Creating your first Free Website
Once you have selected a free website hosting service, you will want to start working on creating your website. Fortunately, tools are normally provided to make the process simple and easy. Nevertheless, it is quite possible to waste a lot of time trying to figure out something that isn’t quite as apparent and straight forward to you as they intended. The website creation process will differ slightly depending on the specific capabilities provided by the hosting service. This website provides step-by-step procedures based on typical capabilities to further simplify the process. If you print this page and have it in front of you to refer to when you get stuck, it should make the process of creating your first website go more smoothly.
1. Enter a Domain Name
Typically, a free web hosting service provides a cPanel with various website development and management tools including website builder. Find the website builder software provided on the cPanel and open it. Two widely used website building programs are website builder and RVSiteBuilder. It will most likely be one of them. You will need to enter a domain name for your new website. The free hosting service will most likely provide free sub-domain names. For a totally free website, take advantage of this service. A short 3 or 4 word name dealing with the planned subject matter of your website works best since it will be easy to remember and not too specific to limit traffic to your site. The name will be registered and an URL [the complete name of your website] will be created. You will notice that your sub-domain name contains a suffix linking it to a higher domain owned by the hosting service.
2. Select a Template
Website builder provides templates which can be modified to form your new website. You need to be smart in selecting a template that will work best for your website. Should you select one that doesn’t work out; you will have to start over with a new template losing all your work. Pick one that looks appropriate for your website subject matter and that will accept your website content without major modifications. The design of some templates includes forms that can result in inappropriate lines or borders running down the middle of your web page. You may have to actually pick one, see how it looks with some of your content and then start over with a different template before you get one that works.
3. Input Website Content
Once you select a template, your website gets created and uploaded to the internet with the sample content provided with the template. You must replace the sample content with your real website content. This is done using the website builder tool. Click on home in the main menu from the website builder admin panel. This takes you to your website home page. You will see the sample content that needs to be replaced. You can replace text by highlighting the text to be replaced and either typing your desired text or pasting text from a word document. A picture can be replaced by clicking on the picture to be replaced and then on the link icon to upload and insert the new picture. Remember to save changes and preview website to see how it looks.
4. Create additional Website Pages
You will most likely want your website to have more than one page. To add additional pages, click on add a new page from within the website builder admin panel. You will need to give the new page a title, select the page type and click on add. The menu will be updated to show the new page. To add content to these pages, click on the page title in the menu which takes you to that page.
5. Adding AdSense & Affiliate Ads
To place ads onto your website, highlight the HTML code for the ad and click on copy. Go to the desired page within the website builder admin panel and place the cursor where you want the ad to be located. Click on the "place HTML code" icon. Paste the HTML code into the box and click on insert code. Save changes and preview website to see how it looks. Don’t click on AdSense ads while in the preview website mode since it will be picked up as clicking on your own ads.
6. Placing links along the side under News & Updates
The News & Updates section can be changed by clicking on the add-on modules tab and selecting news. Fill in the header and text block(s). Click on add news and you should see your new entry at the bottom under news currently displayed on the website. Initially, there by be an entry that reads website under construction. You will want to delete that entry since that tells Google that your site is not complete. Check to see that the news tag is located in the appropriate place under news & updates in the page layout. Do this by going to the desired webpage within the website builder admin panel and clicking on template. Scroll down and see if the news tag is in the block below news & updates. If it is not, type it in there and save changes. When you do a website preview, you should see your new entry under news & updates on every page of your website.
7. Creating a Photo Gallery
A photo gallery can be added to your website by going to the desired page and clicking on the add-on modules tab and selecting Gallery. Photos can consume a lot of resources and for that reason there is a maximum size allowed. You will most likely have to use a photo editing software package to reduce the resolution of your photos. Limit your uploading of photos to stay within the allowable resources for your free website.
8. Placing Contact Information on your Website
You may want one of your website pages to be titled Contacts. You may prefer creating an email address using webmaster in lieu of your name. You can place your email address on the contacts page once you have created it from the cPanel. Also, you can include the contact form provided by website builder. This is done by clicking on the add-on modules tab from the contacts page and selecting contact form. Fill in the information and save changes.
9. Placing a Privacy Policy Statement on your Website
Some affiliate programs require you to have a privacy policy statement posted on your website. You can create one as a word document after reviewing other websites’ privacy policy statements and considering your website operations. When creating your privacy policy statement document be sure to include a way for your site visitors to return back to your website page. This can be done by placing on the document the words “Return to Webpage” with a link to your website page. You will need to upload your privacy policy statement and make it available for your site visitors to read. This can be done by typing the words “privacy policy” at the bottom of the last page of your website. Highlight the words and click on the link icon. This will allow you upload the document and link to it within your website.
10. Creating and Submitting a Sitemap
A sitemap is not required, but it seems to be very important in getting your website indexed rapidly by Google. If you want to make money from AdSense and/or Affiliate ads, you need to get traffic (i.e. visitors) to your website. Getting your website indexed by Google as soon as possible so people will find your site when doing searches is highly desirable. Google will eventually find your website but creating a sitemap and submitting it directly to Google speeds this process along. Google has a free website that assists you in creating a sitemap and submitting it. The Google Sitemaps Generator site can be located at http://www.sitemapdoc.com/Default.aspx. Once you have created your XML sitemap, pasted it onto notepad and saved it to your harddrive, you will need to upload it to your website document root directory using file manager on the cpanel. If you are replacing an old sitemap, it must be deleted before uploading the new one. To be sure Google can find your sitemap, view it by typing in your website's URL followed by "/sitemap.xml". Submit your website by going to Google Webmaster Central, adding your site, verify ownership by uploading a google provided verification HTML file to the document root directory, clicking on the site and then on site configuration and finally selecting sitemaps. Make sure you enter the sitemap location the same as you used to view the sitemap.
