I have spent the last year building my Etsy and ArtFire shops and building my brand name with social networking. The only thing I had not tried was my own site. I am a handy person when it comes to tech stuff. I understand how a computer works, I can hook up all my own home entertainment components without reading a manual and I taught myself how to make jewelry by just studying the supply catalog from Fire Mt Gems. However, with that said, I am DUUUUMMMMBBBB when it comes to the internet, websites, SEO and domain and IP address stuff. I can work the computer and list my items in my shops and I understand tags and I am slowly getting better at some of the other things like SEO but I was down right scared when it came to website and HTML. I knew I was going to have to learn and take that next step of promoting me and my jewelry outside the ArtFire and Facebook realms. I found a website from a fellow crafter that I thought looked nice and I noticed at the bottom it said "Build you free website on Weebly.com" so I clicked and decided I had to try something sometime.
Weebly was very easy to use and figure out and they have great tools to add links, blog, and multiple pages. There is absolutely NO HTML that I need to write myself. They have a number of different designs already made that you can choose and a lot of the tools are drag and drop. After a couple hours of putting components where I wanted them, I was done. I have gone back a couple times and added more information and moved things around but it is not as time consuming as I thought and it is very easy to change things up and to add more info. Then with one click, published! Weebly wanted $35 a year to purchase my .com so until I could afford to do that I kept the free site which was DesertStarCreations.weebly.com, not too bad. Then I remembered the silly GoDaddy commercials and went to their site. I was able to purchase www.desertstarcreations.com from them for $18 for 3 YEARS! Big price difference! I even got help in the form of email (they responded same day!) from Weebly and GoDaddy to have my free site renamed without the weebly in it. It was surprisingly easy, I just had to tell the domain what IP address to point to. Now remember, I know almost nothing when it comes to web and internet but I got it done from the step by step instructions sent to me from GoDaddy. GoDaddy was very easy and helpful, I cant recommend them enough! So, if you have been thinking of doing your own site, get a free weebly one started and for $20 get the .com at GoDaddy. A few hours of playing on Weebly and you are set.
This is my new web site and I am very happy with how it all worked out.
Good luck to all!
Laura
www.desertstarcreations.com
PS. you get one free email for that domain (you can buy more) as well so you can now email me at
[email protected]
Now that looks professional!
Weebly was very easy to use and figure out and they have great tools to add links, blog, and multiple pages. There is absolutely NO HTML that I need to write myself. They have a number of different designs already made that you can choose and a lot of the tools are drag and drop. After a couple hours of putting components where I wanted them, I was done. I have gone back a couple times and added more information and moved things around but it is not as time consuming as I thought and it is very easy to change things up and to add more info. Then with one click, published! Weebly wanted $35 a year to purchase my .com so until I could afford to do that I kept the free site which was DesertStarCreations.weebly.com, not too bad. Then I remembered the silly GoDaddy commercials and went to their site. I was able to purchase www.desertstarcreations.com from them for $18 for 3 YEARS! Big price difference! I even got help in the form of email (they responded same day!) from Weebly and GoDaddy to have my free site renamed without the weebly in it. It was surprisingly easy, I just had to tell the domain what IP address to point to. Now remember, I know almost nothing when it comes to web and internet but I got it done from the step by step instructions sent to me from GoDaddy. GoDaddy was very easy and helpful, I cant recommend them enough! So, if you have been thinking of doing your own site, get a free weebly one started and for $20 get the .com at GoDaddy. A few hours of playing on Weebly and you are set.
This is my new web site and I am very happy with how it all worked out.
Good luck to all!
Laura
www.desertstarcreations.com
PS. you get one free email for that domain (you can buy more) as well so you can now email me at
[email protected]
Now that looks professional!