Can We Use PDFs for Ads?

The ad engine we use on our sites can only use images, text or flash movies for their display. None can use PDFs as they do not render within the site, and the ad engine does not accept them. The ads can be linked to a PDF like we will be doing in your site by uploading the PDF to the server and linking the ad to the uploaded PDF document. There are a few newspaper sites we have built that have another category for their e-editions where they upload their classified pages and similar. That would work too.

For Site Statistics, What Do the Terms Mean?

Visitor/User - A real person that has accessed your website.

Visits - This is the number that is most important in your statistics. Visits represent the total number of people that have visited your website during the reported period. If the same person visits the site twice, they will be recorded twice.

Hits - This represents the total number of requests made to the server when your site has been visited dur-ing that reported period. The requests can be images, pages, audio files, javascript files, etc. Don't be fooled by this number, it does not represent the total visitors to your website.

Sites - This number may not be 100% accurate, but can be used as a rough gauge to track the total number of unique (different) visitors to your site.

Pages - This represents the total number of pages visited during the reported period.

Referrals - This represents the total number of visits to your website home page by linking. This includes links from search engines, external links, and even links on your own website.

Visits, Sites, and Pages the most important numbers in your statistics package. These keywords will appear throughout the statistics summary, reported in a variety of manners

How Does the Paywall Work?

In the Backend: Each article or e-edition to the site can have a choice on whether it should be free to the public or behind the paywall. This is done on a per-page basis, meaning you have total control on which articles you want to be free and which should be behind a paywall. As you add or edit an article, you will be presented with a "Premium Content" field, where you can choose its paywall status. The screenshot to the left shows an example of how to set an article to be free or behind the paywall.

On the Site: For an item that is behind a paywall, a portion of the article will be shown to the user. At the end of the "teaser" a message will be shown as well, explaining the article is behind the paywall and giving them two options for contiunuing to read the article. This message can be customized to your needs, but basically, it gives a choice to have them login to the site (if they are a current online subscriber to the site), or view the subscription options that are available if they are not a current subscriber.

If the article is not behind a paywall, the user will not be presented with the message, but would instead see the complete article.

How Do I Add a New User (or Subscriber)?

To add a new subscriber to the site, is a two-step process if the subscriber is to have an automatic expiration to their role. Please follow the steps below to complete this process:

  1. Login to the site with the admin account
  2. Click on the “People Menu" in the black administration menu at the top of the site
  3. Click the link (in the upper left of the People Page) to “Add User”
  4. Fill in the blanks for username, email address, password.
  5. Do NOT click on the role you would like to give. This is done later. But you can click on the box to “notify user of new account”
  6. Click save
  7. To add an expiration date … after saving, click on the edit tab of the account you just created.
  8. Scroll down the page until you see a link for Ubercart Roles and click this.
  9. Add in the subscription duration for this account and click save.

How Do I Clear the Site's Cache?

To clear your site's cache, please follow the steps below:

1. Login to the site with the admin account
2. Click on "Configuration" in the administration menu
3. About halfway down that page (in the right-side column), there is a link for "Performance"
4. Click it
5. There will be a button at the top of the page reading "Clear Cache" ... Click it

The cache will flush, which can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. It will give you a message when it has been cleared.

Please note, clearing the cache should be done only when needed. It is not good practice to clear the cache too often. Please do not change any settings on the page.

How Do I Check Ad Statistics?

To check ad statistics on the site, please follow these steps:

Login to Site with Administration Account.
In the Administration Menu, click on “Find Content”
On the new page that opens, click on the Ad List tab in the upper right.
The new page will allow you to check statistics for each of the ads.

How Do I Make a Mutliple Page PDF?

Mac Preview Application:

  1. Open a PDF in Preview.
  2. Choose View > Thumbnails to show page thumbnails in the sidebar.
  3. To indicate where to insert the other document, select a page thumbnail.
  4. Choose Edit > Insert > Page from File,* select the PDFs that you want to add, then click Open.
  5. To save, choose File > Export as PDF.

