Help and Useful Information.

What do I really Need to know about using My Business Homepage?

To get your website up and running quickly is really very easy.

Once you have registered you simply click on 'Edit My Website' from the 'My Website' menu and start filling in the questions asked in the form. There are seven sections to the form, 'Basics', 'References' and so on. These are listed at the top of the form. You access them by clicking on the names of each section you want to complete.

You need to complete the 'Basics' page first, specifically the 'MyBusinessHomepage URL' question. This is the address that your visitors have to type into their web browser in order to view your website. It would usually be your company name. Please note that if you have a Free Trial then no one will be able to view your website until you become a paid up member. You can view it by clicking the 'View My Website' option under the 'My Website' menu option.

Once you have completed each section click the 'Update' Button at the bottom of the section. Please note that you need to click the 'Update' button before you go to the 'Gallery' section in order to save the changes you have made in the other sections. If you don't do this your changes will be lost when you go to your gallery! Apart from filling in the URL first there is no particular order that you should do them in.

Most of the questions are self explanitory, but a couple are worthy of note.

In the 'Basics' section the last question is called 'Key Words'. This is for you to enter a list of words, seperated by commas, which describe your business. These words do not appear visibly on your website, but are located in the header of your website and are used by some search engines to list your site correctly. For the search engines to read them properly they must be single words and they must be seperated by commas. Most importantly they MUST be relevant to your site, meaning they must reflect what you have written in the forms. For example if you are a Gardener based in Nottingham you would choose words like 'Gardener,Nottingham,Landscaping', you get the idea.

The other one is the 'Setting your Skin Colour', again in the 'Basics' section. This changes the colour of the theme of your website. It can be used to suggest different moods and was introduced to ensure that your website theme would 'go' with the colour of your logo. I suggest experimenting with the different colours available and picking the one that best complements your logo.

A couple of points in the 'Gallery' section are also worthy of a mention.

When you upload a picture the maximum size of the file is 2MB. If you try to upload a picture that is bigger than this it will fail.

All the pictures you upload will appear in the lower part of the 'Gallery' section and they will have some buttons next to them. These buttons allow you to move the pictures up or down the list should you want to keep certain ones in groups. There is also a delete button for each picture. There are two more buttons for each picture, namely 'Set as Company Logo' and 'Set as Profile Image'. Once you have set a picture as either your logo or Profile image (That is the big picture at the top of your website) they will dissappear from your main Gallery. If you want to change them simply click to set a different picture as your logo or profile image and they will swap over, i.e. the new one will become your logo and the old one will go back into your Gallery.

That's about it really. I hope you enjoy setting up your website and don't be afraid to experiment to get your site looking it's best. You can log in and make changes at any time and as many times as you like.

Finally be sure to read the other articles in the 'Help and Information' list in the right pane of this page, as they contain lots of tips and will definately help you to create an effective website.