Tài liệu The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your First Business Website pdf

But over the last 5 years I have gained all of the skills and knowledge to creating great websites from choosing the right domain name, designing very technical websites and hosting them

This book is written by Mike German For my other eBook

"Make Money With Mike - The eBook"

please visit my website:

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this eBook may be reproduced, duplicated, given

away, transmitted or resold in any form without written prior permission from the author.

Mike German 2010

www.make-money-with-mike.com

VERSION 3 – JANUARY 2010

Introduction 4

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2 Using Market Samurai To Find Keywords

3 Registering Your Domain Name

4 Choosing A Hosting Company

5 Transferring Your Domain Name

6 Introduction To Joomla!

7 Installing Joomla!

8 Using Joomla!

9 If It's Too Good Too Be True It Often Is!

Installing A New Template

11 Creating A Menu System

12 Creating Your New Logo

13 Using Filezilla FTP software

14 Adding Your Logo To The Template Image

15 Working With Modules - Search Box

- Log-in Box

16 Backing Up Your Databases

17 A Final Word

Hi my name is Mike German and you're about to discover what might be the most sought after hidden secrets of professional website design

I would like to share with you all, my web design secrets of the trade in this eBook Other web design companies DO NOT want you to know this

information as it will let you into the inner circle of web design and will expose the secrets web designers want to hide Many use the methods I will share with you and charge you, the

customer, hundreds, even thousands of pounds by bombarding you with computer

jargon and technical information that is designed to baffle and confuse

I am primarily a graphic designer and had little to no knowledge of web design

programming But over the last 5 years I have gained all of the skills and

knowledge to creating great websites from choosing the right domain name,

designing very technical websites and hosting them on my own servers I have

spent months and years learning everything to do with this industry and by making

mistakes along the way I have finally realised how it is done and what not to do I

have stripped out all of the unnecessary jargon and written this plain speaking

eBook which explains everything you need to do to

And all for per month! (The cost of your domain name and web hosting)

You are about to discover what is the most popular FREE website creation

software in the industry that may be a web designers best kept secret!

You will learn how to build and manage your own website that is hosted on your

own servers using your own unique domain name such as

“www.your-domain.com” in a few very easy to understand steps

create stunning business websites in under 15 minutes! ONLY £3.48

I am NOT referring to the many companies out there that use a step-by-step Click &

Build method like the one on www.homestead.com for example On the surface

these “instant website” companies look good They have an amazing range of

quality, professional templates to choose from as you build your website But before

you sign-up to one of these companies…

and you will discover the No.1 reason why you MUST

Choosing The Right Domain Name

Before you do anything, you MUST get this bit right It will be the foundation of

everything that is built from this point on

Your domain name is the starting point when deciding on having a website It will represent you and your company, so is a very important step very early on If you intend for your website to be found by the major search engines for your business sector the domain name you choose will play a very

important part in being found

Why can't I just use my company name as my domain name?

Well if you are a plumber for example and your company name is D&I Plumbing

you would assume that registering www.dandiplumbing.co.uk might be the obvious

choice It's not a bad start because the name mentions “plumbing” in the domain

name The problem is how relevant to anyone searching for plumbers is the

“dandi” prefix? Nobody looking for plumbers would ever type in dandiplumbing as

a search term You would try “plumbing” or “plumbers” or more likely for this

market you would also include a local search i.e the town or city you live in So

your search would look more like this: “plumbers Peterborough”, “Peterborough

plumbers”, “plumbing in Peterborough” These search terms are niche terms that

will concentrate the search on plumbers in the Peterborough area only

But this is merely speculation You can assume that people must be searching for

“plumbers Peterborough”, but wouldn't it be great to know that for definite?

So with this information it's time to see what is really being typed into the search

engines To do this you will need to carry out Keyword Research

What is Keyword Research?

Quite simply a Keyword is the word that someone types into a search engine To do Keyword Research you will discover what words are actually being typed on a

daily basis If you know this information, you can then begin to piece together a

picture of what keywords will work for your new domain name

Choosing The Right Domain Name

What has a keyword got to do with a domain name?

