Web Builder Plus – FAQ

How do I login to my dashboard

If you forget where to login, you can get to your dashboard by adding “/cpanel” to the end of your domain. For example, if your website was ‘Google.com’ you would login at ‘Google.com/cpanel’.

If you forgot your password, you can reset your password at the login page for your dashboard.

If you forgot your username, you will need to email support and supply us with your domain name and standard email address and support can send you your Username.

Add and Edit Text

Adding written content to your site is as easy as dragging any of our text elements to a page. The primary text elements are Text and Title:

• Title: For adding an H2 headline before a paragraph, or anywhere on the page when you want some text to stand out.
• Text: This is what you’ll want to use for the majority of the written content on your site.

Drag either element to your page, and click on it to start writing.

You can type multiple paragraphs inside a single text element or you can add a new text element for each paragraph. Whichever you prefer is fine, though in general you will get a cleaner look by adding a new text element for each new paragraph. This also gives you more flexibility when designing your pages, allowing you to change the alignment for each paragraph individually, position different elements between or next to paragraphs, or add an image to each text element if you like.

As you write, take note of the icons and symbols at the top of the element. This is the text toolbar and you can use it to make basic changes to the formatting of your text, similar to what you may be familiar with from word processing apps. Simply select the text you want to modify and click the appropriate button to make that change.

From left to right, the icons allow you to bold your text, italicize it, underline it, make it bigger, make it smaller, change the color, create a link, adjust the alignment of all text within the element, create bulleted and numbered lists, and remove any formatting you previously applied. The left arrow will undo the last change you made, and the right arrow will re-do the last change you undid. Note that these options will only function while you’re actively typing inside the element – once you’ve clicked outside the element, your changes will be saved and you’ll need to undo/redo manually.

You may notice that one thing you can’t do from the toolbar is change the font family for your text. Font changes are handled from the Theme tab, which you can read more about in our guide to changing fonts.

Changes to the Text Not Saving

If you find that the text changes you make on a page are not saving when you exit that page to go to another, try closing down your browser completely and then re-open your browser, log back into your account and try to change the text again.

If you continue to have problems getting your text changes to save, please contact technical support.

Edit Fonts

Watch how to change your fonts in this How’d They Do That? below, or read on for the full article.

Each Weebly theme includes default, global font settings for all your text. But you can change these font settings through the Change Fonts area found under the Theme tab.

There are numerous font controls to choose from in this section, but only a few of them have much impact on the overall look of your site. The most important of these settings is called Paragraph Text, so let’s use this one as our example.

Paragraph text controls the default font for all the Text elements you add to your site. You can change the Font Family, Size, Weight, and Color.

There are a little over 100 font families available. Each of these is what is known as a “web safe” font. This means any person, using any browser, on any computer, will be able to view the font without any trouble.

Set your font size to any number you like; however, for paragraph text we recommend keeping the size between 12 and 20 pixels. This ensures that your text is large enough to read, yet not so large as to give the impression you’re screaming at people.

You can adjust these four options (Font Family, Size, Weight, and Color) for all text on your site, under each type listed. Paragraph Text controls the font for all of your Text elements, Paragraph Titles control Title elements, Navigation controls your site’s Navigation Bar, and so on from there.

You can see exactly what will be changed on a page by scrolling over the individual control – this highlights in blue exactly which kind of text will be changed by your updates.

Can I Add My Own Fonts?

As there are more than 200 fonts in our Weebly editor, you should be able to find a font for whatever your needs are. The Weebly editor is not setup to easily add new fonts to the system.

Should you absolutely need a specific font Digital West can manually install that font for you, but you will be billed for the time it takes to process that install.

The Block Quote Element

Essentially you should use a block quote whenever you’d like to have a block of text stand out from the rest of the text both above and beneath it, usually when quoting another person or source.

The block quote element can be found under the Basic category of elements when editing a blog post and under the More category on a regular page in the Editor.

Editing a block quote is just like editing any other text element; you have access to the same black toolbar and basic editing functions.

The look of a block quote is based partially on the style of the theme. Some themes have more subdued block quotes and others are a bit flamboyant. If you’d like, you can change the font of the Block Quote by going to the Theme tab > Change Fonts > Blockquotes.

Upload a Logo to Your Site

Every Weebly theme includes space for a logo right at the top of the site. You’ll find this option by scrolling over your site’s text title.

You can turn this off, write a text title for your site, or Upload a Logo.

Choosing the Logo option will prompt you to upload an image from your computer.

You can upload a JPEG, GIF, or PNG file. Your logo is going to look its best if it’s less than 150px tall and is in a file format known as a transparent PNG; this kind of PNG file uses a transparent background which ensures the background of the logo won’t clash or contrast with the background of the site.

Here’s how what this site looks like with a transparent logo:

Ultimately, you’re going to see the best results if you use an image that was specifically designed to be a website logo. Any other kind of image is going to look out of place.

If you don’t have a logo image (and aren’t looking to have one designed), but want to have a stylized look for your site, we’d recommend sticking with a Text Title and using one of the Decorative fonts for that title found under Design > Change Fonts.

Adding Pictures to a Site

There are four ways to add pictures to your pages: Image Elements, Slideshow Elements, Gallery Elements, and via Headers or Backgrounds. The most commonly used of these is the Image Element, so we’ll focus put our focus there in this article.

Watch this How’d They Do That? on adding images or read the article that follows.

Drag the image element to a page. Then click on the element to open the dialog box.

There are several ways to add a photo. The most direct is to upload an image from your own computer, by dragging an image from your desktop into the window, or clicking the green “Upload a photo” button and selecting the file.

The size of a picture will vary after upload, but it may be a different size than you’d like and will often be as wide as the entire site.

You can alter this, though; hover over over the image and a blue box in the lower right corner will appear, which you can click and drag to adjust the image’s size.

Clicking on the photo also opens up a settings dialog box that you can use to make further changes.

Notable controls:

• Link: This option turns the image into a link. We cover links later in this guide.
• Lightbox: If you turn this on then any visitor who clicks the image on your site will be shown a larger version.
• Spacing: Makes minor adjustments to the amount of white space around the picture.
• Caption: Lets you add a basic text caption under the pic.
• Advanced: Allows you to adjust (or turn off / on) the border around the picture.

And the Edit Image button will open a simple image editor, where you can add basic effects, rotate, or crop your image.

Once you’ve made any changes click OK. If you don’t like the changes you can click Crop again to readjust or click the grey Cancel button to drop out of the editor.

You can also add an image directly to a text element and have the text wrap around the image. To do this, drag an image element into an existing text element.

Then upload an image as described above. You’ll likely need to adjust the size of larger images using the blue drag control in the corner of the image. You can access the same settings that are available for a standalone image element, like caption and spacing, and switch the alignment from left to right.

Finding more pictures

Digital West offers a set of stock images directly in the Weebly editor itself. First, insert an image into an appropriate section as decribed in the Add Picture instructions above. Instead of uploading your own image, click the ‘Search’ tab next to the ‘My Computer’ tab and search for a relevant image.

In the below case we searched for ‘business’.

Any of these images can be used for free. If you cannot find an image that fits your need, what you can do is purchase a stock image.

Companies like iStock, Shutterstock and Adobe Stock sell stock images that you can use on your website and Pexels offers stock images for free.

After obtaining an image from a stock image website you can download it to your computer and then upload it to your website as explained in the Add Pictures instructions above.

Digital West does not encourage using images found on a Google image search. Without the rights to use images found online you can open yourself up to cease and desist requests or a bill from the rights holder for unauthorized use of their image.

