Page 22 of Costco's June 2009 Costco Connection newsletter features a good introduction about using social networking to generate buzz about your business. In a bad economy, social networking can get the word out about your business and generally does not cost you a dime -- just your time!

Here's a direct link to the article: http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200906/?pg=24&pm=2&u1=friend

Customers who are using a web hosting system provided by Precision Computing Arts / Fastwebdev will be happy to know about two new features:

• Multi-Column Layouts for your interactive forms.
• Default Product Layouts for your shopping cart.

These features are described briefly below. If you need more help, please contact us (normal hourly consulting rates apply).

ENJOY!

Multi-Column Forms
You can now set up multi-column forms using the form builder. Follow these steps:

1. Create a new form or edit an existing form.
2. Click the the "column" field type icon (see example below).
   
3. Enter a name for the column in the Label field of the Form Field Properties box and click Save.
4. Move the field Up or Down to where the new column should begin.
5. Save your changes.

To clear the columns and create a new row in your form, add the "column" field type and select the "clear column set" option in the Form Field Properties box.

You can see an example of a multi-column form on our Interactive Examples page.

Default Product Layouts
The new default layout feature makes it easier to manage your ecommerce product layouts. To take advantage of this feature, choose the default layout when creating (or editing) your products and categories.

To change the look of the default layout, simply go to the general store settings page and change the default layout. The appearance of all the categories and products that use default layouts will update instantly!

Before this update, you would need to edit each individual product/category to change its layout. You still can choose specific layouts for individual categories/products as needed.

To set up default product overview and product details layouts, follow these steps:

1. Go to the General Store Settings section of your main store page.
2. Set up the default product overview layout (for category pages).
3. Set up the default product details layout.
4. Save your changes.

To ensure that your categories and products use the default layouts, select the default layout when creating or changing the category properties or products. The default layout icon is shown below: