Building a website can be confusing, and intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t necessarily need to hire someone or have any knowledge of HTML coding, and website designing if you are using website builders.
Weebly is an easy website builder that simplifies the process into a drag, and drop layout that is easy enough for all users. In this post, we are going to discuss about what exactly Weebly is, and how to use Weebly Website Builder to create, and build a beautiful, professional website!
About Weebly Website Builder
Weebly is a free drag-and-drop website builder founded in 2006. Its initial development began in the January of 2006, and official private-beta was launched in September of the same year.
Weebly is a do it yourself website builder that lets you create, and host fully functional, and professional websites. Many people also refer to it as a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” editor.
It offers a variety of features, including customization features, and a simple widget-based user interface. Weebly is truly one of the best website creators in the market.
The features, and functions have improved drastically over the years, and it now hosts over 40 million websites online while also receiving over a million visitors per month.
To create your own website on Weebly, you do not need to pay any charges. Each basic account comes with five hundred megabytes of storage space. You also get a variety of options to choose from when it comes to the URL ending of your website, such as .weebly.com, .com, .net, .org, and more.
However, you’ll need to upgrade, and pay a fee to access more features, use your own domain, and unlock unlimited storage space. By upgrading, you can also remove the Weebly branding or have access to the e-commerce features to sell your own products.
Thus, if you are new to Weebly, a free account will provide you with all the necessary features for you to get used to the platform. Later, you can always upgrade your account to get your hands on more extensive features.
It is very easy to create websites on Weebly because all the site elements are drag-and-drop, thus eliminating the need for any professional help or technical knowledge.
It also provides you with a large variety of themes that are designed to fit many different kinds of websites whether it’s for a business, a lifestyle blog, or a food outlet.
Weebly also offers Android, and iPhone apps that allow users to monitor their website, make changes, update blog posts, and do other tasks on the go on their mobile devices. It is also offered in a variety of languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and more.
If you want to learn more about other drag, and drop website builders like Wix, click here. We’ll now have a look at the basics of creating websites on Weebly, and how to use Weebly. We will be discussing about everything from choosing a Weebly website theme to publishing the website. Let’s get started!
How to use Weebly Website Builder?
Well, to know how to use Weebly, and to start using Weebly, and to create a website on Weebly go to Weebly’s website: www.weebly.com.
This will bring you to a page that looks something like this. This is its homepage.
To get started, click on “Create Your Website” option in the middle. This will bring you to the Sign Up page that will look something like this.
This is a very simple process. Just enter all the necessary details like your first name, last name, email address, and country, and after you are done with creating a password, and captcha verification, click on continue.
Now, once you sign up for an account, the following page will appear asking you whether you want to just have a website or do you want a website with an online store. We are going to select the former option, but if you want a website for an online store, feel free to choose the latter.
After you are done with selecting one of the above-mentioned options, you will come across a variety of themes, and a whole bunch of templates that you can choose from, for your website.
It is worth noticing that you will come across themes related to a variety of needs, and purposes like Business, Portfolio, Personal, Event, and others.
You can choose any of these according to the website that you are creating, and as per your aesthetic needs.
After you select a theme, you will come across a preview of what your site will look like if you go ahead with the selected theme. If you like the whole layout, and the placement of the various elements of the theme, you can start editing your website by clicking on the “Start Editing” option on the upper right corner of the screen.
Now, after you are done with this initial stage of website creation, the first thing that you’re prompted for is to actually select a domain. If you already own a domain, you can transfer or connect one. Since we do not own a domain, we are going to create a new one, and see if it’s available for our website or not.
If the domain of your choice isn’t available, Weebly will suggest a few similar ones to yours, that are available. You will then come across the following screen that will display all the available plans – Connect, Pro, Business, and Business Plus.
If you scroll down, you will also see a side-by-side comparison of the four plans. Choose the one that suits you, and if you want to use the free version, just jump back one step, and select a free plan under the subdomain option.
After this, you will get a confirmation that the subdomain setup is complete. Just click on Done, and start editing your website!
How to use Weebly Editor?
After the initial setup is done, it’s now time to edit your website. We will now look at the Weebly Editor, and know what all tools are available in it, where to find them, and how to use them.
So, starting off you will come across the following screen. This is the main editor of Weebly where you can make all the changes to your website. On the right, you will see a preview of your website, while on the left you will see a toolbar containing all the tools Weebly offers.
On the top, you will see more editing, and customization options.
Let us talk about this bar.
Build – The build option is basically the option containing all the necessary tools that you are going to use for building your website or the whole development process, as well as for the preview of your website. Most of the work that you are going to do is under the build tab.
Pages – Just as the name suggests, the pages tab or option is a great way to manage all the different pages of your website. You can rename, add or delete pages according to your needs.
Themes – The themes option lets you change or customize your theme. You can either choose from a light or a dark variant for your theme or change fonts, and access other theme options.