Best Types of Images to Use

Dimensions

Your image does not need to be any wider than the width of your webpage. If want your image to be as wide as your page you generally will not need it to be any larger than 1920 pixels. Your Weebly theme normally makes sure that your larger images will be automatically resized downwards to fit well into your visitors monitor or mobile device.

File size

File size is important because if your image files are too take up too much data space they will load more slowly when visitors come to your website. Visitors do not want to wait long for your images to load, so not only does a large file size cause users to leave your website before it is fully rendered, it also hurts your search engine rankings due to poor user experience.

For most ‘full page’ images, you want your image to be 80Kb-180Kb. If the image is only a medium sized image then we would recommend image sizes more around 25Kb-80Kb.

Reducing the quality of your images by 30-50% of the original usually doesn’t make any noticeable difference on your website. The DPI or dots per inch also does not need to be higher than 72dpi for web graphics.

Create Links

There are several ways to create a link to another site, a page on your own site, a downloadable file, or an email address: a Text Link, Image Link, Button Link, and Navigation Link.

Text Link

Read on below or watch this short How’d They Do That? to learn about creating text links.

Any text you enter into a Text or Title element can be turned into a link (or hyperlink).

First, highlight the text you want to link, then click the “chain link” icon in the text toolbar.

This will open the link dialog box, where you can select the kind of link you’d like to create. Clicking on one of the link options will expand it, and clicking again on that option will collapse the list back to choose a different type of link.

You can:

Link to a Website URL / page on another site. For example, an article on Wikipedia or a page that shows a picture of a cute puppy. You can also choose to have the link open in a new window so your site stays open in the original tab and your visitor can easily switch back to it.

Link to a Standard Page or Product Page on your own site. Just select the page you want from the menu.

Link to a File (like a PDF or Word Doc) so that if someone clicks the link, the file immediately downloads to their computer. You can select a file from the menu or click “Upload New” to search your computer for the file you want.

Link to an Email address, which will automatically launch your visitor’s external mail program like Outlook or Apple Mail, so they can write you directly. Note that if the visitor is not using one of these programs, the link won’t work for them (this is an issue with web browsers, not an issue with Weebly links). Alternatively, they’ll need to copy your address or use a Contact Form if you have one on the site.

Link to a Blog Post that appears from the list of your posts (and you can search to find it if you’ve written a lot).

Your link is saved automatically, so when you’re done just click outside the dialog box. Just keep in mind this link won’t be active in the editor, but clicking on it will show you where it leads, and give you the ability to change or remove it if needed. Your link will be fully functional on the Published site.

Image Link

You can also turn any Image element into a link. Click the image you want to use, then select Link from the image toolbox.

This will open your Link options, which are the exact same ones as for Text.

Button Link

The Button element creates a handy call-to-action button which links to other sites, pages on your site, files and email addresses (see the pattern?).

Drag a Button element on to your page, enter any text you’d like, though the ideal length is no more than five or six words. Then select Link from the toolbox, and you’ll see your standard link options to choose from.

As always you must Publish your site to make the links active.

Navigation Link

The navigation bar or menu is essentially a set of links, which open pages on your site. If instead you would like one of those pages to link to an external website, then you can do that too.

Select the Pages tab to open your pages list in the sidebar. Click the + and select External Page.

Name this page and enter the url, then choose whether you want it to open in the same tab, or in a completely new tab.

As always, you can move this page anywhere in your navigation by dragging it into place.

Publish and your changes will be live.

Switch and Manage Themes

The first step in creating a new website is choosing a theme, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with the first theme you picked.

You can change your theme whenever you want by going to the Theme tab and selecting Change Theme.

The Theme Gallery has many options to choose from, all of which are responsive and customizable so you can add your own personal touches. Themes are organized by category, but you can choose any theme you like no matter which category it happens to be in.

The Recently Used button at the top will allow you to browse themes that were recently applied to your website – this is handy if you’ve been trying out several different looks and want to go back to a previous choice. Wondering what the Custom and Import Theme buttons are for? If you happen to have any custom themes installed or want to add a new one, you can use those buttons to browse previously added themes and upload new ones.

Once you’ve chosen a theme you like, you can customize colors and fonts by clicking on Change Fonts in the Themes tab. Many themes also have different color options and additional features that can be toggled on and off in the Theme Options section.

Undo a Change

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Frankly, it’s surprising we’ve reached the second sentence of this article without a single typo.

What are your options if you make a change in Weebly that you want to undo? It depends on specifically what you’d like to undo:

Did you switch to a different theme and then decide to go back to the old one? You can go back to a previous theme easily – just click on the Themes tab, then on Change Theme, and then on the Recently Used tab. You should see your previous theme there, allowing you to switch right back.

Did you make a mistake while typing in a text element? If your cursor is still inside the text element, then you can use the undo and redo arrows to perform several levels of undo and redo. Keep in mind that your text will be automatically saved once you click outside of the element, so you won’t be able to use the undo/redo buttons after that. Also, if you deleted a file or image from inside an element, we don’t have a way to restore that either.

Can I Restore a Past Version of My Site?

Not currently, but it’s something that we are working on.

Problems Uploading Pictures or Files?

Having trouble uploading a file or image? Take a look at this short troubleshooting guide to get back on track.

Note that you should use this guide only if you’ve received an error message regarding an image / file upload or if the option to upload files appears to be broken in your account in some other way. If you’re just not sure how to upload an image, read the instructions for image uploads instead.

Clear Your Cache: Clearing your browser cache is often a great fix for annoying little problems that come up. You need to clear the cache, close the browser, re-open the browser and then log back in to your account. If you’re not sure how to clear your cache, see:

http://www.refreshyourcache.com/

Check Your Browser Extensions: It’s very easy to install extensions to your browser, occasionally you may not even realize you’ve done so, and some extensions can interfere with uploads. If you’re not familiar with browser extensions, or would rather not worry with this at all, then move on to the next option.

Try a Different Browser: Our service usually works perfectly with most flavors of Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer. But if clearing the cache doesn’t help out and you can’t find any problem extensions, then switching to any other browser than the one you’re currently using is often the way to go.

In giving this final suggestion we realize that the browser you’re using now was likely working perfectly in the past. But there are a lot of variables that can lead to sudden issues, which is why it never hurts to try a different browser if you run into trouble with Weebly.

Add a Favicon to Your Site

Have you ever noticed a small image on your browser’s tab while visiting a site? This is called a favicon, and adding one to your site is a simple way to make your logo even more memorable for visitors and make your link stand out in a list of bookmarks.

You can do this very easily.

You’ll find the option to upload a favicon for your site under the General section of Settings.

Click upload to search your computer for a favicon image you’d like to use, keeping in mind the following:

• The image must be square. A rectangular image of any kind will fail on upload.
• The image must be saved as a .jpg, .png, or .ico file.
• 64 pixels by 64 pixels is the ideal size for the image, though it’s also okay to have one that’s larger or smaller (no smaller than 16×16 and no larger than 100×100 are good rules of thumb and will ensure your favicon looks great).

If the upload is a success, you’ll see the favicon on your Settings page.

Next you should publish to make the favicon live on your site, though there’s a good chance that it won’t show up in your own browser right away upon publish. This is because favicons are cached very strongly by browsers, and publishing your site doesn’t update that cache immediately.

The good news is that first-time visitors to your site will be able to see your favicon, as will anyone visiting in a browser they haven’t used on a previous visit.

Still not seeing the new favicon on your end? Try viewing your site with something other than your usual browser – you’ll likely be able to see it then, though it may still take some time for the cache to update in your browser of choice.

Adding Sections to Your Pages

The Section element gives you the ability to create engaging pages that will delight your visitors. You can drag other elements into sections, customize the background, and change the height and position on the page.

Watch this “How’d They Do That” to see it in action, or read the article below.

Adding Sections to Your Pages – Instructions

Drag the Section element from the Build tab onto your page.

The section will fill the full width of the page where you place it, so choose a spot above or below other elements on the page. If you’re using a Splash page type, you won’t be able to add a section as this style of page is designed to display a limited amount of content with a single background image.

Next, you’ll want to add content to your section. We’ve put together some pre-made, customizable layouts to help you quickly start building great-looking sections.

Click on any one of the layout styles to see a preview of how it will appear on your page. If you like what you see, go ahead and save. You can then rearrange, add or remove any of the elements in the layout and customize them with your own content.

Don’t see anything you like in the section layouts? No problem – you can add elements manually, too! Just click outside of the layout panel to cancel and start dragging in the elements you want.

Each section on a page can have its own unique background color or image, and if you’re a Pro subscriber you can even add a video background. Click on the section and then on Edit Background.

For image and video backgrounds, you can upload your own or choose one from our built-in galleries. Background colors can be selected using the Hue slider or by entering the specific hex code for the color you want.

Want to make a section taller or shorter? Click on it and drag the blue bar at the bottom up or down to adjust the height, which will be displayed in pixels as you move the bar. If the tool tip says “Auto”, that means the section can’t be made any shorter, so you’ll need to remove some elements first.

You can also change the vertical alignment of all elements in a section by clicking on Edit Background, and then Advanced. Elements can be aligned to the top, middle, or bottom of a section.

Need to move or copy a section to another page? Click on the section and then on Move. You can move a section up or down in position on the same page, move it from one page to another, or copy it to a different page or to the same page.

How to Create a Flexible Header

If you want a page to be public, but not appear in your navigation menu, click the Pages tab, the individual page, then check the Hide in Navigation box.

Flexible Headers give you incredible creative control over the look of your pages. You can add and remove elements, customize the background, and adjust the height of the header area.

Watch this “How’d They Do That” to see it in action, or read the article below.

Headers are built into each new page you add by default, but you can change the header type for any page from the Pages tab. Keep in mind that Splash pages don’t support headers as this style is meant to display a limited amount of content with a single background image. The No Header page type, as the name implies, also doesn’t include a header.

The header will have a few default elements in place when you add a new page, but you can pick a different layout by clicking on the Header Section and then on Replace Header Layout. You can preview and choose from several customizable layouts, or you can just delete the default elements and manually drag in whatever you prefer.

You can customize the background for your header with an image or solid color.

Click on the header and then on Edit Background to add a new background or modify the existing one.

Want to save your header to other pages? Click on Edit Background, then Advanced – you can then choose which pages you want to save the image to.

Customize Your Backgrounds

Customizing the backgrounds on your pages is a simple way to add personal flair and make your site stand out. You can add a different background to each section and header on your site, so your creative options are practically unlimited.

Backgrounds fill the entire width of the page and can be an image or a solid color. You can use your own files or choose from our galleries of optimized, high-quality media. Image and video backgrounds can be further customized with scrolling effects.

We’ll look at how to use each type of background and provide some tips to help you make the most of your images.

To use an image background, click Edit Background for the section you’re working with. Select Image, and click add image. You can choose one from our gallery by clicking on the image thumbnail and then on the select button. The images in the gallery can be filtered by theme using the menu at the upper right.

To add your own image, click Upload Image and choose the file you want from your computer.

Click on the section and then on Edit Background to bring up the settings. Here you can edit or replace the current image and choose a scrolling effect for the background.

Images will also look the best when they’re high-quality and large enough to fit comfortably across the width of your page. Again, most phones have a good built-in camera capable of taking photos that will look great on your site. Wondering exactly what size the image needs to be? There really aren’t specific dimensions for a background image, but a good rule of thumb is to choose an image roughly 2,000 pixels wide and at least 1,000 pixels high – that’s large enough to ensure your background will look good on all screen sizes and devices.

A solid colored background is a great solution if you want to make a bold statement or showcase special content on your page. Click the section you want to add a color to and then click Edit Background, then select Color.

Click the Change Color button to open the Color Picker. Drag the circle in the spectrum bar to the color you want, and then drag the circle in the color gradient field below to fine tune the lightness and saturation of the color. If you already know what color you want to use, you can simply type the hex code in the field below.

What if the font colors you’ve chosen don’t stand out well against your new background color? You can select the text and change the color using the A button on the text editing tool bar. You can pick one of the preset color swatches or click the arrow below to open the color picker and customize it.

Create Anchor Links

Weebly currently doesn’t have a built-in way to create anchor links, but you can still add them to your site using our Embed Code element and a little basic HTML.

Wondering exactly what anchor links are? They’re a special kind of link that will take you to a specific location on a page on your site instead of to a different website or different page. Check out our short video or read the guide below to find out how to do this:

You can create an anchor using text, images, or a button. In this example, we’ll look at using a button to link directly to some text further down on the page.

First, decide where you want to place your anchor and drag an Embed Code element just above or next to that spot. We’ll be using the Exciting Destinations text as the anchor point, and the anchor name is destinations. You can use any word you like – it doesn’t have to be part of the text – but it is a good idea to choose an easy-to-remember name for the anchor.

Next, decide where on the page you want to link from. In this case, it’ll be a call to action button in the header section. When entering the link, you’ll need to use the “Website URL” option and type in the full link to the page followed by #youranchorname. So if your website is www.domain.com and the page you’re working on is about.html, it would look like this:

http://www.domain.com/about.html#youranchorname

Note that if you’re working on the Home page of your site like in this example, your page name will always be index.html, even if the page is called Home or News in the navigation menu.

Here’s how it looks inside the editor for our example site:

Don’t forget to leave the “New Window” option unchecked – otherwise, the anchor link will open in a new page instead of jumping down to the right spot on the same page. When you’re done, publish your site and check out your fine handiwork. That’s all there is to it – give it a try on your site sometime!

Copy Pages

A page can be copied and used as the basis for a new page. To do this, just select the Pages tab and select the page you want to copy from your list of pages in the sidebar, then use the Copy button to generate a copy of the page.

This will generate a new page at the bottom of your list of pages. This new page will have the same name as the original page.

Click on the page to add a new name and to make additional changes. Then hit Done.

As you can see in the image to the left, the new page is created with the same name as the page you copied. Click into your new page to begin editing it.

Re-Order Pages

As you add pages to your site, they will appear in the Pages list in the sidebar, and also they’ll automatically become part of your site’s navigation bar. Where a page appears on this Pages list directly controls where it appears in the navigation.

You can rearrange the order of the pages by clicking and dragging them up and down the Pages list. Dragging a page to the top of the list will make that page your Home (though you can name it whatever you’d like).

Changing the order of pages in the list will also change the order in which they’re displayed in the navigation.

Organizing Sub-Pages

As the number of pages you add outgrows the space on your navigation bar, additional pages will automatically be categorized under a tab labeled More.

Creating subpages will give you more control over your navigation, so it’s an even better option than the More tab catchall.

To do this, just drag a page or pages underneath and to the right of another page.

The navigation menu will show your main pages, and when you hover over them, your sub-pages will appear in a drop-down menu below them.

