Karelia Software

The Regular edition includes all the features necessary to create and publish a website along with some additional capabilities such as the ability to modify the design. The Pro edition is designed for users who want to be able to customize a site to a greater degree.

The Pro edition has everything the Regular edition has, but with the Pro edition comes the ability to manage raw HTML in several contexts:

• As pages and pagelets
• By editing the HTML behind a page's editable text elements
• Via the Code Injection panel
• In the ability to view and validate the HTML source for your elements

Also included with the Pro edition is a Google Inspector that easily integrates Google's Webmaster tools (Google account required) into your site. With Google's Webmaster Tools you can:

• Effortlessly incorporate tools like Google Sitemaps and Google Analytics
• Get assistance with required site verification
• Take advantage of the automatic sitemap generation during the publishing process (including notifying Google of changes to your site)
• The automatic injection of Analytics tracking code into all site pages.

You'll absolutely love all the extra features included with the Pro edition of Sandvox.

Yes! In fact, we want you to test the software before you decide to purchase it. Download the demo version of the Regular edition free of charge and you'll begin building a site and testing Sandvox's features. You might also want to watch our screencast introduction, a short (15-minute) video covering the basics of creating a website in Sandvox.

Sandvox will publish websites to your own Mac (if it is reachable by the Internet), Apple's MobileMe service, or to almost any web host that supports transfer of files via FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV.  (We can recommend a few.)

Sandvox doesn't make use of any special features that web hosts may offer (such as PHP, databases, blogging systems, etc.), which means that you do not have to worry about specific host capabilities.

Most well-known hosting services work well with Sandvox, as long as they allow the upload of  HTML files, graphic files with GIF, JPEG, and PNG extensions, and any other file types (such as PDF's) you might want to make available for download. We've encountered a few web hosts that place unnecessary restrictions on file uploads, so you might want to check with the host you wish to use.

Yes! Actually, you'll use Sandvox to create as many websites as your imagination and time permit, with one condition. Although Sandvox doesn't limit the number of sites you can create, the terms of our license specify that any sites you create should be your own and should be maintained by you.

Sandvox allows you to create your own design or make changes to the existing designs offered in the software, but you need to be familiar with CSS in order to do so. 

For specific information and advice about creating custom designs and making changes to existing designs, see our Designer's Guide. If you just want to make slight adjustments, you'll find that most of our designs feature  swappable banner images. You can get more information about how to access design files by visiting our Help page and reading the information on modifying designs.

Yes! Sandvox can help you create and publish a blog, either as a stand alone site or as part of a larger site. Any collection of pages—text, photo, or others—you create using Sandvox, can form the basis of a blog. The most important task is to index the collection correctly. 

In Sandvox, use the Page Inspector and set the Collection Type to either Weblog or Photo Weblog. Or, as a shortcut, you can add a preconfigured weblog collection from the collections item in the toolbar. For more information, see our Help page on  Blogging with Sandvox.

A podcast is simply a weblog with attached sound (or video) files. You'll need to record your podcast using digital recording software such as WireTap Pro or Audio Hijack. Then, just drag the sound files into a website collection and publish your site. The URL for your feed will be the same as your site or collection, but will end in "index.rss" or "index.xml". Subscribe to that title in iTunes with the "Subscribe to Podcast" menu. For more information, see our Help page on Podcasting and Videocasting.

With Sandvox, your pages are automatically structured to allow search engines to properly index the content appropriately. You can add other meta-data to your pages to improve this process using the page details area of the window, and you should also notify Google of your website. Our Pro edition takes this one step further and includes an Inspector feature for integrating Google Webmaster Tools.