In Adobe Acrobat DC:

  1. Open Acrobat DC to combine files
  2. Open the Tools tab and select "Combine files."
  3. Add files: Click "Add Files" and select the files you want to include in your PDF. You can merge PDFs or a mix of PDF documents and other files.
  4. Arrange and delete content: Click, drag, and drop to reorder files or press "Delete" to remove any content you don't want.
  5. Combine files: When you're finished arranging, click "Combine Files".
  6. Save as a PDF file: Name your file and click the "Save" button. That's it.

In Adobe Acrobat Pro:

  1. Go to “File”, select “Create”, then select “Combine Files into a Single PDF…”
  2. A new window will open, titled “Combine Files”.
  3. Click “Add Files…”, located in the top left corner of the window. Select “Add Files” to add specific files, or select “Add Folder” to add all the files in a specific folder.
  4. A new window will open, titled “Add Files”.
  5. Select the files you would like to use.  You can select several files at once by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking.  Click “Open” when you have selected all the files you want.
  6. To add more files, click “Add Files…” and follow the instructions in the previous step.
  7. When you are done adding files, you can organize the order in which the files will be placed in your PDF. Select a specific file in the Combine Files window, and click:
    • “Move Up” to place it earlier in the PDF
    • “Move Down” to place it later in the PDF
    • “Choose Pages” to only use certain pages in the file for the PDF
    • “Remove” if you do not wish to include the file in the PDF
  8. When all the files are in the desired order, click “Combine Files”, located on the lower right corner of the Combine Files window.
  9. A status bar will appear at the top of the window, indicating the progress of the PDF creation.  When the PDF is done, it will automatically open.
  10. Name and Save the new PDF.  By default the new PDF will be titled “Binder1.pdf”.  You can keep this name, or name it something that more accurately describes the content of the PDF.

How Do I Set Up a PayPal Account?

Setting up a business PayPal account enables your business to take payments for products and services without having to pay for an expensive merchant account. Your business can also take credit card and debit card payments, online check payments and direct payments from customers' personal PayPal accounts.

The following steps will take you through the process of creating a business account.

This part can be confusing, because PayPal will many times require you to either select an integrated shopping cart to use or create a button to use. The easiest way to proceed is to create a product button. PLEASE NOTE: This button will not be used, but PayPal requires you to create one. Personally, we suggest making a button named "Sample" with a price of $1. Once completed, you can honestly forget about the button, as we will not need it at any time.

  1. Visit and click "Sign Up."
  2. Enter the requested information. The process requests the new PayPal account owner's name, address, email address, business address and business customer service contact information. Once all requested information is completed, submit the form.
  3. Open your email and check for new messages. Look for the verification email from PayPal. This notification normally arrives within minutes, and is required to open your account.
  4. Log into PayPal and follow the remaining instructions that require you to enter your bank account information. You can set up a business PayPal account with either a personal or business bank account. Enter the name of your bank along with the personal or business account number and routing number as instructed. PayPal will then send a verification request to your bank in the form of two small deposits. It normally takes three to five days for the verification process to complete.
  5. Check your personal or business bank account transactions three to five days after setting up the PayPal account. Once you see two deposits from PayPal, you can finish setting up your account.
  6. Log into your PayPal account and follow the instructions to finish verifying your personal or business bank account information. PayPal will then tell you your new PayPal account set up is complete, and ask you to choose your preferred business payment method. You will also be able to set up other business-related features, such as requesting a debit MasterCard, or setting up an online shopping system.

At this point, your PayPal account is active and ready for integration on your website. When using PayPal as your payment processor, Surf New Media will only need the email address assocaited with your PayPal account to integrate the payment system within your site. Do NOT send passwords!

Security Note: When recieving an email from PayPal, please note who the email is addressed to. PayPal will always start the email with your name. If your email address is used, please do not click on any links in the email. For more information on online security, please visit

How do I reset a subscriber's password?

To change a subscriber's password on the site, please follow the steps below to complete this process:

Login to the site with the admin account
Find the user's account that you want to reset the password fo on the page.
Click on the edit button of the account in question.
On the edit page, you can change the password of the user/subscriber.
Click save.

There Is a Security Update for the Site. What Should I Do?

Surf New Media will handle all of this under our package solutions. If there is a security update (or other update) wanted or needed on your site, please email and we will handle the rest without any interuption to your site.