Your main menu item can be either a functional link leading to a page, or a non-clickable menu item that will only display the subpages instead. To create a nonclickable menu, add a new page from the Pages tab and choose the Nonclickable Menu option. When you’re done, you can arrange your subpages under your new nonclickable menu.

Hide Your Pages

Sometimes you may not want pages to appear in your navigation menu at all.

To a hide a page from the navigation menu, open the Pages list by selecting the Pages tab, choose the page and check the “Hide in Navigation” box.

Taking this action with a page simply means it won’t show up in the navigation menu. However, the page is still live, and you can still create a link to send visitors to the page.

But why hide a page at all? If you have dozens and dozens of pages, showing all those pages in the navigation could be overwhelming for your visitors. Hiding some of the less important pages and linking to them from the content area of your site is a way to keep the navigation area clean and easy to, well, navigate.

Add a Permalink

A permalink will allow you to have a different name for your page in the navigation menu versus what is shown in the address bar in the browser. For example, in the image above the page’s name in the navigation menu is View Our Work, but the permalink is www.examplesite.com/samples.html. To add a permalink, click on the page you want to modify in the Pages tab, and then click on SEO Settings.

What would the page address be if there was no permalink? It would be www.examplesite.com/view-our-work.html, and a page called Contact Us on the menu would be www.examplesite.com/contact-us.html – you get the idea. Pro Tip: You can leave off the “.html” on the end of your links – the link will work with or without the html extension (eg, examplesite.com/samples and examplesite.com/samples.html will both load the same page).

Delete Pages

If you would rather delete a page entirely, just select that page from the Pages list in the sidebar, then hit delete at the bottom of the options listed.

Create a Blog Post

Below is a blog posting video. Should you need additional instructions on creating a blog or creating posts, please keep reading the text following the video.

If you haven’t already created a Blog of your own, go to the Pages tab and click the + to add a page, then select Blog.

To create a New Post, click on the New Post button at the bottom of your blog page.

Your blog post has a title and a content area. The title is like the headline of a newspaper article, so it should generally be short.

You can add content to your post in the same way content is added to a regular page. Drag elements into the post, and edit them to add content.

Once you’ve added your content you can select a variety of options for this particular post. Click Post Options.

When you click Save, you’ll see a Drafts button is added to the lower right. Clicking Drafts lets you view all your works in progress to edit and post them when you’re ready.

Manage Blog Settings

Your blog settings let you determine how you want to handle comments and alter your time / date settings. These settings can be found via the Blog Settings button at the bottom of the blog. Or directly under Settings > Blogs.

The Comments section gives you the choice of using one of three comment systems for your posts: our built in system, Disqus, or Facebook. You can also turn comments off entirely if you don’t want them.

The General section has, as you might imagine, some basic, general settings. This includes control over the number of individual posts shown on each blog page (this defaults to 10, but can be set to more or less), whether you want to include Facebook and Twitter share buttons on your posts so visitors can easily share them to either service, and whether or not you want your blog to have a sidebar that shows up everywhere on the blog (including each individual post). There are also spots to add code to the header and footer of each blog post, but these options are rarely used and you likely need to do nothing with them.

The Date & Time for your blog (and the rest of your site) can be configured via the Settings tab, under General > Site Formatting.

Remember to Save Changes when you’re done and that these alteration won’t have any impact on your live site until you Publish again.

Schedule Blog Posts

Have you ever wanted to write a blog post, then schedule it to publish at a specific time? What was once a fantastical dream is now an unbelievable reality!

Learn how to schedule your own blog posts by reading the guide below.

While editing, you’ll see a button in the lower left called Post Options. Clicking on it expands variety of options for this particular post.

The first option is Publish, and by default is set to “Immediately”. Select “Scheduled Time” if you want this post to go out in the future.

This will allow you to select the date and time you wish.

Edit a Blog’s Sidebar

Your blog has a fully customizable sidebar. This sidebar include three sections / elements by default and these can be deleted just like any other element.

Want more stuff in your sidebar? You can easily add more content by dragging elements to the sidebar. There is a “Blog Sidebar” category that is meant to be used only with the sidebar, but you’re welcome to use elements from any of the categories.

Here we see a sidebar that includes three of the default sidebar elements, a Flickr badge from the “Blog Sidebar” category of elements and a Blogroll (links to other blogs) that was created using a Title and a Text element.

Want less stuff in your sidebar? Hover your mouse over the element you want to get rid of, then click the X that appears. Yes, you can even delete the default fields (like Author, Archive etc).

If you absolutely hate sidebars, you can turn it off completely.

Go to Settings > Blog and toggle the Blog sidebar field to OFF. Once you click save and Publish, your sidebar will be gone and your blog posts will expand into the extra space.

Blog Categories

You can add tags to categorize your posts, which displays Categories on your sidebar. Categorizing a post in this way allows visitors to your blog to easily find posts that cover a specific topic.

Adding Categories to a Post is as easy as opening the Post Options, and using the Categories section to select any previously added Categories that apply, and adding any new Categories that seem appropriate.

Once you add a Category it’s always available to use for future posts.

Any Categories that are used with a blog post will show up in the Categories section of your blog’s sidebar. Clicking on a Category will display all blog posts that have been tagged with that Category.

Create a “Read More” Link

Using the “Read More” element is a simple way to keep longer posts from cluttering up your blog page, giving you more control over how much content is displayed to visitors.

While working in the Blog Post Editor, you’ll notice that the Build tab contains some different elements. These are only available to use in a blog post or in the sidebar, so you won’t be able to use the Read More element on a standard page in your site (though you can easily create a link to a hidden page to get a similar effect on non-blog pages).

Locate the Read More element and drag it over to your post. You can position this anywhere you like – everything underneath the Read More element will be displayed on the permalink page for the post. Here’s how the example post above will look on the blog page once it’s published:

That’s it! There are a couple of other things worth noting, though:

If you’re using the Slick theme (shown in the screenshot below), you won’t really need the Read More element – by design, every post on the blog page with that theme will display just the title and a “Read Now” link.

It’s currently not possible to change the text from the default “Read More”.

Manage Blog Comments

We have comments turned on by default for all of your blog posts, allowing your visitors to comment on any posts you’ve made unless you turn comments off under your Blog Settings. These comments appear underneath each individual post in the order in which they were added.

You should reply to your comments using the same comment feature all of your readers use. If you’re logged into Weebly, your comments should appear visually different, per the above in which all other commenters are listed in grey.

Additionally, if you (or any other commenter) replies directly to another comment, that comment will appear directly underneath the original comment and will be part of a thread connected to that comment. Any other replies to that comment will appear as part of that same thread.

We notify you of these comments via the email address associated with your account (you can change this to a different address for the blog under settings).

The comments can be read directly on your site or in the Blog Comments area on your Dashboard. Just select the site on which your blog lives, and you can see your Blog Comments at a glance, or click to expand.

This will bring up the comment area where you can read and delete comments. And if you turned on comment moderation (comments are not moderated unless you turn this on) via the Blog Settings, you’ll be able to approve the comments from here.

How to Edit or Delete a Blog Post

Most of the time we just have to live and learn from our mistakes. Happily, that’s not the case with blog posts – you can go back into the editor and fix errors in a post even after it’s published.

Fixing a post is as easy as finding it and clicking it – you can click anywhere on the body of a post to open it for editing. Make your changes, then click the Update button – voila! Mistakes corrected!

What if you just want to get rid of the entire post? Not a problem – click on the post to open it for editing, then click the arrow next to the update button to delete the post.

You’ll be prompted to confirm you really want to delete the post, so please be cautious because deleted posts can’t be restored. If you’re sure, go ahead and confirm – voila! Post banished!

Sharing Scheduled Blog Posts to Facebook and Twitter

Let’s not kid ourselves, your blog posts are awesome. But there’s only so much you can do. You write the thing, you publish it, but other than having your grandma tell all the folks down at Butchie’s Saloon about your blog, how else are you gonna promote it?

Well, there’s an sharing option for both social networks built right in to every post.

Create a New Post, then select Post Options.

Under Publish, select Scheduled Time, then you can schedule the time you would like the post to go live, and select Edit Share Settings.

Now you can turn on Twitter or Facebook sharing (or both).

If it is your first time connecting to Twitter, you’ll be prompted to authorize Weebly. Click Authorize app.

And the same is true for Facebook. To connect with Facebook for the first time, you’ll see this:

Your first option is to choose where you’d like to share. Should your posts go to your personal Facebook account so all your friends can see? Or would you like to share them to a Business or Fan Page you’ve created?

If you choose your personal profile, you’ll log in to Facebook, connect, then you’re all done. But if you select “My Organization Page” it will connect to your organization page, or if you have more than one, you’ll choose from a list of every Fan Page you manage on Facebook. You need to select the one to which you’d like to share your posts.

After you’ve authorized both, and entered a message to accompany the post if you want, hit Save.

Now click Schedule to schedule this post to go live at the day/time you’ve already set, and it will share to Twitter and/or Facebook when it posts.

Set these share settings individually for each post you write.

Reader Share Buttons

Are you looking for a way to let the people reading your blog to share it with their Friends and Followers? We also provide handy dandy Facebook and Twitter buttons at the end of every blog post to do just this:

You can also Customize this if you only want one of these options to appear – maybe you’re still mad at Twitter for eating all the tater tots at your wedding, or you just fell out of touch with Facebook. Whatever the reason, use the Customize option to pick what you want displayed on your posts.

Then just check the appropriate box:

Now your readers will be able to quickly share your posts with their followers on both social networks.

Upload Multiple Images w/ Slideshows and Galleries

If you want to add multiple images to your site, there are two easy ways to do that, with our Gallery and Slideshow elements. Choosing which one depends on how you want it to look. For reference:

• Gallery: Displays photos in a grid, clicking on an image opens it in a large “lightbox” display. Manual control for scrolling through photos.
• Slideshow: Displays one large photo at a time within the page, with sequential thumbnails. Autoplay or manual control for scrolling through photos.

Gallery

Our gallery element enables you to display as many images as you’d like, in a click-to-see-a-larger-version (lightbox) grid format that you control.

Drag the Gallery element to a page to get started.

Then click the Upload Images button that appears in the element.

And either drag images into the box or click the big green Upload Photos button.

This will let you select images from your computer to upload. You can select multiple images by holding the CTRL key on a PC or the Command key on a Mac. If you have trouble uploading images, we’d recommend limiting the number you upload to no more than 50 or so at a time. You can always add more later.

Give the photos a few minutes to upload and then you’ll see your gallery on the page.

Each image in the gallery automatically links to a larger version of the image. You can also link an image elsewhere (another site or page) if you like or add a caption that will appear on the enlarged version of an image. Click on the gallery to see these options.

Click on thumbnails and drag them around to rearrange images within the gallery.

The gallery’s toolbox enables you to make additional changes.

Slideshow

To add a slideshow of images, drag the element to a page on your site.

This will open the “Choose a Slideshow Style” dialog box where you can select which style of slideshow you want. This can always be changed later, so don’t spend too much time worrying about which one you want.

You’ll now be prompted to upload photos. Hit the big Upload Photos button or just drag some photos into the box to get started.

Then select the photos you want to upload. You’re to both delete unwanted photos and and more photos to the slideshow at any time, so you don’t have to be too selective at this point.

Depending on how many photos you’ve chosen, it may take them a few minutes to upload. Once they’re done uploading you’ll see them all on the photo management screen.

You can drag photos to re-order them, click the “x” next to each to delete them and click the “bubble” icon to add a caption that’ll appear along with the photo in the slideshow.

When you’re ready to move on, click Save and you’ll see the slideshow as part of the page.

Click on the slideshow to open its toolbox and make changes (scroll to view more options within the toolbox).

• Use the Add / Edit Photos button to bring up the Manage Photos dialog box we saw earlier.
• Use Transition Style to switch between five different photo transitions.
• Use Navigation to select whether you want to use Thumbnails, Numbers or no navigation at all.
• Use Speed to determine how fast the slideshow should play.
• Use Spacing the tweak the amount of space around the image.
• Use Caption to determine if any text captions should appear at the top or bottom of each image.
• And with the Advanced option, set Autoplay to On or Off (it’s on by default) and determine if you want the slideshow to always play in order or start from a random point every time the show is loaded.

Note that the slideshow will automatically expand to the width of the page or column in which you’ve placed it. So if you want to shrink a slideshow, you simply need to place it in a column by dragging a Spacer element too either side of it.

Upload HD Videos

Our HD Video element allows you to upload HD quality videos (up to 1 GB per video) directly to your site, and display that video in a professional, unbranded player.

The HD Video element is available under the Media category of elements. To use it, click and drag it to your desired location on a page.

Then simply click the player and a dialog box will open from where you can select a video from your computer (if a box does not open, then click the Replace Video button to open it). Weebly supports M4V, MPG, MOV, WMV and most other standard video formats.

Depending on the size of your video and the speed of your internet connection, it may take up to 20 minutes to upload your video. You will see a status message on your screen (in the lower right corner) showing the upload progress. Just kick back and relax while the video uploads.

Once the video is uploaded, we then have to encode it to make sure it plays perfectly on all computers, browsers, and mobile devices. The element itself will display the amount of time remaining in the encoding process. While the video encodes you can continue to work on other pages and content for your site (no need to kick back and relax during encoding), and when you come back later the video will be encoded and waiting for you.

Once the encoding process is complete you’ll be all set and your video is ready to watch. You can upload an unlimited number of videos to your site, the only limit is that no single video can be larger than 1 GB by itself. Which means you can’t upload any 1.5 GB videos to your site, but can upload as many 950 MB videos as you want.

You can alter the size of the video player (among several presets) using the toolbar that pops up when you click on the element.

Something to remember: if you’re using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, the files created when you use the Save option in these programs are not video files. They are editable files that are meant to be used with each program. Be sure to Export your final video from either program to ensure you have a video and not an unusable document file. To Export a video from iMovie go to File > Export. To Export using WMM go to Publish Movie > Export to File.

Upload Music to Our Audio Player

Our audio player allows you to easily add music, podcasts, or other audio files directly to your website. This element requires either a Pro or Business subscription.

To learn how it works watch the short How’d They Do That video below, and/or read the tutorial that follows it.

The Audio Player element is available under the “Multimedia” category of elements. Drag it to a page to get started.

After adding it to a page, click anywhere in the element to open up the Audio Toolbar. Then click Upload Audio to select an Audio file to upload and use the Track Title / Artist fields add a Track Title and Artist to the player.

Keep in mind that our audio player currently only accepts audio files that are specifically in MP3 format. If your audio is in another format, you’ll need to convert it or else it won’t work.

The audio file may take a few minutes to upload. Once the upload is complete, the player will expand to display the title of the audio and basic playback controls. You should now be able to play the file without any problems. The player only uses HTML and will work perfectly on all computers, iPads, iPhones, Android phones, and other mobile devices.