Everything basically The major search engines, i.e Google being the largest, use a series of algorithms that their robots use to crawl the web for websites

to list One of the known factors is the domain name of your website

So I should call my domain name www.plumberspeterborough.co.uk?

You can, but this was based only on an assumption that's what people are typing

when searching for local plumbers We need to use software that will analyse the

top search terms for Plumbers and Peterborough There is no point choosing

plumbers Peterborough on the assumption it is right What if that particular phrase has no or little searches per day? It would be a waste of time using that name for

your domain name if nobody was even looking for it!

What software can find this out?

There are numerous software

packages out there that will find out

this information, but having used a

great deal of them I can recommend

one in particular If you visit

www.marketsamurai.com you will be

able to download this software and

some very helpful video tutorials

absolutely FREE for a limited trial

period This is a very comprehensive

internet marketing tool that I will explain in greater detail in future eBooks

Using Market Samurai to find keywords

When you have installed Market Samurai you will be given the option of starting a new project or opening an existing one Choose the new project to begin Enter the main keywords of your business in the Keyword box, i.e plumbers peterborough This can also be used as the Title Then choose where you want to save this project in File Then click Create

You will now see a screen with 8

options displayed You need to choose

Keyword Research from the list You

will now see the intro Keyword

Research screen For the purpose of

domain name research can simply

click on the Generate Keywords

button in the top right, as we do not

need to add extra keywords at this

stage

After a short time your results will be displayed in the results window There may well be over a hundred results here, but you can filter out words and phrases that are irrelevant

So eliminate keywords that are not associated with your business and

then click on Analyze Keywords in

the bottom right

This may take a bit longer to return these results depending on your internet speed

you

Using Market Samurai to find keywords

You will now see the main Keyword Research screen The table may look very

confusing at first, but I will lead you through what you need to be looking at

Searches and SEOC

We are interested in two main areas of this table The first being Searches and the second, SEO Comp or SEOC for short In the top section of this screen we will see a

title Competition and a sub heading below called SEO Comp (SEOC) with a plus

symbol next to it Click on the plus symbol and enter a number of 10,000 This is the amount of web pages globally that mention a specific keyword in Google's index The lower the number the better The left column displays various keyword options from the Keyword Research results What we are looking for are the keywords with a high amount of Searches and a low amount of Competition (SEOC) If your chosen keyword phrase for your company returns a result of 0 in the Searches column there will be no point choosing this for your domain name as it is not being searched for If

you need to modify your keywords to try other words click on the Modify Keywords

button in the bottom right and you will return to the previous screen

Using Market Samurai to find keywords

phrase is highly relevant to D&I Plumbing who are based in Peterborough; have 24 searches a day and a moderately low

competition level it is an ideal phrase to use for their domain name

This may take a bit of practice at first to master, but you will soon get the hang of it It took me a few late nights before I had it perfected!

Please bear in mind these top tips before choosing your domain name:

Summary

1) Do not assume your company name is the best domain name to select Carry out some keyword research before making a decision and consider incorporating a keyword alongside the brand name

2) Short is better if we can do it, but simple phrases can be fine Too long and we might get more typos

3) Keywords (which people actually use from your Keyword Research) in a domain are useful in making it clear what the site is about

4) Show a preference for co.uk top level domains (TLDs), but don't despair if we have

to use other TLDs Any TLD can be brandable - it's just a bit easier with co.uk in the UK

5) Most people should avoid trade name and trade name typos Domain squatting on these kinds of names can lead to costly legal battles

6) Do grab the mistypes of your own domain Not for SEO, but to get traffic that might have not otherwise reached you

In our example of “plumbers peterborough” the results show there are 24 searches

a day and a competition of 5290 websites globally that contain the phrase

“plumbers peterborough” As this

Registering your domain name

So we have completed the Keyword Research; found the competitive keywords

with high traffic and low competition and now we must find out if your new

domain name is available to buy

There is nothing more annoying when you have researched thoroughly what name

to use and somebody else has registered it already! This is what you can do if this

happens to you:

