LeBokov21.com

Last time I have shown you how to sign up an account at FreeSiteDesigner.com. You can review part 1 here if you have missed it. Today, I will show you the basic functions and add some contents to your website. So sign in to your FreeSiteDesigner account now and follow along!

Template Basics

First, after you have signed into your account, you need to click on the “Edit Website” icon. A pop up window should appear and show you what your website currently looks like with the template you have chosen when you created your account. You should also see the names of the pages in the menu. If you don’t like your current template, you can pick another one by following the steps below:

1. Click on the “Design Website” button at the top.
2. Click on the categories to browse for a template that you like.
3. Click on the template. A preview will show you how your site will look like.
4. Click “Save” and then “OK” in the confirmation dialog box.

Now you have a template. You should get familiar with the different sections. The top part is the header and it contains the site name, slogan, and the header image. The middle part (or the body) contains the main contents of your website and the menu. The menu should be either on the left or right vertically, or it should be in the middle horizontally, depending on the template you have chosen. The bottom part is the footer which usually contains the copyright sentence.

Changing Site Name and Slogan

First thing, you should change the site name and slogan in the header. To do so, click on “Edit Page” at the top. Then click on “Edit Header” and follow the steps below:

1. Click on “Click to change text.”
2. In the new window, you can enter the name of your site in the text field next to “Your Message”.
3. Enter your slogan in the field next to “Your Slogan”.
4. Click “done”.
5. If you want to use the same site name and slogan on every pages, make sure you check the box next to “Apply this content to all web pages’ header”.
6. Click “Save”.

The header of your site should now have a custom name and slogan.

Changing Contents in Body

Under the “View Page” mode, you can test out your website. If you want to change the contents of a page, then you should click on the link of the page in the menu. Then click on “Edit Page” at the top. Then you will see a text editor where you can edit the text.

Next to the text editor, you should see the image box that lets you pick an image to be displayed on the page. Click on “Click to change image ” and the image library will come up. You can then browse the categories for a picture that you like. If you want to use your own image, you can click on the “Upload Image” button at the top of the image library window. You can then browse for an image on your computer for upload. Please note that FreeSiteDesigner only provide you less than 10MB of space for storing your own images and you can not upload an image that is larger than 2MB. After choosing an image, you can check the box next to “Enlarge Option” so that people can click on your image and view it in full size.

After you are done editing the contents, remember to click on “Save” to apply your changes. Follow the same steps to edit each of the webpages of your site.

Changing the Footer

To change the footer message of your site, click on the “Edit Page” button at the top. Then click on the “Edit Footer” button. Then you should see a text editor, just like the one you used to edit the body text. Enter your message there and click “Save”.

Publishing Your Website

You should now have entered the basic contents of your website and should be ready to publish it. Click on the “Publish” button on the top and the “OK” button in the confirmation dialog box. Wait for it to finish and you can view your website at the domain you have specified at sign up.

So this is the 2^nd part of the tutorial. I will show you how to further customize your website in part 3 later. I have published my FreeSiteDesigner website here so you can check it out.

Look at this guy showing off Linux’s 3D desktop effect (the technical name should be Compiz Fusion) with a touch screen. What a chemistry this combination has created! I have setup the Compiz Fusion on my notebook too. This is one of the fun stuff to play with in Linux (and perhaps one of the most attractive features of Linux to the normal users).

What do you think? Are you willing to give Linux a try? You may want to download Ubuntu for a quick trial yourself.

If you want to quickly setup a website for yourself but you don’t know anything about web design, then you may want to give FreeSiteDesigner a try. FreeSiteDesigner is an online web design and publishing tool for the beginners. You don’t need to know any programming languages. You simply sign up an account at FreeSiteDesigner.com, pick a template, fill out the contents, and publish to your web server. The only requirement is that you already have a domain and hosting.

In this post, I will be guiding you through setting up an account and choosing a template. In part two, I will show you the basic functions of FreeSiteDesigner and add some basic contents. In part three, I will show you how to further customize your website in FreeSiteDesigner.

Sign Up Account

Your first step is to sign up an account (everyone knows that!). Just follow the instructions and fill out the required information. You will need to provide a valid email address as they will send you an activation link via email. When you get to the “Website Info” page, think about what you enter for your website URL. For example, if you have a domain mywebsite.com and you wish people to visit your website at http://www.mywebsite.com/subdomain, then you should enter www.mywebsite.com/subdomain as your website URL. If you want people to view your website at http://www.mywebsite.com, then you can simply enter www.mywebsite.com.

