Create a Website Tutorial (Printable)

Covered in this document:

Create your website

1. Go to our website and click on the 'Start your trial' button.
2. Select a template for your website. You can view examples of each template and can swap to a different template at a later stage.
3. Choose the kind of website you would like to build. This enables us to pre-select the most likely pages and functions for you, and again these can be changed at a later date.
4. Enter your contact details and submit. (Use a current email address you have access to!)
5. View your website and become familiar with the navigation and menu button names.

How to login 

1. Go and check your email inbox for a password notification (you may need to check your junk-mail or spam folder)
2. If you have lost your password notification, and forgot your password, please contact support staff, and we will help you.
3. Go to the content management system www.cms-tool.net 
4. You will see a login box, please enter the email address you registered your 30 day free trial with, and the password you were sent in the password notification email when you first registered.
5. Once logged in, you will see a welcome page explaining the most common sequence in building a new website.
6. On the left is a list of your web pages, and you can easily edit those pages, or add new pages. You can delete pages in the reorder pages area.
7. The menu at the top has every single option you can possibly want to do to your website, email, domain names, photos, etc, are all accessible from this menu.
8. Hover over the domains button to see a list of your domain names, where you can also manage email and view web statistics.

Enter Text 

1. Click on the page you intend to work on
2. Wait for the editor to load. You can change editor mode for a page when the page is open.
3. Hover over any of the items for more information on what each icon does.
4. Press SHIFT-ENTER to enter a single spaced line feed, eg to get the next line of text close to the previous line of text. Normally ENTER assumes you want to start a new paragraph, with a double-space between each paragraph.
5. Now use the mouse to select some of the text you entered before, eg your name. Press the left mouse button down at the start of the word, keep it down, then drag to the right of the word, then let go. The text should be in a highlighted colour. This is how you select text. Now go up to the "Style" menu again, and select the "bold" option. Your text should now be bold. You can also use the keyboard shortcut  CTRL-B or CTRL-I for italics or by click the bold button B
6. Now select some more text, and press CTRL-C to copy the text, then go elsewhere in the page to paste that text. (Note CTRL-X is cut, and these options work in most programs in windows). CTRL-Z is undo.
7. Entering links is easy, highlight the text you want linked and then select the link icon within the black editor bar. Read further on for more linking and file attachment options.
8. On the black editor bar, you can change the size of your text. The headings options will change a whole paragraph at a time, so make sure your heading text is in its own paragraph before you click the heading size.
9. Avoid changing colours and fonts too much. It actually makes the page look untidy. The fonts and colours of a website can actually be changed globally elsewhere, and this makes it much easier to change your website style as a whole, rather than having to change every single paragraph individually.
10. Click Save at regular intervals to save your changes.. Sometimes the internet has timeouts, and you don't want to lose your changes if you haven't saved in the last 5 minutes.
11. Click "View Changes" at the bottom status bar below the editing window to see your changes in a new browser window.
12. Now close that view window. Your editing window should now be visible again.
13. Feel free to repeat the above steps to make more changes and get comfortable with this.

Upload Photos 

1. Position the cursor in your text where you want the photo to go
2. Click the picture button on the toolbar.
3. You can either browse the clipart, etc, which is available from our site including any images you may have already uploaded.  Or upload an image from your computer, click the browse button and navigate to find photos on your own computer.
4. You should only upload photos with a .jpeg, .jpg, .gif or .png extension. 
5. Once you have selected a photo, its filepath and filename will be displayed in the box in the photo wizard. Click upload, and it will automatically upload onto the web server If the photo is too big, then our system will automatically shrink it for you, but this will slow down the upload time.
6. You will then be given the option of renaming, cropping, or resizing or you can simply click 'Use this photo'
7. You are then given further options to control the alignment or spacing of the photo, or to link the photo to another page on your website. 
8. Click 'Insert photo'  and the wizard will disappear, and within about 10 seconds, your photo should appear in your page.
9. Click save on your page, and then "view changes" to see the photo appearing in your page.

Adding a new page 

1. Login and hover over the web pages button.
2. You should then see a list of your existing pages, plus a grey button labeled "Add a new page"
3. Each of the different types of page dictates the layout of the content, and it also changes the way you manage a page. Gallery pages are good for adding lots of photos that will automatically be thumbnailed into an index, and linked so you can go Next Next, etc.  Single design pages are good for "About Us", "Terms and Conditions" and other pages that are just a single page of text with an occasional photo thrown in for decoration.
4. Let's select a "gallery" as they are very useful for lots of photos.
5. Follow the on screen prompts, it is recommended to enter a short name for the Menu Button Text and perhaps a longer name for the Page Title (note the options to hide the page until later, to password protect viewing and to give the page file a specific name are all optional)
6. Click "Add new page now" and you will now be presented with the options to add content based on the type of page you added..

To add a link or upload a file 

1. Assuming that you are logged in and editing a page
2. First you should select the text you want to link, or position the cursor where the link should go.
3. Then select the "Insert..." menu and select "Link".
4. Select what kind of Link/Attachment do you want to add e.g. "Link to a page on this site" or "Upload a file"
5. If you clicked "link to a page on this site" then all you need to do is scroll down and click the link you want.
6. If you selected "upload file" then you need to browse for your file,and click upload. In this case, the file will be uploaded on to the webserver, possibly taking a minute to complete, and then it will automatically create the link to this file.
7. Click Save, then view changes to view and test these links

Registering your web address and going live

1. Once you are fairly happy with your website, you will want to purchase a web address so everyone can see your website. Once logged into your website, click the "Register Address" option under "Domains and Email" in the left menu.
2. Click the first option "Search and register new domain names"
3. Enter the web address you want, no spaces nor dots are allowed, only letters, numbers and dashes, then select a suffix from the drop-down menu e.g. .co.nz or .com
4. Do the search, if the domain name is available, then you can register it (otherwise keep searching)
5. Enter your contact details in the registration form, then click submit. Note - you will be billed at this stage.
6. The email address you use in the registration form is important, it must already exist. Do not make up new email addresses here. We must be able to contact you on this email address before your domain name registration is completed.
7. Your domain name will not be fully registered until you've paid the invoice. (Invoices are sent by email, you can pay by online banking, credit card or cheque)
8. Even when your domain is paid for and registered, your domain name will still not point at your website until you pay for web hosting. Web hosting is a fee you must pay us every month so that your website remains online and visible to everyone on the internet, and also so you can use our really cool content management software.
9. Once you have paid for hosting and domain name, your website will be live and you can start doing business on it.  Log back in to check your Web Statistics, add or edit pages or view messages from people (messages will also be emailed to you)