(i) Contact the existing owner directly and make them an offer

(ii) Use a domain broker like Sedo.com to negotiate the price for the domain

(iii) If your brand is strong, you could try out a different TLD (a net or com

instead of a co.uk), or if your brand is new or not well known, try a variant domain (mybrand.com instead of brand.com)

The easiest and indeed cheapest approach is the last option There are a number of

ways to subtly change your domain name and still carry the same keyword

strength

There a several websites I have

found that offer an automated

service for finding domain name

variations The best one being

www.domainsbot.com where we

simply enter your chosen domain

name in the search box and let the

software find all the available

domain names either the same or

similar to your search The great

thing about this website is you don't have to keep trying different combinations as

they will all be listed for you in the results table

list of Registrars listed with Domainsbot.com and my favourite one is not there

The easiest and cheapest at the moment is

which is precisely that – your name

is cheap to buy, but the service and ease of use of the

website is excellent Please click this link to setup your

Name Cheap account now

Registering your domain name

How do I buy my domain name?

Domainsbot.com do offer a Buy Now option from their website, but you cannot purchase your domain name from here as they are not actually a

Registrar When you click the Buy

Now button you are presented with a

drop-down

I'm on the Name Cheap website, now what?

The first thing to do is enter your domain name in box 1

titled “Enter the domain name you want”

Then tick com in step 2, then click on Search Now check you have a tick next to

the com domain name Now scroll

down to the bottom of the page and

click on Add to Cart (as shown)

The total price is for a 1 year

duration (for all com extensions)will

be $9.69 which is just under £6.00 You will then need to sign up for a free account

by supplying your name, email and password, so very quick and convenient

Registering your domain name

When you reach the

payment stage you are

given the option to pay by

usual credit card or funds

direct from your Paypal

account, if you have one

Once you have successfully

paid for your new domain name you can view the details my clicking on

My Account on the menu, top right

You will now see the title Account

Information and underneath a list of

options Click on the first option

“Number of domains in your account”

by clicking the “view” link next to it

This is where all of your Domains

will be listed So if you decide to

buy further domains for future

projects or for anybody else, this is

where you will manage them

If you now click on the link to your

domain name in the table you will

be taken to the Your Domains page

You can now assign ownership of

your domain name to yourself or anybody else if you wish You may wish to assign a different contact for

Choosing a Hosting Company

The word on the web is “cPanel” It

stands for Control Panel and is the #1 used control panel in the world If it were not the best I wouldn't be using it

You MUST ensure the hosting

company you choose has this system in place It will make your life of web design much easier and won't cost you any extra

What is cPanel?

It is quite simply the best thing you will ever use in web design management

When you have ordered your hosting package you will then have access to your

Control Panel (cPanel) where everything is managed Here is a list of the main

features you will get:

Fantastico: Instant Shopping Carts, Content Management Systems, Blogs,

Portals, Forums, Counters, Formmail

Website Statistics: AWStats, Webalizer, Raw Log Manager, Referrer

and Error Logs

Password Protected Directories and Custom Error Pages

Web Based File Manager, Hotlink Protection, IP Deny Manager, Redirect URL

This is the number 2 secret of the trade I will share with you in this chapter

This will make everything else from this point forward very easy, even for those of you with little to no computer knowledge all at!

Choosing a Hosting Company

What is Fantastico?

You will wish you knew about this year's ago! This is number 3 of the best kept secrets of web design That's two big secrets in one chapter! Which is probably why you had never heard of it, until now!

Fantastico is an icon on your cPanel, which allows you to automatically install the

best Open Source web design software in the industry You may have heard about

web design companies offering CMS web design , Wordpress blogs or even

Oscommerce shopping carts? They are industry standard applications that make

complicated technical scripts and coding a thing of the past This could do to web

design what digital cameras did to film processing labs

What are the best Web Hosting

Companies?

