Home > freesites General help & FAQ

 

GENERAL ADMIN USAGE TIPS:

  • You can add new pages by clicking the "Create a new page" link.

  • Your site pages are listed on the left. Simply click one of them and that page will load in the editor and you can start editing it.

  • The buttons at the top of the page editing area have a tip that says what each one does if you hold your mouse over it.

  • You can save or publish the page you are currently editing at any time by using the buttons below the editing area:
    Save and Publish: this saves what you have done to the specific page you are working on and makes your changes to that page live.
    Save: this saves what you have done to the specific page you are working on, but hides the page from public access until you go back to that page and press the 'publish' button.
    'Saved only' pages are indicated by being listed in red

  • Change the order of your site navigation links by using the orange up and down arrows at the left of each page name. The order you see them in here is the order they will be in your site.

  • The 404 Error page is the page that will show up if someone follows an old link to a page in your site that doesn't exist any more.

  • Use the change design link above to easily browse the different site design templates and apply one to your site. You can do this at any time.

  • You can change your credit card details from the settings page.

  • Set your page where the contact form will show from the settings page

  • Set the page where your gallery will show from the settings page.

  • The page that will show when someone first goes to your site is the one called Home. If you rename it, it will still be the one that is shown when a visitor first visits your site

  • Page hit counters are ugly and unprofessional. You have access to full statistical reporting by clicking the 'stats' link from your admin area.

  • Site Restore - This is used to create backup points of your site, and to restore your site back to any of the backup points created.

 

Help using the Editor system:

Please go here for detailed help: http://support.mediatwo.com.au/devedit_tips.php

 

LINKING TO PAGES

Follow these simple steps to create a link in a page to another page in your site:

  1. Get the page address of the page you want to link to. Select it and copy it.

  2. Go to edit the page you want to place the link in, type your link, eg: 'click here to...' or whatever you want it to say

  3. Select the word(s) you want to link and then click the link button - - on the toolbar

  4. In the new window that appears, paste the address if you copied it at step 2.

  5. If you want the link to open in a new browser window, you can select that option under 'Target Window'

  6. Click 'Insert Link' button


EMAIL

  • If you need a mailbox set up, please contact us and we'll set it up for you. Mailboxes are an additional $2 per month. With a mailbox, you can use the webmail system, or your own outlook/outlook express or any other mail program.

  • To have an address set up and simply forward to your current email address, there is no charge.

 


DESIGN / PAGE CONTENT TIPS:

  • If you paste content from Microsoft Word or another website, you must use the paste from word option. This will get rid of the non-web formatting that gets pasted along with your text.

  • Try to keep all your text the same size font.

  • Use "Heading 1" from the format drop down for headings. - select the text you want to format, then choose the option from the drop down.

  • Don't use flashing or animated gifs. They distract and annoy, and a guaranteed way to make people leave your site!

  • Hold down the Shift key and press Enter to make a line break at the end of a sentence if you want to.
    Using just the enter key alone creates a new paragraph and inserts a blank line between paragraphs.

  • If you're inserting an image in amongst some text, use either align left or align right in the Appearance tab and alignment option. Also, to stop text from hitting the edges of the image, set a vertical and horizontal space of about 10 pixels. This will allow the image room to 'breathe'

  • As a user of the Freesites system, you are expected to be able to resize your images BEFORE uploading them, and NOT resizing them on the page. This will have 3 main benefits for you. 1. you will upload them quickly. 2. they will download quickly for you visitors. 3. they will look good. - images resized on a page look bad.

 

GOOGLE SEARCH RESULT LISTING

  • Firstly, you need to allow time for the googlebot to re-discover your site and re-index it with the new content and meta tags. Also, Google ignores the meta keywords, but takes note of your page titles and page content (text).

    For example, once Google has re-indexed your site based on it's new content, then it probably won't list it at the top, simply because there would be other sites using the same words and offer the same services which would have a stronger page rank than yours because they have been around longer and might have more links to them from other sites.

    The Google 'PageRank' is a complicated issue, as is Search Engine Optimisation.

    PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.
    PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

    The best method of getting your site listed high in the results for a specific search phrase is to keep fine tuning your page content based on what people would type into the Google search to find you. What you need to do, is work out what the most common search phrase that people would use when looking for a service such as yours, then put that phrase or group of words repeatedly on your pages, and then re-submit your site to google at http://www.google.com/addurl, wait a couple of weeks and check the result. Go to your competitions site listed first in the google search results, and see what they have in their page title, and copy it to your site, or even improve it.Then put the same info in your page content of your home page multiple times. Set the 'alt' tag of your images with the same search phrase too.

  • We offer full Search Engine Optimissation services at www.m2seo.com.au



FAQ

  • Q: Will my site be search engine friendly?
    A: Yes, You will be able to specify keywords and a description which will be used in the meta tags, and for Google, your keywords will also be placed into the page titles.

  • Q: Is it easy to use? I'm not good with design and I don't know any HTML at all!
    A: Yes, we have made it virtually foolproof. The system helps you create, save, and edit your website pages. The editing interface uses the same buttons that you would find in Microsoft Word, so using it is a breeze. Why not try the demo out by clicking the demo link above?

  • Q: Can I upload PDF files and link to them on a page?
    A: Yes, when you create a link, you can choose from a list of current pages, an external web site address or a list of files you have uploaded.

  • Q: What happens if I want to take the site down? Is there a minimum contract term?
    A: Everyone hates contracts, and so do we! Your hosting (which is all you will be paying for) is a month to month fee, charged monthly, to your credit card, and we just require 1 month's notice of termination. You also need to email us from the address you used to sign up with, or your current login address. Please quote your account password as well.

  • Q: Can I sell from my site and have people pay with credit card?
    A: No, people cannot purchase online with this system, Freesites is for brochure style websites only.

  • Q: Can I have multiple email boxes set up for different email addresses?
    A: What you pay for monthly is the hosting of the site, $12.00 per month includes the ability to forward all emails sent to the doman to your signup email address. If you would like to have separate and additional email boxes, the rate is $2 per month per email box. Each mailbox has a 10 meg capacity.
  • Q: Can you change the templates for us?
    A: We'd rather not change the templates, but we're open to suggestions! We can make different version of them if you want them to matchg your business colours etc. Just contact us and ask.

  • Q: I already registered my domain name, what do I have to do so that it is hosted by your server?
    A: To transfer your domain to our hosting server, you just need to login to the site where you registered the domain and change the nameserver settings to:
    • dns1.mediatwo.com.au
    • dns2.mediatwo.com.au