How You Can Make Your Own Professional Website For Free With Weebly
By Helen L Abell
Having a professional website is becoming mandatory for all businesses these days; if
you're not online you don't exist! But you may not want to spend thousands on custom
web development and web design. What if you just want to get your website up and
running, with minimal cost and effort, so you can focus on your business?
In this article, I will walk you through the steps you need to take to make your own
professional website for free, very simply, with a technology called Weebly. Using
this website builder you can put together a simple, professional website with no need
for technical skills at all. Weebly has the simplest, most intuitive user interface
I've come across to date! Note this is one of a growing number of website builder
options, but it does provide good features for a simple online or small business,
including blogging functionality, and an extremely easy to use interface.
Introducing Weebly
To help you make your own professional website, Weebly provides you with both a simple,
intuitive web site builder, and hosting package absolutely free for up to two websites.
If you use the free version, there is a link back to Weebly in the footer. This can be
removed if you upgrade to the Pro version for a small fee, but for a simple website I
wouldn't bother, as it is quite discreet.
• It has a set of ready to use, professionally designed templates, that can easily be customized with your own images.
• It is great if you want a simple site that displays your business information.
• It also includes simple e-commerce functions including integration with Pay Pal or Google Checkout,
and a simple shop function, and a Blog with all the usual comment and mediator functionality.
• It is not a full blown e-commerce order tracking or shopping cart system though,
if you need more in depth functionality in this area you'd have tolook elsewhere.
• It does allow you to drag and drop contact forms and polls onto your site, which integrate with your own specified email addresses.
Step 1 - Sign Up with Weebly
The first step you need to take to make your own professional website, is to sign up
with Weebly. It's completely free and
you only need to give them your name, email address and a password to sign up.
Step 2 - Create Your Site
• Next, click the [Add Site] button on the My Sites page.
• Give your new website a name, which will be the overall title of your website.
• Select a Domain Name option. I suggest you initially select "Use a Subdomain Of Weebly"
to get started as this requires the minimum of fuss, you can design your site and test it out to see what it looks like.
You can change this later when you are ready to publish your finished website.
• Press [Continue], and bingo! your site is created and ready for you to customise.
Step 3 - Choose Your Design Template
I like to choose the website design template next, so that you really get a feel for
your new website. At the top you will see some options, click on the Design option,
the second one from the left. Here you can pick from a range of pre-designed
professional looking templates, for all different types of sites. Just select one you
like and it will be instantly applied to your website.
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