Feel free to search the web for different

hosting companies using cPanel to compare

prices But I have already spent time doing

this for you and my #1 choice is

They are one of the largest, but cheapest hosting companies in

the world with an incredible customer

support team behind them I am not telling

you, you MUST use them because, it is your choice, and you're paying after all I

can only recommend them, but I am telling you to insist on cPanel

Here are some of their features:

Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth Flexible, Easy to Use Control Panel

(cPanel)

Unlimited Sub Domains, FTP Accounts, and Email Accounts

99.9% Uptime Guarantee No Contract with a 45 Day Money Back

Guarantee

www.hostgator.com

Choosing a Hosting Company

(.com)

How much will it cost me?

Very little, is the short answer I was surprised the

first time I used them If you only have one website

for your company you will only need their cheapest

Plan called the Hatchling Plan (see left) for an

incredible $4.95 per month which is under £3 per

month for Unlimited Disk Space AND Bandwidth!

I bet you can't find a web design company that is

offering unlimited web hosting for as little as this

without charging you extra for the web design!

Some companies will offer FREE hosting and a domain name for 12 months, which

sounds great, but it is used as a hook to get you to use them

You are charged typically between £400 - £800 for your website which more than

covers the domain name and hosting costs, as it will only cost the web design

company about £42 for a whole year!

This is the calculation:

If you then work this out per month it will only cost you £3.48 per month!!!

This is why this information is kept a closely guarded secret, until now! When you

have read this eBook there will be no reason why you would ever pay a designer up to

£800 for your business website ever again!

You will also discover how quickly you can get your website online and therefore

saving time and money So if it can really be this quick and cheap, the web designers

are charging you hundreds of pounds for their knowledge, which I am giving away

free of charge in this eBook So you're in a WIN WIN situation! And there is NO

catch whatsoever!!

Transferring your domain name

How do I transfer my new Domain Name to my hosting company?

I will use Hostgator as my example to explain this Other web hosting companies may vary slightly After buying your Plan you will receive an email of your order

confirmation You need to look for a title called “Your name servers” and below will

be something like this:

ns1.websitewelcome.com

ns2.websitewelcome.com

These are your DNS for short Make a note of the server

names or copy to your computer's notebook for later pasting

We now need to re-visit www.namecheap.com where we registered your domain name and log-in to your account

Now navigate to Manage Domains and then Modify Domain On the menu panel on the left we need to click on Transfer DNS to Webhost

You will then see a list of empty boxes numbered 1

to 5 (as shown) We are only interested in boxes 1 and 2 as we only have 2 name servers (the ones

we wrote down or copied

to the Notebook) Enter the first one in box 1 and the second in box 2 Then

click on Save Changes

That is it, we've done! we will now have to wait between 2-12 hours for the DNS to

propagate fully You can check this by typing your new domain name i.e

www.yourdomain.com into the address bar in Explorer or Firefox When it is

working correctly you will see a fully functioning temporary website

Domain Name Servers or

I would like to introduce you to your new Best Friend, Joomla!

Ever since I have been involved in Web Design and Internet Marketing, I have yet to find another website design software,

application or tool that would do the entire

"job" of building and managing websites as easy and effective as Joomla! does

When I was first introduced to Joomla! I was literally gobsmacked When I realized how powerful this website creation tool

actually was, it wasn't hard to understand why it has won so many awards

In simple words, Joomla! is one of the most powerful open source content

management systems on the planet No, really! As we will see in this chapter, Joomla!

is easy to install and probably even easier to manage

And the best of all, we can use Joomla! to build and manage everything from a simple website to a complex corporate web application For example, we can use Joomla! to

build and manage:

ŸTypical direct response "sales-letter" website or "mini-site" for (re)selling

single product or service (e.g info product, software )

ŸE-commerce site or product catalogue website with shopping cart if we're

selling multiple products

ŸBlog and other types of content focused website if we're publishing lots of

fresh content (articles, news, videos) and placing ads (e.g Google AdSense ) or affiliate links into your content

ŸWebsite with multiple landing pages for your individual pay-per-click

advertising campaigns

ŸPersonal or business blog with commenting system

ŸPaid or free membership website where only registered users can access

certain areas of your website

ŸCommunity website with forums and users profiles

ŸPlus much more

In fact, the only limitation using Joomla! for your online business is your imagination But you don't need to believe my words If you've been into Internet Marketing or any other type of online business, I am sure you've at least heard of tools for building your own websites or blogs such as WordPress, Drupal, Blogger or Mambo

Introduction to Joomla!

