Building websites these days have become very simplified and you can get one up and running in a matter of minutes without needing to have prior knowledge of the programming languages that help with website creation.
If you want to know how to build a website with Weebly, you will only need to follow these steps below and you should have your website ready and live in the next few minutes.
I will be waking you through all the steps you need to take to build your website with Weebly, from scratch to the end, and I will be explaining to you what the seemingly difficult areas are all about and how to work with them.
Without dilly-dallying, let’s do it.
Table of Contents
A Bit on The Weebly Website Builder First
Weebly is one of the best website builders on the web. It has an easy to work with interface that allows you to drag and drop most of the features you want to have in your website and also gives you the chance to add code and build other features in your website if you are well versed with coding.
Ideally, it is a good place to build and run a website for both beginners and advanced website owners. It also comes with a variety of tools to help improve your website experience.
There are also different pricing plans for Weebly based on what you aim to do with your website. The good thing is that you can start out completely free and if you want, you can later invest in their plans if you want to take your online business to the next level.
This flexibility in the usage of the platform and the pricing has made many people love this website builder.
So, let’s now take a look at how you should build your website with it.
How to Build a Weebly Website
Here are the steps you should take to do it:
Step 1. Head over to the Weebly website (www.weebly.com)
Step 2. Click sign up or login if you already have a Weebly account
Step 3. Create your account by filling in the required details
Step 4. Read and agree to Weebly’s terms and services below the registration form and hit “continue”.
You will be taken to a page that gives you 2 options. One asks you if you only need a website and the other asks if you want a website together with an online store.
Step 5. Choose the option that best fits your desires and goals for the website you are making and then click “Continue”.
Step 6. For beginner’s sake, I am going to choose the “I just need a website” option since this is the best place to start if you are a newbie. Ideally, you want to keep it simple as you begin if you don’t want to be overwhelmed. Later on, when you have understood how things work, you can decide to run an online store.
Although, if your plan is to open an online store as a beginner right off the bat, you can go with the “I need a website with an online store” option and follow the steps to do it. From there, you will want to do some research on how to develop, grow, and run the store.
It is entirely up to you and your vision for the site.
I have personally chosen the website only for this example since I am interested in building a website only.
Step 7. Select a website theme. If you don’t know what a theme is, it is simply what determines the look of your website. Some people call it a website template as it defines the layout of the website when you build and add content in there.
Go through the available themes and click on the one you feel is a good fit for your site.
When you click on your favorite theme, you will be given a preview of how it will look on your website.
Step 8. Choose your website domain. Your website domain is like the address of your website. It is what people search on Google to be directed to your website. For instance, the website domain of this website you are on is www.affiliatedove.com. You will now be choosing your domain here.
There are 3 options when it comes to domains on Weebly.
Option #1. Register a domain – You can choose to buy and register a domain name with Weebly in a few steps. Buying a domain name means you have full ownership of the website you will build and you can even transfer it from Weebly to another website hosting company.
My website domain or domain name (www.affiliatedove.com) is fully owned by me and I get to renew my ownership by paying a yearly fee. The same case with all other website domains out there. Website owners pay every year to keep their domains.
This means that if you also want to own your very own website domain, you should click on this option and put in a domain that you want to use.
Ideally, the domain should be the name of your website with a www. and .com or .org or a .net or any other that you wish at the end. If the name of your website has more than two names, you should write them without leaving spaces.
For example, the name of my website is Affiliate Dove, and the domain name is www.affiliatedove.com. Use the same idea in your case. If you want to change the .com to a .net or another ending, click the drop-down menu on the right side of the space you are writing your domain name and then choose the ending you want.
The good thing about Weebly is that it will show you if the domain name you have chosen is available or not. If you write and see that your preferred domain is not available, think of another one, type it in there and see if it is available. When you get one that is available, click “Continue” on the top right reaction of the window to go ahead and buy as well as register the domain.
When you are through with the purchase and registration, come back and continue with the website building process but this time, choose the second option that says “connect a domain you already own” to connect the domain you just bought to your website.
Option #2. Connect a domain you already own – This option is for those who have already bought a domain in the past, either from the option above or long before they ever joined Weebly. All you have to do here is to type the name of that domain that you own and then click “Continue” to build your own website. When you create this website you will then need to get hosting services for the domain from hosting companies like Bluehost.
Option #3. Use a subdomain of Weebly – A subdomain is a website domain that has an extension of the website builder you used to create the website, which shows that you don’t own the website. The extension usually comes after the domain you have chosen for your website. Weebly’s subdomain has a .weebly extension on the domain you have selected.
Say if you select this option and write the domain name you want in the space provided (assuming you choose a domain like thinkinghub, the extension will be added to that domain to be https://thinkinghub.weebly.com. This tells everyone that your website is a free website that has been powered by Weebly and you don’t have any rights to it.
A subdomain is a good place to start as a beginner but as you get serious with the website and want to monetize it, you should consider buying and registering your own website domain.
For now, you can choose the subdomain and click “Continue” to go to the next step.
Step 9. Customizing the website to your liking. Now that you have chosen your domain and a website theme, it is now time to make the website look like what you envisioned before you even created it. In simple words, it is time to make your dream a reality.
How to Easily Customize Your Weebly Website
In this step, you will be setting up the foundation of your Weebly website and adding the features you want to have so that the whole website can look good and have better functionality.
