online, but the English forum was launched last week as well. Now, users can exchange their experience in several categories, submit tutorials or arrange Jimdo user meetings.

Have fun!

Dear friends of Jimdo. We recently integrated four new layouts now waiting to be tested by you! Just log into your Jimdo Page and chose "Layouts" under "Layout" and pick one of the new ones. Maybe it's time to give your Jimdo Page a new look...?

Have fun!

Your Jimdo Team

In 2008, you can look forward to several surprises and improvements! If you have any suggestions or wishes, please do not hesitate to write us an email to: support@jimdo.com! Keep at it!

All the best,
Your Jimdo-Team

Just in time we'd like to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and all the best!

Enjoy the holidays and we'll be back very soon.

By the way, we're processing support questions from tomorrow on again, so you can be sure to get a quick answer to your questions.

All the best again,

your Jimdo-Team

Many people bring important organizations to life and do voluntary work every day. Often enough there is too little attention paid to their projects and work, and frequently relief projects are not supported enough because of a very low awareness level.

About two weeks ago we launched our new editor (see: "Further improvements"). Now we have another goodie for you, which many of you asked us for: You can now also define the color of your font directly in the editor!

Last night we made the following improvements:
1. New editor for adding and editing texts.
2. New login-process

1. New editor for adding and editing texts.
We replaced the editor by a new one which loads way faster. The next time you'll add or edit a text you'll notice the significant speed improvement. So why not maybe add a new text to your Page?
A nice sideeffect (for pros): the XHTML-Code the new editor produces is way cleaner than the old one.

2. New login process.
When you'd like to logout out of your Jimdo-Page you now have the two options "View" and "Jimdo-Logout". If you choose "View" you're changing into the same view-mode the regular visitor of your Page sees. With a click on "Edit" you can easily change back into the "edit-mode" of your page without entering your password again.
If you click on "Jimdo-Logout" you competely log out of your Jimdo-Page.

It's finally online: our new font styling tool! It can give your Jimdo-Page a new look and it helps you to design your Page in a clearly arranged and well-structured way.

Videos, a music player or the current weather report – from now on, you can more easily integrate any kind of widget into your Jimdo Page. In order to include a new widget, all you have to do is add the new widget element, paste the corresponding source code – that's it!

Have fun trying out!

We're really happy to announce that the brothers Oliver, Marc and Alexander Samwer have invested in Jimdo (via their European Founders Fund).

The Samwer Brothers have already created successful brands like Jamba! and the German eBay clone Alando. In 2006, they established the European Founders Fund to invest in promising Internet companies.

The Samwer Brothers are our first large-scale investor. We are very happy that they're joining Jimdo. They just have such a widespread knowledge and experience that'll help us to grow Jimdo even faster. For you the investment of Jimdo will hopefully result in an even faster development of Jimdo!

Pages to the People!

Do you fancy something new? We just integrated 139 new background images that are now waiting for you to try them out.

What about one of these?:

Inserting a new background image is easy. When you edit your Jimdo-Page, you'll find them under "layout" > "background image". Pick your favorite image, submit the changes - that's it! :)

A Google Analytics tool is now available for integration into your website. Google Analytics generates detailed statistics, in addition to your Jimdo statistics, about visitors to your Jimdo-Page. You can, for example, find out where your visitors clicked from, how long they visited your website and which keywords they used to find you in search engines.

We have five new templates you can use to beautify your page in a very special way – display your interest in your favorite topic from head to toe, if you want to… You can chose between one of the following "special templates": Horses, Flowers, Rock star, Surfing and Halloween!
The new templates look particularly good when you load up your own picture into the heading area. Just try it out and see…
Here's the way it goes: Chose "Special Layout" under "Layout" and pick one of the new templates. That's it – you can get started!

You can see some examples of what your page could look like, here:

Have fun trying out!

Your Jimdo team

Starting now, you can use your own design for your Jimdo-Page. That means that you can not only personalize the content, but also the appearance, of your Page. Cool, huh?

Good news to all users of JimdoPro: At last, when you sign up for JimdoPro we can now offer you your own email account in addition to your own domain. That means you'll be able to use the email address name@username.com. This great new extra does not only offer you great benefits - it also provides some technical features.

• It supports both POP3 and IMAP
• Webmail access is through https://webmail.jimdo.com. Here you can set up additional features: Contacts, Calendar, Feed reader, etc.
• Out-of-office-reply (very useful while you're on vacation...)
• Substantial spam filtering and virus scanning

Of course, all existing JimdoPro users can install their own email account - just send an email to support@jimdo.com - we'll attend to this directly!

We're pleased to present a newly-added feature for your Jimdo-Page: the third navigation level. If you add this feature, visitors of your homepage can read through your Page via a more complex navigation bar.

We're really excited to announce the official launch of our Chinese version

Jimdo has had a large number of Chinese-speaking users from the very beginning, but, unfortunately, they have had to rely on our English-language version. We are now really pleased to have eliminated this language barrier with our Chinese version. We think it is a really great move to make Jimdo available in China. It's the first step in our strategy to further internationalize Jimdo (Pages to the People ;)).

Jimdo already enables you to edit important information, like your e-mail address, password, language, screenshot, tags and website description directly through your Jimdo Account. (You can also upgrade to Jimdo-Pro on this page.)

Now we've added 39 really cool background images you can use for your Jimdo-Page.

Did you already try out the background images for your layout? It looked like this:

Here's a sample of the new ones:

New function: from now on it's possible to set up different password protected areas. That means you can give your friends different access rights than your parents. Cool, huh?

By the way, this is one of the many suggestions you made to improve Jimdo. Thank you very much for your support - it's really great!

The Popular pages section of our website, here, provides a short description of your Page so that potential visitors immediately know what your Page is about :-)

Now you can edit the description yourself. Just log into your site, click on "Jimdo Account" and "Description of your Jimdo-Page." Make sure to fill out "Tags / Keywords for your Jimdo-Page," too. We'll use them for a new feature appearing soon :-)

Facebook, one of the largest social communities worldwide, just opened up their network to external services (great move!). Since we think that Jimdo is a perfect extension of the Facebook Profile page that every Facebook user has, we just designed a Jimdo application for Facebook. So, if you're a Facebook user who would like to share more information about yourself or something you're really into, you can now easily create your own Jimdo-Page - and a screenshot of your Page will be added to your Profile!
Oh, and of course all groups can create their own website, too! :-)

As you've probably seen, we're listing the 500 most popular Jimdo-Pages, screenshots included, on our website, here. You now have the option to manually update your screenshot if your Page makes it onto the list.

So, if you change your Page layout or make other significant changes to your homepage, just log into your Jimdo-Page, click on "Jimdo Account" and "Screenshot of your Jimdo-Page." Your screenshot will automatically be updated. You can update your screenshot once every 24 hours.

A job here is probably just about the swiftiest position out there. :-) So, go here to see whether there's a vacant position that'd suit you. We look forward to having you on our team!

Good news: the new statistic feature is online! Now you can analyze how many people have visited your Page, where they came from, what search engines and terms they used, etc.!

JimdoPro-Users get slightly more detailled statistics - they get swifty graphs that display, sort and categorize everything they need to know about their Page - these stats are also downloadable as an Excel file!

Just a quick note concerning the differences between JimdoFree and JimdoPro. We try really hard to give away as many features in the Free version as possible. For example, we just raised the JimdoFree storage space to to 500 MB.

However, there are a couple of features that make a lot of sense for professional use. The detailed statistics are an example of this and that's why we only included them in the JimdoPro. Sound ok?

How do you like the new statistics? Looking forward to your feedback: support@jimdo.com

Finally, you can upgrade to the JimdoPro-Page online. So if you wish to use the JimdoPro-Page (features) you can now simply log into your own JimdoFree-Page, click on "Jimdo Account" on the right side and complete the four-step ordering process in minutes. It's of course really easy to upgrade. Looking forward to welcoming you as a JimdoPro user! :-)

11:00 a.m. GMT

Unfortunately, we currently have a hardware defect on one of our US-servers. The harddisk is just being replaced and the data copied. No data is lost and your Jimdo-Pages should be up soon again. We'll post here again as soon as the problem is solved.

Sorry for the inconvenience this is causing! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us at support@jimdo.com

UPDATE April 12, 1:25 a.m. GMT

Well, to tell you the truth, we think it can't get any worse. Our hosting partner has been trying all day to fix the hardware problem but they didn't manage, yet. It seems like the harddisk was not the only problem, now they are checking all the other elements.
It's only one of our US-servers but still the situation is very unsatisfying to say the least. We're really really sorry and we know that it's very inconvenient for you. As soon as the Pages are up again, we'll post it here right away. We'll also let you know about what exactly caused this downtime.
Again, we do have back ups and your Pages are not lost.
Thanks for your understanding!