Display Documents on Your Site

The Document element, powered by our partner Scribd, allows you to upload and display documents on your site for easy online viewing.

Drag the Document element from the Build tab over to your page and drop it where you’d like it to display. You’ll see a sample document asking you to click on it to upload a new file.

Click Upload File to locate a document on your computer or drag one to the upload window. The Document element supports PDF and DOC/DOCX file types, so your computer may show other files as greyed out to indicate they can’t be uploaded. You may need to wait a moment while it finishes uploading, but you can move on to other things or exit the editor if need be – it’ll keep working in the background.

When your file is finished uploading, you can adjust the size of the element by clicking on it and choosing the height option that best fits your document.

Embed Video from YouTube, Vimeo, and Others

There are a few ways to add video to your site. First, you can upload video directly using our HD Video element, if you’re a Pro or Business user.

You can also share YouTube, Vimeo, and any other providers videos in two ways.

Watch this How’d They Do That? or read the article that follows.

YouTube element

Our YouTube Video element allows you to share videos from, er, what’s that place called? Oh yeah, YouTube! This element can be found under the Media section of Elements.

This element is one of two ways you can add a YouTube video to your site. The second (and more flexible) way is to use our Embed Code element, which we’ll tackle next.

Drag the element to a page and click on it to bring up the toolbox. You need to enter the direct link to the YouTube video in the provided field.

To find the direct link, click the Share button beneath the YouTube video. And copy / paste from there. No other link will work, so be sure to use the one found here.

Once you add the link, the video should show up on your page in less that a minute. If it does not show up then you are not using the direct link—please double check that you are copying the proper link using the option noted above.

Once the link is in place, you can determine the size of the video player using the Advanced option in the YouTube element’s toolbox.

If you feel at all limited by this element, you’re also welcome to embed videos from YouTube using our Embed Code element. How so?

Embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

Our Pro elements are not the only way to add Video and Audio to your site. You can add multimedia content from Vimeo.com, Blip.tv, Ustream.com (and many other providers) using our Embed Code element.

The short How’d They Do That video below shows how to use our Embed Code element to quickly add a YouTube video to your site.

Start by dragging the element to the page.

Then get the embed code for whatever you’re looking to add to the site. This can usually be accessed via an embed or share button found on or near the content you’re looking to share. In Vimeo this share button appears on the right side of the video.

Once you have the embed code, click inside the Embed Code element, then select Edit Custom HTML to paste it in place. When you click outside of the element, your content should show up there.

All Done!

Link to Documents, PDF, Powerpoint Slides, and More

You have the option to upload and link to pretty much any kind of document, allowing a visitor to download it to their computer.

To learn how, watch this short How’d They Do That video or read the guide below.

Link to a Document (or Other File)

You can link to a file by highlighting the text you want to link or clicking on an image and choosing the link option.

If you’re linking text, it’ll look like this:

If you’re linking an image, it’ll look like this:

Both image and text links will open a dialog box like the one shown below.

Click on File and select the file you want to link to. You can upload a new file or use one that you’ve uploaded in the past. If you scroll up in the dialog box you’ll see a search field you can use to locate a previously uploaded file by name. Note that this search works only with files you’ve uploaded using the link setting, and won’t be able to search files or media added directly to an element on your site.

You can choose to have your linked file open in a new window, but keep in mind that not all file types can be opened in a browser. If the visitor’s browser doesn’t have the ability to display the file, it will attempt to download the file instead.

Add Social Icons (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more!)

You can send visitors to your social profiles – Facebook page, Pinterest board, LinkedIn profile, Instagram page, etc – by using our Social Icons element to add whichever social icons you want, from our list of 13 providers.

Watch this “How’d They Do That” to learn more, or read the article that follows.

Each theme includes social media buttons that are designed specifically for that theme. You can add these buttons via the Social Icons element.

Additionally, a few themes also have the option to show (or hide) social icons in the navigation bar, accessible via the Theme tab. If you don’t see this option, it isn’t available with your current theme.

Drag the element onto the page and click on the buttons to open the social toolbox, then click Manage Icons.

We pre-populate the element with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mail. But you can deactivate these, and/or add the ones you want, by scrolling down through the Inactive list.

Click on the provider you want to use from the list, then type or paste your address into the field provided, and make sure Show is toggled on. Note: leaving the link field blank will make any of the icons disappear on the published site.

If you choose an icon that wasn’t initially activated, then add your info and toggle Show on, you’ll now see that it’s added to your Active list, as well as appear within the element itself.

Reorder the order in which your icons appear by clicking Reorder, then click and drag an icon up or down in the list and click Done.

And that’s all you need to do. These icons provide an easy way for site visitors to access your social media profiles and pages from any page of your site.

Add Twitter Feed / Badge

Twitter provides an easy to use widget generator so you can share all your recent tweets with visitors to your site. Watch the short video below that uses Weebly customer indyplush.com as an example of how to add a Twitter feed of your own to a site, and/or scroll down to read the article that follows.

Start by going here:

Twitter.com/settings/widgets

Then select the Create New button in the upper right. If you’re not already logged in to Twitter you’ll be prompted to log in before you’re able to access this Create New button.

Select the User Timeline tab and fill in all the info requested there.

Make sure the username field matches the username of the Twitter account you’re currently using. Twitter will allow you to change the username field (for some mysterious and unknown reason) but if you enter a username other than one you’re logged into you’ll later see an error stating “Unable to save your widget, please check your inputs.” An error apparently written by a robot from a 1950s Scifi Film.

You can change the height of the feed (the default of 600 is a little tall) and switch from the Light theme to a Darker one should it better suit your fancy.

When you’re done, click the Save Changes or Create Widget button. Twitter will present you with code to copy & paste to your site. Select all of that code and Copy it.

Then go to Weebly and drag an Embed Code element to the section of your site where you’d like the Widget to appear.

The feed should look something like this:

What if you don’t see your tweets on your site, but instead see an error or a blank space? Besides sarcastically saying “Thanks Twitter!” to your computer, you should make absolutely sure you copied all of the code that Twitter provided. The feed occasionally won’t show up in the Editor, so it’s also worth Publishing and checking the live site to check if it shows up there.

Add a Facebook Like Button to Your Site

Adding a Facebook Like Button to your site is a great way to make it easy for visitors to either share your site with their friends or to follow your Facebook business / fan page.

Read on below or watch this How’d They Do That? to learn more.

Get started by going here:

developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

There’s a form on this page that you’ll use to setup your like button.

First you’ll enter the address that you want people to like. If you leave this field blank, people who click your like button will end up liking nothing at all, which could either be a statement on the sometimes empty nature of our consumerist society or a mistake. Let’s go with mistake.

If you have a Facebook Fan Page and prefer visitors Like that page as opposed to just Liking your site (and as the video above notes, it’s better to have people like your fan page than your site), enter the address of that page instead.

The FB Fan Page for Benk, the Weebly customer used as an example in our video, is located at facebook.com/benkartist, by entering the address for his own Fan Page he ensures that all visitors who like his site follow this Fan Page and see all his updates. If you have a fan page, you’ll likely want to take this same approach.

Set the width of the button. 200 pixels is usually a very good choice here.

Choose the Layout / Look of the button. We’re fans of the Button Count.

Leave the Action Type set to Like and then turn the Share Button off by unchecking the “Include Share Button” option.

Then click Get Code. Here you’ll find two separate snippets of code that need to be placed in two different areas of your site.

