Sanja's dashboard

If you don't want your menu to show up on the index page, then you will need to hide your pages as given in the steps above. However, by hiding your pages, then you no longer have a way to navigate from page to page. This is where you need to create a custom code. A simple way to do this is to create text links or image links to help your visitors to navigate your site.

Here's how to create text links:

1. Drag and drop a text widget onto your page.
2. In the text widget type the words that you want people to click on (this is your link text).
3. Highlight the link text and then click on the link button (it's the 10th button from the left in the text editing tool bar, and looks like the link in a chain).
4. A link editor dialogue box will open up and you will be given 4 options. You can link to an email address, an external URL, a page on your own site or a file in your file manager.
5. Click on and edit the option appropriate for you.

You will then have a link on your page. To check that your link is working preview your page and then click on the link.

This is a brief explanation of how to add links, we have written a tutorial that shows the process in more detail. Here is the link: Creating Links.
For a step by step video on how to Add text links please see: Adding text links.

Here's how to create image links:

1. Add the image to your page, using the image widget.
2. Click on 'Properties' on the right-hand sidebar.
3. Click on 'Choose a Link' and make your selection.
4. Click on 'Apply'

To check that your link is working, preview your page and then click on the link.

For a step by step video on how to add links to images please see: Adding link to images

However, you don't have to hide your menu! This was just how I have done it for my site.

Hello Stephanie

It does takes time for new sites to be picked up by search engines, and there's no guarantee that you'll show up for the searches you want to. There are however, things you can do to increase your ranking.

Search engines like Google show users the sites that they think the users will find useful. The most important things you can do to get your site indexed is to update your content frequently and get other related sites to link to your site. If users like your site enough to post a link to it, search engines begin to trust your site a little more. This also applies to visitors - the more visitors you have, the more likely search engines are to send other visitors to you. While many users have achieved good search engine rankings with a yolasite subdomain, using a custom domain name will make it easier for users to remember and revisit your site.

You can submit your site to Google through a program called Google Webmaster Tools. We have posted a tutorial that walks you through the steps to do so here: Google Webmaster Tutorial. Please use our instructions and not Google's. Google's are written on the assumption that you are coding the website from scratch. Our instructions are written to work specifically with Yola.

When you submit your site, it's a matter of sitting back and waiting for Google's crawlers to reach your site. This could take as little as a few days, or as long as a few months. Unfortunately, this is out of our control.

You can also add tags to your pages to tell search engines what your site is about. These are key words which will help search engines identify your site. In the properties sidebar for each page you will see a field labeled "Keywords". Type your tags in there - your location, your business, what you offer etc. This is the place to put the sorts of things you'd expect people to be typing into search engines to find you.

You should also add a description into the "Description" field - this should be a sentence or two describing your site. An example of a description would be "The Quick & Easy Website Builder that Requires NO Technical Skills and offers free website hosting."

The "Window Title", which will become the title tag, is what shows up at the top of a browser when viewing your page, it will also be the text Internet users will click on in the search engine results pages (SERPS) to get to your site. An example of a title tag would be "ABC Store - Affordable Custom Widgets - Austin, Texas".

You may also be interested in reading our SEO tutorials. The last tutorial in the series, SEO Tutorial 4 - Promoting Your Website has many other suggestions to help you now that you have launched your site; here is a link: SEO Tutorials.

You might also want to watch our very informative webcast on this topic: SEO Webinar.

If you're a small business or affinity group, you may want to have a professional help get traffic to your site. Some businesses on Yola have found it useful to work with an SEO (search engine optimization) company to improve their rankings and reach visitors. If you'd like to do so, we suggest speaking with our partner inLocal.

If you want to see who is visiting your site, we suggest that you install Google Analytics. Here's how to do it:

1. Go to Google Analytics and sign up for a free account.
2. Type in the URL of your site.
3. Copy the verification code provided by Google.
4. Go to Yola and drag and drop a HTML widget at the bottom of each page you want to track.
5. Paste the code from Google into the HTML editor on each page.
6. Republish your site.

Your site will then be verified and you can log into your Google Analytics account to find out all the information you want to know about the people who have visited your site.

Another great way to promote your site and any updates you make is through Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, you can easily Tweet any changes or updates you make when you publish! For more information on this please see this thread in our forum: Twitter Button - Tweet your new site or your latest changes!.

If you don't have a Twitter account and would like to get one to make use of this promotion tool, please go to Twitter.com and sign up for a Free account!

I hope some, or all, of the above is helpful to you. Now that your site is built and published you have taken the first big step towards having an online presence. From now on you should focus on developing and updating your site, and doing as much as you can to promote your site and attract visitors. It can seem like a slow process, and it is a challenge for all website owners, but anything you do towards this will help in the end.

Whoops - my bad! I forgot to encode it! Here's the proper code:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2; url=http://webdesign.about.com"> – Sanja, on November 20, 2009 17:56

Hello dukemailula

To create the entry or welcome page as I did, I had to hide all my pages first. Go to "edit menu", then drag all your pages from "in the menu" to "out the menu".