UPDATE April 12, 10:32 a.m. GMT

The server is back up and all Pages are running smoothly again. We can't stress enough how sorry we are that your Pages have been down this long. We don't even know which part of the hardware was defect. After our hosting partner changed pretty much every element of the server and it still wasn't running stable they did give us a brand new one. This one seems to work fine now...
There was no data lost and all of your Pages are now back.

We just wanted to wish everybody a Happy Easter holiday! Here some flickr pictures tagged with "Easter." Enjoy!

We've just integrated five new designs. You can see here how to apply one of the new designs to your Jimdo-Page.

And this is what they look like:

Pages to all the People in the world! Jimdo has just been launched internationally!
More big news: We just launched Jimdo internationally! Finally the English version is up and we can offer Jimdo to the entire English-speaking community. We have been looking forward to this moment and can't wait how you all like Jimdo! So after testing please make sure to leave your comment here.

Today we have majorly upgraded JimdoFree and JimdoPro. In the JimdoFree-Page there are now 500 MB included! And in the JimdoPro-Page you now have 5 GB! What an upgrade! It has been so cool watching what swifty pages you have created. That's why we are especially happy to give you even more possibililities with the upgrade. Click here for an overview of the integrated features in JimdoFree and JimdoPro.

The HSV is going to present two of your Fan pages during halftime of the match against Leverkusen on Sunday! Wow, that's cool! All you have to do edis send an e-mail to hsv-leinwand@jimdo.com. We will then randomly draw two of your pages...

Important: Due to the limited time, we can only consider e-mails that arrive by Friday, 12 o'clock! So go ahead and apply immediately. Good luck!

The HSV is a major soccer club here in Germany. And we are really really proud to cooperate with the HSV and offer its fans the Jimdo-HSV-Fanpage!

What is the Fanpage? Well, basically it's a JimdoFree-Page with an official HSV layout. The HSV offered us the chance to integrate three official designs which the fans can use...of course all regular Jimdo users can use these designs, too. Just login to your Jimdo-Page click on "Layout" and then on "Cooperations" and you'll see the Fanpage designs. Please don't be surprised that you can't, for example, change the background color. Just imagine what a HSV-page would look like in the colors of the opposing teams. ;-)

These are the three official HSV designs:

We are overwhelmed! Before the launch we were so so much looking forward to this day, but we were of course also nervous. But what happened during the last days is just unbelievable. The ultimate best is your feedback. It is obviously so important to us that you like the way you can create your page! So thank you all for your tremendous feedback, it is motivating us even more!

In addition, it was just great to get that much positive press and cool blog posts. Click here for an overview.
What do you think of Jimdo? Looking forward to your comments!

flickr.com is a plattform where you can store, share and sort photos. We have just added a new element that is of special use for those of you who already have a flickr account. You can now directly integrate your photos from flickr into your Jimdo-Page (just like videos from YouTube). Thus, you don't have to upload your photos twice. If you don't have a flickr-account, don't worry, you of course can keep on using the integrated Jimdo galleries (which have even has more functions than the flickr gallery).

This is what a flickr-gallery looks like within your Jimdo-Page (here the most interesting flickr-photos from today):

Del.icio.us is a free, online bookmarking service (very useful!). With the new del.icio.us element you can easily integrate your (or others') del.icio.us bookmarks. Why does this make sense? Well, maybe you have a really cool hobby, like surfing around on Jimdo-Pages. Now every time you find a cool Jimdo-Page you can bookmark it at del.icio.us. And you can integrate the new del.icio.us element onto your own JimdoPage to show all of your Jimdo bookmarks. Every time you add a new Jimdo-Page to your bookmarks, it is also displayed on your Jimdo-Page. Cool, eh?

And this is what your bookmark links from del.icio.us look like on your Jimdo-Page:

Today is the official launch of Jimdo in Germany! We are very very happy to have reached this significant milestone. Now we are really excited to see how you - our new users - will be using Jimdo and what your feedback is like. After testing, please make sure to leave your comment here. Thanks for your support!

Welcome to our Blog! Jimdo is blogging. Right from the German launch on we'll be presenting new features, business developments and, of course, cool Jimdo-Pages! So make sure to subscribe to our feed or check this site regularly!