The first snippet needs to be placed in the Header of your site. This may sound somewhat complicated, but it’s simple to do. Start by copying this first set of code from Facebook.

Then go within the Weebly Editor to Settings > SEO and paste this code into the Header box seen there. You may have to scroll down a bit before you see this Header box.

With this done, you can now add the actual Like button itself wherever you like on your site. Start by going back to Facebook and copying the second code snippet.

Now to add the button to your site, choose a page (or pages) where you’d like to add a like button and then drag an Embed Code element to that page (or those pages). Click Edit Custom HTML and paste this code into the element.

Once you click out of the element your FB Like Button will appear, and then once you Publish your site this Like Button will be available to all of your visitors.

Verify Your Site with Pinterest

Want to verify your website with your Pinterest account? Easy! Here’s how:

Go to your Pinterest settings, enter the address of your site there and click the Verify Website button.

Pinterest will display a snippet of HTML code. Select and copy this code, and click Finish. Then Save Settings before you exit.

(If you happen to see instructions to “Download the HTML Verification File”, don’t do it. Why not? Because Weebly doesn’t provide FTP access for you to upload an HTML file, so that option won’t work. Make sure you’ve chosen the Verify with a meta tag option, and you’re good to go.)

Now log in to Weebly and Edit your site. Go to Settings, select the SEO option and paste the Pinterest code into the Header Code box. Click Save, then Publish your site.

If you don’t Publish your site then Pinterest won’t be able to verify that you added the code and everyone will be sad; so don’t forget this step.

All done! Return to Pinterest and you should see your website at the top of your profile.

Add a Newsletter Sign-up Form

Want your website visitors to stay in the know and get all of your latest updates? Weebly’s Newsletter element is a simple, integrated solution – people can opt in right from your site so they’ll never miss a beat.

Watch this How’d They Do That? to learn more, or read the article that follows.

Let’s take a look at adding the Newsletter element to your footer.

You’ll find the Newsletter in the Build tab near the Contact Form. Click into your footer to open it for editing, and drag the element over.

The Newsletter is a lot like the Contact Form element, so it’ll be very familiar if you’ve used that – the same options are available, but the Newsletter is pre-configured as a sign-up form so you can get it set up quickly.

Want to customize the sign-up form? Check out the Build tab while you’re editing the Newsletter element – you can add additional fields and customize them, just like the Contact Form.

Once you have things the way you want them, save and publish your site – that’s it!

What if you’re already using a service like MailChimp or Constant Contact? Not a problem! Adding one of their forms to your website is a simple matter of getting the appropriate embed code from the provider and pasting it into an Embed Code element.

Add a Search Field

As a Pro customer you can add Search to your site to enable your visitors to quickly and easily discover whatever they’re looking to find. Learn how this works by watching the short How’d They Do That video below and/or reading the guide that follows it.

The Search Box can be dragged to multiple pages just like any of the other elements.

Plus, if you have a theme that supports it, you can activate a Search Box in the Header area of your site via the Design Elements section found under the Theme Tab.

A visitor can search your entire site simply by entering a word or phrase in any of the search boxes you’ve added.

The results are immediately displayed on a search results page that distinguishes between regular pages, blog pages, and blog comments. The layout of the results page cannot be directly edited, but it uses your global font settings (found under Design > Design Options) to determine how the text should look.

If there are no results found for the visitor’s search request, then they’ll see a simple message indicating that this is the case.

The Search bar uses the text content found in paragraph, title, and eCommerce elements; in page names, descriptions, and keywords; and in picture captions / alt tags to determine which results should be displayed.

If you want to exempt a page from the search results (so that it won’t show if someone searches for it), choose that page from the list found under the Pages tab, click the Advanced Settings link, then check the provided “Hide This Page from Search Engines” box.

Create Widgets, Embed Code and Add External Content

You can add outside content (like embeddable video, audio, advertisements and forms) to your site using our Embed Code element.

Then get the embed code for whatever you’re looking to add to the site. This can usually be accessed via an embed or share button found on or near the content you’re looking to share.

Here we see an example of embeddable code connected to a video that is hosted on Vimeo.com.

Once you have the embed code, click inside the Embed Code element and select Edit Custom HTML. Then paste the code in place.

When you click off of the element, your content should show up there. All done!

Note that there are a few situations where the content you’ve embedded won’t show up on your site until you Publish the changes. So if you don’t see your video, form or what have you in the editor, try Publishing to see if it shows on the live site.

Create a Survey, Poll, RSVP or Contact Form

Our Contact Form element is a great way to allow your visitors to contact you (which is why we put it right in the title!). All the entries sent through this form will go directly to the email(s) of your choosing, as well as show up right on your Site Dashboard.

We pre-populate the element with a few basics, but you can add, delete and customize the form fields however you see fit to create custom surveys, polls, RSVPs, subscriptions, comments, and more!

Drag the Contact Form element to your page, then click on the element to edit.

You’ll see the element sidebar has now changed to show elements you can add to your form, which includes a handful of regular elements, and 10 Form Field elements.

Let’s look at some quick examples of what you could make with these!

Survey

This one was made with a Title, Dropdown box, and Checkboxes.

Poll

This includes a Title, Email, and Options button elements.

RSVP

This one was created with a Title, Name, Email, Options button, and Dropdown box.

You’ll notice if you click on Form Options, that you can name this form, set the email where these form entries will go, adjust spacing and change how the submit button appears.

Now Save, Publish your site, and your visitors can start submitting. When you go to your Site Dashboard, you’ll see all the form entries sorted by form name.

Click through to see your results, switch between forms, delete selected entries, and export your data.

A Note on Spam: Our forms have security measures built in to the system to avoid automated submissions, and we’re constantly working on security, but it’s not perfect.

At this time, we don’t provide any type of captcha to add to our forms. However, you’re welcome to create forms with a third-party provider and embed them using our Embed Code element.

Add a Map to Your Site

If your business or organization has offices that site visitors can visit, it’s helpful to include a map to that location on your site. And we have a built-in Google Maps element that helps you do just that.

To learn how to use this element watch the How’d They Do That video below, and/or read the tutorial that follows it.

Start by dragging the Maps element to a page on your site. It’s under the Basic category of elements.

The map displays a small part of central San Francisco by default.

Click on your map to open up the toolbox. You can make a number of changes from here.

The most important thing to change (unless you happen to be sitting exactly at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Market Street in San Francisco) is the address. Enter your own address as Street Address, City, Country, and this will update the map to the address you’ve entered.

And you can adjust several aspects of your map, including zoom level, width and height and position. If you’d rather enter a Lat/Long instead of an address, you can do so under Advanced Location.

You can add some helpful text (like directions or hours of operation) next to the map by dragging an element on right next to it. (You’ll see by the blue bar exactly where your element will be placed.)

Embed Code from Google Maps

If you feel at all limited by our built-in Maps element, you’re also more than welcome to embed a map directly from maps.google.com (or a similar mapping tool).

Create the map in Google, click the Menu option next to the address, and choose the “Share and embed” map option.

Select the “Embed map” tab and copy the code they provide there.

Then paste this code to your site using our Embed Code element. Your map will show up as soon as you click out of the element.

Add a Calendar to Your Site

Google Calendar is an easy, robust and free way to add a calendar of events to your site. You manage your events directly through Google’s interface and the changes are automatically added to your calendar.

You will need to sign up for a Google Calendar account, if you don’t already have one. You can do that here.

Once you get up and running with the calendar (adding events, what-nots and what-have-yous), you can add it to your site with these steps.