Just out of curiosity, here is what Google Trends is saying when I last compared the

popularity of several popular tools for building and managing your own website for

free The graph below shows a trends comparison chart for WordPress, Drupal,

Mambo, Blogger and of course, Joomla!

As we can see since early 2005, Joomla! (the dark blue line) has hugely gained in

popularity and has only real competition from Wordpress, the blogging based website software

To briefly describe the main difference as to why I am showing you Joomla! in this

eBook and not Wordpress, is Joomla! is a Content Management System (CMS) and

Wordpress is a Blog creating system Both equally capable and award winning in

their own genre For most businesses the CMS type website platform will suit more businesses than a blogging platform There are, of course, many other differences and indeed similarities between the two, but is too much to explain here, so please read my eGuide

Introduction to Joomla!

"Joomla! v

Wordpress" available in my Membership Site,

to see how these two giants compare in a head

to head battle

Introduction to Joomla!

Before we jump into the meat of this chapter, let me first point out something very

important here; Joomla! is FREE in a true meaning of the word "free"

Joomla! is an open source software released under General Public License which

simply means it is completely free of charge to download and use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes!

In simple words, we don't have to pay a penny or a cent to use it for our personal and

commercial needs You may use Joomla!, change it and adapt it to your needs and add any modifications to its code as you want No only that, we may freely distribute it

and may also even charge for that service

The only thing, however, you must not do in any case is to pretend Joomla! is your

work We must not charge people under any circumstances for Joomla! as software

itself, because it's free!

For example, when I build websites in Joomla! for my clients, I only charge for my

service, knowledge, experiences and time I do not charge for Joomla! software as it

has a free licence and cannot be legally sold

Joomla! Is Easy To Understand And Even Easier To Use!

If something is too complicated to understand and use, we usually won't use it (unless there is really no other option)

Although you probably won't become a Joomla! expert in a day, it sure won't take

long for you to realize and understand what Joomla! can do for you and your online

business(es), and how much time and money you'll save and gain by using Joomla!

for building and managing your own virtual real-estate websites

Well I think that's enough praising of this great software, lets have a look at how it

works

Installing Joomla!

Do you remember your lesson in Chapter 4 when I revealed one of my top secrets?

I'm referring to cPanel or Control Panel I will need to talk about this briefly before

we can progress to installing Joomla!

Hopefully by now, if you have successfully transferred your Domain Name to

Hostgator.com your website should be active To test this just type:

www."yourdomainname".co.uk/cpanel*

*Just replace the "yourdomainname" with your new registered domain name

You can then log-in using your username and password supplied in your welcome email You

will then see your new cPanel Accelerated

screen It may look a little confusing at first glance, but

we are only interested in one icon at the moment and I think you know which one? The 3rd Top Secret from Chapter 4

called Fantastisco.

Scroll down to the bottom of the screen to

the tab titled Software/Services and click on

the Fantastico De Luxe icon This is where

installing a whole host of website styles just

got a lot easier

On the left menu we will see a heading

called Content Management First

we will need to click on Joomla! 1.5

(the latest version) and the welcome screen will appear We are only a couple of

Installing Joomla!

Next we need to enter a valid email address and a name for your new website, i.e your company name You're nearly there, just one more step Do you want to Install Sample Data? This is up to you It will give you a good idea of

how your site will look when finished You can overwrite the sample data with

your own as you start to add content to your website This is not necessary if you

have a database you want to import, but I will be talking about databases in later

chapters

Finally we can click on the Install Joomla! 1.5 button.