Then, on the index page (which is the first page that people land on), I added a redirect code on it. Here's how to do that:

1. Drag and drop a HTML widget onto your page.
2. Paste this tag into the HTML editor:
`<meta />`

"2" is how many seconds it waits before it redirects - you can change this number. You'll probably want to start with a higher number as the page will redirect in your site builder until you're happy with how your page looks and that it's correctly working.

"url" is the URL it redirects to, so, replace the URL in the above tag with the one for the site you want to link to.

Please note, because you have to hide your pages, you will need to create a custom menu and have this custom menu on each of your pages.

Please let me know if you need any help or have further questions.

Wow Randy! Very impressive indeed! You have done a fabulous job in really utilizing the submenu feature and presenting it in such a way that it easy to navigate and organized.

p.s. I'm sorry that the custom menu didn't quite work out the way you wanted it to.

Hello Fenix

You have done a lovely job! I really like your use of colors. Well done! I'm sure that your visitors will enjoy reading your blog. :)

Diane! I love this look! I'm sure your brother-in-law will be super impressed by all the work you've done. :)

Hello Maria

It sounds like you got everything resolved then? Please let us know if further assistance is still needed. :)

Hello Carl

I have received your email in support. There appears to be a problem on Google's side. Please read this thread for more information: http://forum.yola.com/yola/topics/pro... – Sanja, on November 20, 2009 03:15

Glad to hear that you got it working! :) – Sanja, on November 20, 2009 02:51

Hey Lee

You have every reason to be proud! I can't believe how much this has changed from when I first remembered checking out your site. I always thought it looked so great before.. and somehow.. you've managed to make it look even greater! :)

Well done my friend! Well done!

Hi Laura

At the top of your browser, does it say Google Chrome or have a little tri-colored circle icon? This would indicate that you're using Google Chrome. – Sanja, on November 19, 2009 02:56

Hello Whopster

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble updating your website. Are you perhaps using Google Chrome as your browser? Please note that Chrome is not currently one of our supported browsers. We hope to add support for Chrome in future. Could you try to update your site from Firefox (recommended), Internet Explorer or Safari.

You could also try updating Chrome to the latest version as some users report that they are able to publish successfully from the latest version.

If this does not solve your problem, or if you are not using Chrome, please let me know.

Hello William

I can see that you're quite frustrated and while I am understanding of that, I do have to admit that I am bit taken aback by your attitude towards people who are trying to help you. We strive to answer in a reasonable amount of time and I believe that more often than not, we usually do. For future reference, I just ask that you try to exercise a bit more patience and understanding (we dont' just have the responsibility of moderating the GS threads, but our support emails, support documentations, maintenance, upgrades, etc...) when we aren't able to answer right away. I also ask that you frame your questions and responses in a manner that does not come across as being belligerent which I'm sure that you did not intend to do.

Now, I am quite familiar with Disqus and would be glad to answer your question in regards to this:

"Append #disqus_thread to the end of permalinks. The comment count code will replace the text of these links with the comment count

This simply means if you're wanting to create a link where it displays the number of comments you have for that particular blog post, you can do so by using that code. If you are wanting to do that, please follow these steps:

1. Copy the code in #3 box.

2. On your blog page, drag over an HTML widget (click on back, under "content" to see the HTML widget) and place at the bottom-most part of your blog page.

3. Paste in the code.

4. Go to your blog post and click on the HTML button. At the end of your post content, add the code given in #4 which looks like this:
Comments

5. Replace the http://example.com/my_article.html with your blog post URL. This would be something like this:
http://yoursitename.yolasite.com/your....

6. Click on OK.

7. You should see the number of comments you have for that blog post.

8. Do the above steps again for each blog post where you want to display the number of comments.

Hey Lee.. I do get the message "A page with this name already exists" when I try to rename inside the site manager. I take you do not then? Sorry for the confusion! – Sanja, on November 18, 2009 19:49

Hey Lee

I just wanted to let you know that it is expected behaviour that you cannot rename your pages in the site manager if the page name already exists.

You can however rename your pages using the "Save page as" function.

Thanks for letting us know though that this could have been a potential bug. I'm glad to know though it's not!

Lee - can you determine if this occurs with a particular style and with a particular browser? – Sanja, on November 18, 2009 18:01

Hello Dennis

Please don't feel stupid! How can we help? Are you also having trouble with your Disqus code? We would like to help resolve the issue. If you could clarify what the trouble is, I'm sure that we will get it sorted out.

Hey Ruhan

I really like the look of your site. I too would agree with John's suggestion that you left-align your paragraphs on your "About Us" page. This does help to make for easier reading.

I look forward to seeing the logo as I feel this is the missing ingredient needed to make your site really pop!

One other way that you could perhaps add color is adding a border to your pictures on your "About Us" page. Perhaps a nice green or blue that will match the color theme in your website?

People always like to hear testimonials about how this service has helped them. You may want to consider adding that to your website later on down the road.

You have done a really nice job! You should be proud of yourself!