This part is very personal and you get to add and customize the website the way you personally desire it to be. So, you should not follow what I do exactly. You should get the idea of how customization and adding features are done and then do it in your own style.
1. Give your website a personalized title – For my case, I will start by giving a title to the website. Since I chose thinkinghub as my domain, I will change the title on top of the website from “my site” to “Thinking Hub” to make it more personal.
2. Customizing the homepage – The second thing I will do is to edit the homepage as it is the face of the website.
Here, I will have a photo with a text that gives a summary of the website. Luckily, my theme already provides a plain image with text so I will only have to edit the text, click on the text you want to edit, and add your own text.
If you don’t have this provision with your theme, you can delete whatever you have on that section and then go to the individual elements section on your left, choose the image object and drag it to the top part of the website where you want it to be. You will then add your personal image and then add the text object to the top of the image so that you can write the summary there.
Look at how I have done it with my website.
You can write anything you want as far as it is related to your website.
The third thing is to edit the next section that is below the summary. Normally, I like having 3 sections on my homepage. The summary, more description of the website, and the footer.
We have already covered the summary, so will be working on the extra description of the website now.
To do that, I will delete whatever is on that section and add my own stuff. To delete, you click on the features in that section and then click on the “x” symbol in the top right corner. A message will pop up asking if you want to delete the feature. Click “delete”.
Then move over to the individual elements section on your left and drag the text object to the second section which is only an empty space.
After that, click inside the text box and write a description of the website. Since my website is about critical thinking, I will give more description along that line. You should do the same with your website.
This is what my description looks like.
Now to the fourth thing, the footer. The footer should be at the most bottom part of the website. It should give details about the owner of the website, a summary of their background and what they intend to do with the website as well as other details.
In my case, I will say am a passionate free thinker and a student of philosophy and I intend to discuss more on critical thinking and philosophy and connect with other like-minded people.
Use the same idea to write a short description of yourself too.
Here is what mine is like.
You can decide to leave the other elements on the footer as they are and then change them later when you have legitimate details for your website or you can delete them completely, leave the space empty and add them when you are ready.
I personally prefer deleting and leaving the space empty so that I remember that I need to work on that section.
You can do what you find best for your website.
When you are done with that, delete all other sections on the homepage that are not relevant to your website.
With that, you will have completed customizing your homepage.
3. Customizing other pages of the website – You can continue customizing other pages of the website using the same steps I have shared for the homepage to make them look and feel the way you envision it.
Step 10. Once you have done the customizations, click on the publish button on the topmost part of the right corner of your computer screen.
Your website is now live and published, congratulations!
NB: Weebly keeps changing the design and looks of their website builder and there might be some differences with what has been shown at the time you are building the website, but the concept is the same. The idea behind the website building process has always been the same they have just been changing the appearance of it. So don’t fret when you see a few differences as you take action on the steps.
What Next After The Website is Up And Running?
Now that you have a website in place, you need to choose your path and decide on what you are going to be addressing on the website and how to optimize the website.
Having a proper plan and direction for your site
I am guessing you already had a plan in mind about the direction your website would take, the topic it would cover, and how you would run it.
Although the plan may not be perfect, you should have an idea of what you should do with it. You can decide to blog about what you love most, create a review website, or any other thing you want.
The idea here is to know and be decisive about what you want to do with the website.
From there, you should work on implementing the decision.
Adding more content and further customizations of the site
Implementing the plan will mean adding more posts and pages to your website about the topic you have decided to cover and further customizing the website to suit your needs and desires.
As you have seen, customizing the website is not really hard and things in the website builder are quite intuitive and simple to work with. Just play around with the tools as you learn what they do from the Weebly tour, YouTube videos, and online tutorials on Weebly and you will know how to work your way around everything in there.
I would encourage you not to hire a website developer to do this for you unless you want to change something in the code side of the website that will require technical skills.
Anything other that is wasting your hard-earned money as you can learn freely online.
Adding more functionality to your website
The other thing you should consider as you grow the website is to subscribe to Weebly plans if you need more features and functionality for your site.
Since you are on a free website, your options are going to be limited and you may not be able to do all that you want unless you pay to unlock extra cool features.
Take your time and decide what features are important to invest in based on the pricing plans available and then invest wisely.
Working with SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a big essential if you want your website to be ranked in search engines like Google and get good traffic from it.
Look for a skilled SEO expert or take an online SEO course to help with that.
Other than that, keep building the website on a consistent basis if you desire to see it become what you dream about it and you are going to get there soon.
Monetizing your website
After you have established your website well and it has started bringing in good traffic, you can consider making money out of the traffic through different ways such as affiliate marketing or Google AdSense.
The money can help with maintaining the website performance and adding more useful resources to enhance its quality or even help you with your personal bills.
The decision is yours.
In summary, creating a website doesn’t need a lot of expertise nowadays. You only have to understand the main elements that make up a website and how to work well with them to create a website that you love.
And I believe you have seen how easy it actually is based on how we have done it.
Now it is up to you to decide the direction you want to take with your website and how you are going to benefit from it.
I wish you all the best with your website endeavors and if you ever need help with anything, don’t hesitate to ask me through the comments.
Cheers to new beginnings! 🙂