To check everything worked okay just type your domain name in explorer and you

should see a Joomla! branded website with or without content, depending what you

decided to do Congratulations, this is your first Content Management System

website All it needs now is some text and images and your company logo

How do I add my own content?

You need to gain access to the Administrator Back-end of your website To do this you need to type your domain name followed by

/administrator So your url will look

like this

www."yourdomainname".co.uk/adm inistrator Obviously you will need to replace the "yourdomainname" with your

newly registered domain name, without the quotes You will now see the Joomla!

Administration Login screen (see below) You need the Username and Password

you used when installing Joomla! After entering them, click Login

Welcome to Joomla! we are successfully logged into the back-end of your website

Using Joomla! 1.5

We are now presented with a WYSIWYG screen, similar to Microsoft Word This stands for

What We See Is What You Get It

basically means we see a user friendly editor and not a page of scary html computer code So excellent for beginners This is the screen where we will create the content/web

pages for your website

The first step is to give your new article a Title The Alias box below is what will

appear in the title of your web page and is url friendly For example if the title of your page is

Web Design then the Alias would automatically

be web-design as the url friendly title You can

type whatever you like in here as long as you do not leave any spaces between the words Most of the time you simply leave this box blank and it will automatically be

filled in for you

You can either start typing your text directly into the

editor window or you may prefer to add a table first if

you plan on adding images to your page

The table icon is shown here and when we hover your

mouse over the icon, it will display a popup label "Insert

The first thing to do now is edit or add new content to your website If

you ticked Install Sample Data

you will already have several sample articles and a menu system already in place If not then you

will need to Add New Article in

the top left and create a new menu system

Firstly let's add an image to the top left rectangle of the table Click your mouse in the rectangle and then click on the image icon (as shown).

The Image Manager box will appear There

are a number of ways we can insert images into our web page I will show you the easy way and explain other ways in later chapters

You need to click on the icon (as shown) and

the Upload box will appear.

Now click on the Add button (as shown) and you will see your computer's files Navigate

to where your images are saved and click on the one you want, then click open Your image will then be added to the Queue window (as shown) Then click on the Upload button Your image will now be

added to the image list

Extensions

Using Joomla! 1.5

You should now see a preview of your previously uploaded image You now simply

click on Insert to add the image to your table.

Depending on the size of the image we uploaded, it may be too big for the table The average size for the content area of your web page is between 500 to 600 pixels in width

This is worth bearing in mind when you save your images for the web Also if you limit your images to 500

pixels you will ensure the file size will be kept at a minimum, which cuts down on disk space and website load time

If your image needs resizing you can do so

in the editor window Click on the bottom right square (as shown) and move your mouse diagonally towards the opposite corner and you will see a preview of your image getting smaller When you are happy simply let go of the mouse button and your image will be re-sized Simple eh?

Now we are ready to add some text in the box to the right of the image As you will see the right hand box has collapsed as the image was inserted, but if you click your cursor in between the vertical lines and tap your space bar a few times the column will get wider

Now we can easily insert our text directly into the window As you can see the text

is quite small and centred vertically in the rectangle (as hown

No 1) You may prefer to align your text to the top of the box

Reminder!

Please remember to save your work as you go To do

this click on the Apply icon

in the top right of your Joomla! screen Only click Save when you have finished or you will be taken to the Article Manager menu each time.

Using Joomla! 1.5

When this screen appears you need

to click on the Vertical alignment drop-down box and select Top

from the list Then click on

Update.

You will notice your text has aligned to the top of the box

I have added a title above my text and selected Heading 2

from the drop-down menu (as shown)

Finally I have created a bullet point list below the text After you have typed your copy, highlight it and click the

Unordered List icon

(as shown) and bullet

points will be added

Now click on the Save

icon at the top

Top Tip

You can preview how your page will look when it's on your website at any stage.

Simply click on the Preview

icon (as shown) and a popup window with your web page will be displayed.

