Set Up A Website Lecturer: David Nicol

Free Web Provider There are various organisations which provide free websites and web space. Many offer a variety of ready made templates. The only problem is (unless you purchase a domain name of your own) you will have the domain name of that company as an extension e.g. wix.com, weebly.com etc. There are other extra features you can get if you pay a host some money but the features provided for a free site can be pretty good. For your social media campaign the web service we will use will be weebly. Weebly will be the main portal/site to access your social media sites. This tutorial will help show how to set up a site – weebly also offer good tutorial videos to help with this too.

Get Started Go to Click on Sign Up you can use your facebook or gmail college account to sign up for weebly if you wish. Alternatively, use another account you wish to use.

Get started

Choose Site Note you have options for blogs and online store. Choose Site this time.

Choose a Theme Am going to set up a site for a new restaurant. Your choice is down to suitability and taste from the templates you have available (depending on your social media campaign). You can change the template later. Am going to try this one.

Create an Address If you have an idea for your business name you can check if available. If you wish to leave this stage until later – leave blank and continue.

Create a Home Page You can edit your home page as you see it – click to change the template text boxes.

This is your home page. You can add your own business title and headline text in. You can also add a logo (like you have made in my logo exercise) for your own business/social media campaign.

You can add in the addresses for your social media pages/ contact at any time – and remove ones you do not use.

Adding Images Better to use your own! For copyright reasons too collect and create your own content! Change the homepage image

Starting to look better

Ready To Add Content In weebly under build you can add many types of content/media to your page by clicking and dragging the blocks to the page from the left on to the page with the mouse.

You can then add, format and edit the text

Add/Edit Other Pages This template came with an about and contact page. Under pages you can edit those pages to suit yourself. Add your own text, images, videos etc. You can add all kinds of media – titles, text, YouTube videos, photos, slideshows, galleries, audio etc. It will take time and effort to create/collect content and put it together. A logo for your site and social media sites would be a good idea too.

Edit other pages You can edit existing pages, add new pages and delete pages not desired.

Using the Tabs You can access the features to customise your site via the tabs: Build: To add any kind of media to pages Design: To alter colour, fonts and themes Pages: To access and edit pages Settings: General Settings It will take time to get familiar with using it so you need to get content together and practice, practice and practice! You have a few weeks to get your campaign up and running.

Most Importantly… Remember to click Publish regularly to update any changes you have made. When you do that it will be published straight to the web.

Put the time in It is now down to you to create good content for your site and social media pages. You may wish to take photos and videos with your camera or phone and start to create your own content. Come up with a logo for your company (or the business you are setting up and running a campaign for) which people can identify across your site and social media pages. This could be something good for your CV/portfolio too if you make a good job of it.

Finally If it is a fictional company/campaign you may wish to add a disclaimer to your main pages to state it is an education project. Use the weebly help option A help guide and video tutorial Have Fun! Don’t forget to help each other too…