FTP Info

For the FTP info, they should be provided by your web hosting service provider. If you are not sure, you should ask your hosting service provider for the following:

• FTP host name e.g. lebokov21.com
• FTP username (should be the same as your username to sign in your hosting account)
• FTP password (don’t tell me this)
• the FTP root folder (this is the tricky part)

The tricky part here is the FTP root folder. You could let FreeSiteDesigner to guess it by clicking the “Auto Detect” button. But most of the time this won’t work. Usually, it is just a forward slash “/” or it can be “/var/www/html”. For Bluehost users, it is “/public_html” without the quotes. If I am going to publish to the “subdomain” folder, then I would enter “/public_html/subdomain” without the quotes.

Once you have submitted the information, you will receive an activation email at the address you provided. You can then activate it and sign in to your FreeSiteDesigner account.

Choosing Mode and Template

Once you are signed in, you will see six large icons. Click on the one that says “Edit Website”. For the first time, you are asked to choose between simple and advanced modes. I suggest you to pick the advanced mode, since I don’t really see much differences between the two. After choosing the mode, you will need to pick a template from a list of categories (just pick one, if you don’t like it, you can easily change it later). You will then be asked to name a few pages for your website.

After you have chosen a template, you can start playing around with the functions and adding contents. I will be talking more about these in part two and three so stay tuned!

As you may have already known, I used to work in a web hosting company as a customer support representative. Although the team was pretty small (there were only 8 of us), we managed to answer the questions from a 200,000+ customer base. This is quite impressive from a business point of view. However, in the customer’s point of view, it could be a nightmare…

During the time I was in the company, we only provided support service via email. There were no real-time support such as over the phone or online chat. There were only 8 of us and we did our best to keep the turn around time under 24 hours. In some difficult cases, it took 48 hours to give an initial response to the customer. So when you submit a support ticket to us, you will need to wait for a day to get an initial response and most of the time the response is just some copy-and-pasted templates which is not really helpful. You will then ask for further help and wait for another day to get the 2^nd response. It is not unusual to take a week to resolve a case. Some extreme cases can take up to a month.

Besides the customer support service, we were always being complained about our email services. A lot of users have experienced hours of delay in receiving emails. A lot of times, emails that are sent to popular servers such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail were blocked. The delay was mainly due to the email firewall server being overloaded with large volume of emails. The firewall server needs to check each incoming email for possible SPAM and viruses. Because of the large volume, it takes a long time for the emails to get through.

So how should you choose a web hosting provider for your website? Besides picking the lowest price with the best features, I think you should test their customer support first before actually signing up. Send them an email, start an online chat, or give them a call if they provide a toll free number. If they don’t give you reasonable and timely response, then you can go to the next company. Also, you should ask them what their refund policy is. If they allow you a full refund within a month, then you can test their email system too. If you find that a lot of emails are delayed or being blocked, then you can ask for a refund.

I am currently using Bluehost for my blog, as well as my business website. It’s been almost a year and so far I haven’t experienced any major problems. There are some small issues such as website being down for a few minutes because of server reboot. But I don’t find this too serious because I know there are some limitations in a shared-hosting environment. If you are still looking for a web hosting service provider or if you are having major issues with your current one, then you can give Bluehost a try. They have a 30 days full refund policy which should give you enough time to test it out.

If you are building a new desktop PC and planning to use more than 4GB of memory, then you should do some research on the hardware and software first. I had a customer today who was ordering some parts from my computer store to build his new gaming computer. He ordered the ASUS P5K SE motherboard, 4 sticks of DDR667 2GB memory, Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit version, along with some other hardware. When I saw the ordering list, I could tell that this customer will not be happy with his new system once he built it because he will not be able to utilize all 8GB of memory.

The problem is due to the 32bit operating system. Although the motherboard is capable of supporting up to 8GB of memory, the 32bit operating system can only see up to 4GB of memory. Even for Vista, if it is 32bit version, then you can only use up to 4GB of memory. In some situation, the 32-bit operating system will not be able to recognize the full 4GB because some of the memory addresses are reserved for the system hardware. You will probably see 3.xGB of memory only.

Solution? Switch to a 64-bit operating system, as I have suggested my customer to get Vista Home Premium 64Bit. Also, you need to make sure that the motheboard chipset can support 8GB memory or more. The ASUS P5K SE, using the Intel® P35 chipset, is capable of using 8GB of memory.