What Statistics Are Available?

Full statistics and more than you will probably ever need are built right into the site. Clicks, pageviews, time spent on site, which feeds are used and how often, most, e-mails, most viewed, etc. Ads can be tracked through sent e-mails, but amount of times read through e-mail (automatic e-mails like news alerts) cannot be tracked. This is because once the story is e-mailed, it leaves the server and cannot be tracked. However, the ads associated with the automatic e-mails will reside on the server, and therefore can still be tracked for statistical purposes.

Why Does the Article Scheduling Seem to Have a Delay?

When scheduling an article, you will notice that sometimes there is a delay between when you scheduled the article to publish and when it shows up on the website.

This is due to the background process (called cron) that handles such items.

The breakdown of the scheduling is as follows:

  1. An article is scheduled to publish at 10am by using the scheduling options.
  2. At 10am the article is queued for publishing by the website
  3. The next time the cron run (after 10am) the article will be added to the site

On most sites, the cron process runs about every hour. This is the maximum allowed.

What this means is that if the cron process ran at 9:30am the day of the scheduled article, it will not run again until 10:30am. So an article scheduled to publish at 10am will see about a 30 minute delay before it is shown on the site.

Because of the cron process schedule, an article can then take up to an hour to publish in the following circumstance:

  2. The cron process runs at 9:59am
  3. At 10am the article is queued for publishing by the website
  4. The corn process runs again at 10:59am
  5. The article is published at 10:59am

Why Isn't My Image Loading?

When adding in an image to an article or a cover photo to a PDF, there might be times when the the image will not show. Sometimes the site will even give an error stating something along the lines of resource not found or worse ... a bunch of warning that make no sense.

But the fix is actually pretty simple.

There are two basic reasons why an image won't display on the site.

1. The name of the image contains special characters. To fix this, rename the photo without special characters, making sure to only use a period between the file name and extension.

Good: photoname.jpg
Bad: photoname&info.jpg
Also Bad:

2. The image is just too large. Most of our sites allow you to upload up to 200MB per photo, and you are uploading an image that is just a mere 4MB. How can it be too big? Easy ... The diementions of the photo are too big. Many times someone tries to upload an image that is twice as wide as the website. When this happens, the server can time out trying to resize it, making the image not appear.

The fix is simple. Check the dimentions of the image, and try to keep them to less than 800px wide. And don't worry about the MB size .... we have that covered.

Why Is there Code in the Body Area? - Why Is the Text So Small?

When pasting in from certain word processing programming (specifically Microsoft Word), additional text formatting is added from the word document into the text editor. The additional formatting carried over from the word processing document is not seen when pasting, but is seen by the text editor.

This can result in text being a different font than the site has programmed in, or oftentimes shows extra coding (or in many cases very small text) within the body area when the article is saved.

To alleviate this, please paste copy into the body area of the article the following way:

Disable the text editor before pasting in the text.

To disable your text editor before pasting, please scroll below the body text area. There is a link reading similar to "Disable Rich Text" or "Switch to Plain Text Editor." Clicking this will disable the text editor. You can now paste in the article copy and the additional coding provided by your word processing document will be stripped out.

Why is My Image Loading Sideways?

When you upload an image to the site, sometimes the orientation is wrong even though it is fine when viewing the photo outside of the site. This is due to tags that some cameras add to the photos.

What is happening is that advanced cameras like on phones and most DSLRs use a tagging system to orient the photo (vertical or horizontal) which is then read by various other programs for photos. These programs range from photo editing software to basic photo albums on computers phones and social media applications.

However, during the process of adding them to the website, these tags can get stripped. This stripping of the tags can happen from any number of places including but not limited the computer’s operating system, the browser, various proxies on your ISP, etc.. The stripping, though, makes the photo not have such tags, causing then photos to default to a regular horizontal (or landscape) position.

The fix for this is the following:

Open the photo in any image program. This can be a photo editor like Photoshop or the default photo software on your computer (Ie: Preview in Mac).

Save (or re-save ("save-as" option)) the image (a different name preferably).

Use the re-saved image as the upload.

What this does is change the defaults of the image to the correct orientation without the need for tagging.