Apps – The apps section takes you to the Weebly App Center. It takes you to a lot of different applications that you can use on Weebly. Some of these are made by Weebly, and some are offered by the third parties.
Settings – Here you can access the settings for the general stuff, to more advanced settings like SEO, user management, etc.
Help – If you want to reach out to Weebly Support, you can choose this option, and get professional assistance.
Now, let’s go back to the build option where the majority of the tasks will happen. As we previously mentioned, that everything is drag, and drop, you can simply choose whatever element you want to make a change in, and just start doing so.
For example, if you wish to change the title of a webpage, just click on the Title of the webpage, and start typing your new title. It is as simple as that.
We are now going to discuss the options under the main headers of the build tab namely Basic, Structure, and Media.
How to use Weebly Basic?
Basic contains all the basic tools that you need for site customization. Trust us, Weebly is so very easy to use that once you go through all these options on your own, you will easily get the hang of it.
Moreover, all the options are self-explanatory, and very simple. To use them, just select the desired option, and drop them on the desired location of your website.
Under the Basic header, you will see the following options –
Title: Title option lets you add titles or headings to your webpages.
Text: To insert text on your website, you can insert a text box anywhere on your website with the help of this option.
Image: This option lets you add images to your website. Add, crop, and adjust images wherever you want, however you want!
Gallery: If you wish to add more images at once, you can try using the gallery option that adds a sort of collage to your website. Definitely looks better than a single image!
Slideshow: You can also add a slideshow to your website, and easily show images in beautiful, professional photo galleries with the help of this option. You can upload images directly, and choose from the various display toggles.
Maps: This option lets you add a map to your website. This is important when you want to provide a deeper insight to your visitors about the geographical location of your office or store. A handy feature indeed.
Contact Form: This option lets you add a contact form to your website. This can help you receive more feedback, improve customer interaction, and facilitate communication between yourself, and your website visitors.
Newsletter Form: By adding a newsletter form to your website, you can ask people to “subscribe” to your website or your newsletter by providing you with their emails.
This is important as it can help you in increasing the number of customers by converting these leads, reminding them of any new updates, and in sending out new announcements, and much more.
Button: With the help of the button option, you can add a variety of custom buttons to your website. These are generally clickable or non-clickable elements that can serve a variety of purposes. You can create a Sign-up button, for example, for your website.
Embed Code: This option lets you embed a code, and add external content to your website. Just drag the element to your page at the desired location, and type in the code.
How to use Weebly Structure?
Let us now discuss about how to use Weebly Structure option here. As is obvious by the name, this tab contains options that are related more to the structural aspect of your website. These options are Section, Divider, and Spacer. Let’s briefly talk about them one by one.
Section: You can add a new section to your website with the help of this option. Following are the available section layouts –
Divider: With the help of the divider option, you can add dividers to your Weebly website. You can also define style thickness, and color for your divider. Dividers basically help you divide sections on your webpage in a subtle yet attractive way.
Spacer: This option helps you add Spacer element that helps you in providing space between elements. You can also adjust spaces on the left, right, above, and below with the Spacer element.
The following video will guide you on how to easily add dividers, and spacers to your webpage.
How to use Weebly Media?
The media tab contains four options that lets you add a variety of media to your Weebly website. These options are as follows:
HD Video: The HD video option helps you in adding high-definition video files to your site, and display them in an HD video player. However, it is a premium element, meaning it is part of an upgraded plan, and not a part of free plan.
Audio: This element allows you to easily add music, audio notes, podcasts, recordings, and other related audio files to your website. However, just like HD Video, Audio is not a part of the free Weebly plan.
Scribd Document: This option lets you add a Scribd Document to your site, which you can use to provide additional information, e-books, brochures, and other important, and valuable material to your visitors. These files are hosted publicly on scribd.com. You can easily select files from your system, and upload them.
YouTube: To add YouTube videos directly to your website, you can make use of this option. Just select this element, drop it wherever you want to display the video, and type the URL of the video. And, with these simple clicks, you will be able to add a YouTube video to your website.
Flash: Flash option lets you add video or animation to your site. However, flash players are no longer supported now, due to which it is advised to use YouTube or the HD Video Elements in Weebly instead of Flash for the same purpose.
Here are some articles that will help you use HD video, and YouTube elements.
For a much deeper, and detailed look into the whole process, and to create a website on Weebly, and how to use Weebly, check out the following video.
Conclusion on how to use Weebly
In this post, we discussed about Weebly, how to use Weebly, and how to create a website on Weebly. We covered the basics of Weebly, and also discussed about the step-by-step process of creating your own website on Weebly.
Weebly offers a rich array of tools for website creation. You can use these tools as per your requirements, and wants, and create a stunning, and a professional website on your own!
We hope this post helped you in discovering Weebly, and how to use Weebly, and how to create a website on Weebly. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments section down below!
