LeBokov21.com

Facebook is one of the most popular topics on the Internet nowaday. Although I have a Facebook account myself, I intend not to use it because of the risk that you have to take from the nature of Facebook and similar networks, as compared to traditional social utilities such as MSN Messenger and ICQ.

Traditional Tools

When using MSN Messenger and ICQ, I know that my contact lists are not revealed to the public. I know that my relationships and connections with other people are not exposed. This gave me the security to establish relationships freely with anybody because no other people can see who is on my list. Nobody can take advantage of me based on my relationships with others.

Dangers in Facebook

Unlike traditional social utilities, Facebook and other similar networks reveal all your connections to the public. Even if you don’t use Facebook, your relationships are still revealed by others through different ways such as tagged pictures. You can no longer keep your relationships a secret. For instance, if you tell me that you have never met “somebody”, but then I have found a picture on Facebook that has you and “somebody” in it, then I would know you have lied to me.

In a worse scenario, if one of your friend has done something unlawful, then people can find out through Facebook that you are his friend and they may stereotype you as another unlawful person. This stereotype may expand to other people who has connection with this unlawful guy. It will have a negative effect on those people around him.

Besides the connections being revealed, your ranking of the connections could be revealed too. I can probably have a general idea of who you like the most or which relationship you value the most by checking how many digital gifts you may have sent to a particular person. I can also check what you wrote to others to get clues about how well your relationships are. There are just too many clues out there on Facebook to draw a lot of information about you. If these information is collected by your enemies or by some unlawful people, you are being put into a dangerous position and there is no way to stop them from getting these info.

I Still Need It But…

One day, I may need to play around with Facebook myself in order to provide technical support to my customers. However, I will not use it as a tool to communicate with others or build up any relationships. The consequences can be way too serious than one could imagine.

Every year around Christmas time, the amount of spam email traffic would increase by huge amount. A lot of people may experience delay in receiving emails due to mail servers being overloaded with spam. Last year, the web hosting company that I used to work at, had spam emails increased by over 500% than normal volume. The firewall servers were busy scanning all the incoming emails, causing delays up to 12 to 24 hours. This was very annoying especially for the business clients who rely on email extensively.

Testing Email Service

So this is the time for the real test to the web hosting companies. If you are still receiving emails in a timely manner at this time around, then your web hosting service provider should be doing pretty well in managing its email service. This blog is being hosted by Bluehost. I am going to test its email service by sending some emails to a lebokov21.com email address from my personal Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail accounts.

Bluehost Passed

I have sent three emails from each of my Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail account. All emails from Gmail and Hotmail were received instantly at my lebokov21.com account. Two of the three emails from Yahoo were received instantly. The other email from Yahoo didn’t arrive at all. (When I was working in the web hosting company, It has often happened with emails from Yahoo being lost if emails were sent within short amount of time to the same address. There seems to be some rules on Yahoo’s side governing this.)

From the tests, it seems that Bluehost’s email service is doing pretty well even during the spamming season. I wonder if other Bluehost users are experiencing the same. How is your email service doing from your hosting service provider?

So this is the last session on FreeSiteDesigner. If you have missed the first 2 parts, you can check them out here for part 1 and here for part 2. If you still do not have a hosting server for your website, you may want to sign up one from Bluehost. In this last part, I am going to show you some advanced functions to further customize your website.

Body Components

The body of each page consist of mainly three types of components - text, image and web tool. Web tool is like a javascript handler that allows you to plug-in a javascript tool to your website. For example, you can add a counter to your website. There are some pre-defined body layouts that let you re-arrange these 3 components on the page. To change the body layout, follow the steps below:

1. Select the page you want to change and click on “Edit Page”.
2. Click on the “Edit Body Layout” tab.
3. Click on the layout that you want and then click “Save”.

So you can setup a page that may contain all 3 components or just some of them. You can also customize the properties of background, font and links such as color and size. You can edit all these properties by clicking the “Edit Body Properties” tab.

Web Tool

The web tool component allows you to add any javascript codes to it. You can search on the Internet for some free javascript tools, copy the code, and paste it into the web tool component. For example, I went here and copied the code of a button for viewing the HTML source codes of a webpage. Below are the steps to insert the javascript codes:

1. Under “Edit Page” mode, click on the “add custom scripts” icon. If you don’t see the icon, then you need to change the body layout.
2. In the new window, click on the icon next to “Custom Scripts”.
3. Click on “Add new items”.
4. Paste the javascript code into the box and give it a name in the “Script Name” field.
5. Click “Save”.
6. Click on “Insert”.
7. You have now inserted the script. Remember to click “Save” to apply the changes.

Footer

The footer is very similar to the body. You can do pretty much the same things as you did for the body section. You can change the layout, change the properties such as color, font and background, and you can include a web tool as well. One tool you may want to add to this section is the counter. If you want all your pages to have the same footer, remember to check box next to “Apply this layout to all web pages’ footer”.

Sidebar

The sidebar is just another area under the menu where you can add text, image, and web tools. It is very useful for showing your visitors some tips, a quick view of your photos, or anything you can think of. You may also want to add a tool to this area such as setting up a poll. You can create a mixture of your like with the 3 components. You need to edit the sidebar individually for each page.

My FreeSiteDesigner Webpage

Here is what my FreeSiteDesigner webpage looks like before (left) and after (right) this tutorial. You can also check it out here.

So this is the end of my tutorials on FreeSiteDesigner. If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

By the way, do you know any tools similar to FreeSiteDesigner that you have experienced with?

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.

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!