Using Joomla! 1.5

You will now be on the Article Manager

screen where your newly designed article will be listed

The next step is to decide what Section and Category this article will be filed

under This is very important to do this correct now as it will save a lot of time later and will keep your website properly structured

When planning your new online business you will need to decide what the main

sections of your website will be For example you will need an About Us page,

Contact Us page, Products page (if you are

making or selling products), News, Portfolio,

etc These main sections will need to be

added to the Sections Manager Click on the

New icon (as shown) and the Section New

screen will appear Type the section name in

the Title box e.g About Us and click the Save

button

You repeat this procedure for all your main

sections of your website

We can then move on to adding Categories A

Category is a sub-category of the main Section heading we have just created So

for example if we have a Section titled "Products" we will have a list of product

types that we could list in Categories, e.g web design, graphic design, display

design, etc Creating this structure of Sections and Categories means your articles

you create can be assigned to the right area of the menu system

Let's do that now We need to go back to your article So click on Content, then

Article Manager and click on the article you created You will notice the two

headings Section and Category If you

click on the drop-down menus you can

select the Section and Category you have

just created Now hit the Save button and

we'll move on to creating the Menu

Using Joomla! 1.5

Creating the Menu System

This next step is the last major step we must do before your website will function

correctly The menu system will enable visitors to your site to be able to navigate to your various pages Joomla! has a fantastic menu system that is capable of

displaying various different menus and sub-menus as your site grows over time

You can also easily create drop-down menus that will display your sub-level categories It all sounds confusing, but believe me, it isn't

Firstly click on Menus (as shown) and select Main Menu from the drop-down

box

By default there is already a menu item

called Home This is so you can always

navigate back to your home page from anywhere on your website

Now click on the New icon (as shown

above) and the Menu Item: [New]

screen appears Click on Articles and then select Article Layout

Step 1 you need to give your menu a title This is the name that will appear in your

menu bar along the top of your website For this example I have called mine "Web

Design Secrets Revealed"

Step 2 we need to link the article you wrote earlier to this menu item Click on

Select on the overlay window will appear and you should see the article you wrote

in the list Select it

Step 3 is where we can decide what level

this menu item will be, e.g if we select

Top it will appear in the top level menu

bar on the left of your web page If we

select home it will appear as a

sub-category of the Home menu The easiest

way to see this is to try each one at a time

and view the live preview to see what it

does The best way to learn is by

making mistakes.

Congratulations! This is your first web

page with an article linking to the menu system

If it sound too good to be true it often is!

I spoke before in my introduction about these companies that offer FREE website

design and I was going to reveal the big catch!

Let's not keep you in suspense any longer Here are the problems:

You will notice that your newly created web page has your new domain name in

the address bar in your browser, i.e www.yourdomain.com which is what we did

all of the research for in Chapter 1 of this eBook If you compare your new domain

name to the one you would get with the free website companies (FWC), you would

see a big difference They would look something like this:

www.yourdomain.freewebsitecompany.com

Now for your new business to start off on the right foot you have to ask yourself,

would I be happy with that domain name to represent my new business Would I

like it printed on my business cards, sign written on my vans or advertised on the

web itself!?

I hope most of you would say NO The problem is these FREE click and build

website companies are not offering a free domain name or web hosting, there are

only giving you a sub-domain of their company So to most people finding your

new website will see the other company name alongside yours And because its a

sub-domain it looks as if you are linked to that company in some way Now I don't

now about you, but I don't want to be seen in this way I want my own real domain

on my own servers with complete control

Let's talk about the hosting now, since I touched on it in the previous paragraph So

as well as a bad domain name you will also get a bad hosting deal All of your text

and images you add to your website, as you build it, are stored on a server on the

World Wide Web, not on your computer So you are totally in the hands of these

FWC

Let me explain

As you build your website over the following chapters you will see how you

upload images you want for your website to your own server using free FTP

software (I will explain FTP in the next chapter.) You will have unlimited disk

space and monthly bandwidth available for only £3 per month The problem with