In the calendar list on the left, click the down-arrow next to the appropriate calendar (you can create more than one) and select the Calendar Settings option.

Go to the Share this Calendar tab and check the box to “Make this calendar public.” Be sure to Save this change after you make it.

Then select the Calendar Details tab and go to the Embed this Calendar section.

Highlight and copy the provided embed code. This is what you’ll use to add the calendar to your site. Note that, while you’re here, you can also use the “Customize” link above the code to make changes to the look and size of the calendar.

Back in our editor, drag the Custom HTML element to a page.

Paste the calendar embed code into the element

Click out of the element to see your calendar and then click the Publish button. Your calendar will now appear on your live site.

How Can I Change My Contact Form Email Address?

Click on the form in the editor and then select the Form Options button.

This will bring up the Form Options toolbar. Just change the address shown in the “Email to” box. Be sure to Publish the site after making the change.

You can even enter multiple addresses in this box if you like. Just separate each address with a comma.

I’m Not Receiving My Contact Form Submissions! Why Not?

When a contact form is submitted, the information entered in that form is emailed to the address assigned to the form. But what should you do if you’re not receiving the form emails?

First, check your Spam or Junk Mail folders in case the messages are being routed there. If you see the messages in your spam folder, mark them as “Not Spam” using whatever option your email provider gives you. The more of these you mark as “Not Spam” the less likely they’ll be to show up in your spam folder.

If you don’t see them there, make sure you have the correct address assigned to your form. To do so, click on your form element, then the Form Options button.

Then make sure the email is entered correctly in the submissions “Email to” field. If it isn’t, re-enter it and Publish the change to your site.

You can even enter multiple addresses if you want. Just separate each address with a comma. This is worth trying just to see if the email is delivered to one address and not the other.

Delivering form emails to the inbox can be tricky and there are some situations where the emails may be completely blocked. If you cannot find the messages in your Inbox or your Spam folders and you believe the messages really aren’t coming through, the best bet is to switch to another address completely (preferably at a provider like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail).

We’re constantly fighting to keep our contact form email delivery high, but we can’t guarantee the form messages will be delivered to every address. That just isn’t possible.

That’s why we also give you the option to view form messages directly in your account. To access any messages that have been sent to you via a form, go to your Site Dashboard (if you’re not sure what we mean by that, the Site Dashboard is the first page you see whenever you log in to Weebly). You’ll see a box there that displays all messages to all your forms.

This will bring up all the messages that have been sent to you through any of the forms on this site. You can even export all these messages to a spreadsheet using the Export All link.

Working With Your Robots.txt File

Your website automatically includes a robots.txt file that you can use to control search engine indexing for specific pages or your entire site. You can view your robots file by going to www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt or yoursitehere.weebly.com/robots.txt (using your unique site address in place of the examples, of course).

The default setting is to allow search engines to index your entire site. If you want to prevent your entire website from being indexed by search engines, go to the Settings tab in the editor and click on the SEO section. Scroll down to the “Hide site from search engines” toggle, switch it to the On position, and re-publish your site.

What if you only want to protect some of your pages from being indexed? Not a problem! You can do this for each page individually from the SEO Settings menu. First, make sure that the “Hide site from search engines” toggle shown above is set to Off. Then go to the Pages tab, click on the page you want to hide, and then on the SEO Settings button.

On the following section, click the checkbox to hide the page from search engines, and then click on the back arrow at the top to save your changes and return to the main settings for the page.

Follow the same steps for any additional pages you want to hide from search, and then publish your site when you’re done.

That’s really all there is to it, but there are a couple of important things to keep in mind:

• If you’re using Weebly’s site search feature, any pages you hide from search engine indexing will also be hidden from the local site search.
• You can go back and disable (or enable) search engine blocking if you change your mind later, but it will take some time for search engines to catch up. In other words, pages that were previously blocked will need to be indexed before you may see them show up in search results, and pages that were previously indexed may still show in search results until they’re re-crawled by search engines.
• There are some things that are automatically blocked for all Weebly sites no matter how you’ve configured your settings. This includes protecting the directory where uploaded files for Digital Products are stored (even if you don’t have a store or aren’t a Business subscriber) and certain user-agents that send an exorbitant amount of crawl requests. These blocks will not have any negative effect on your site or its search engine ranking, and are actually beneficial since they help to secure your site.

How to 301 Redirect an Old Page to a New Weebly Page

If you’re migrating a website and domain from another platform, 301 redirects preserve your old URLs by redirecting them to your new Weebly ones. Your search engine rank for that page is preserved and you don’t lose traffic.

All pages on Weebly hosted sites end with .html. This is a fairly standard convention. And if your old host followed the same convention then you likely don’t need to worry with 301 redirects.

But the issue is that every host takes their own approach and not all of them end their pages with .html. Some end with .php or .htm. Some don’t have a file extension at all.

So if with your old host you had a page called contact.php and your site with Weebly has a page called contact.html, you can learn how to ensure traffic to that old contact.php link is redirected to the contact.html page by watching the short How’d They Do That video below, and/or reading the tutorial that follows it.

You’ll find the option to configure 301 Redirects under the Settings tab of the site editor. Once you’re in Settings, select the SEO section, scroll down to the bottom, and click Add Redirect to get started.

Creating your redirects here is as simple as entering the old address, choosing the equivalent page on your Weebly site, and saving the changes.

Continue to create new redirects by using the Add Redirect button.

When you’re done, click Save Changes and Publish the site. Your redirects are now active and working. There is nothing more you need to do and you can set up redirects for as many pages as you need. You can even direct multiple pages from an old host to a single page on your site with us.

Keep in mind this is only viable if you’re using the same domain name with us as the one you used with your old host. If you’re using a completely new domain with us then individual pages cannot be redirected to your new Weebly pages in this same way.

Set Up a Custom 404 Page

If someone visiting your site happens upon a page that does not exist, they’ll automatically see a Weebly 404 Error Page like this one:

The error is very straightforward and essentially says, “The page you’re trying to visit does not exist, but you can click here to go to the site’s home.” It works.

But what if you want your own 404 page instead of relying on Weebly’s default error message? You can easily do so.

Go to the Pages section of the Editor and use the “+” button to add a new Standard Page. Name that page “404” and check the box to Hide in Navigation.

Save this page and you can have it say whatever you want, show whatever you want, look however you want. It works like any other page, except it’ll only show up for visitors who somehow end up visiting a page on your site that doesn’t actually exist.

Improve Your Search Ranking

Now that you’ve built a great site, you most likely want people to find it.

One way to get visitors is to directly distribute your site’s address, and if you only have a handful of close connections who need to see your site, well this just might work.

For the rest of the world, finding your site will depend on searching via a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo. How can you optimize your site to ensure you appear as high as possible in these search engine rankings?

Start with the basics. Read our Description, Titles and Keywords article to learn how / why to add this information throughout the pages of your site.

While you’re doing this, keep in mind that keywords are not made out of magic (this is explained further in the Keywords help article linked above). Just because you add a keyword to your site does not mean search engines are going to find you through that keyword. If life were that easy, we’d all be rich and retired to our own private islands by now.

Get a Google Search Console account. It’s easy to set up an account with Google Search Console, and once you do you can verify your site, view your ranking, and ensure Google indexes your site on a regular basis. It goes without saying, but Google is far and away the most important search engine. We show how to setup an account in our Google Search Console help article.

Search-friendly Pages. Make your page names work for you. The name you give to a page in Weebly appears both in the site navigation and in the address (or url) of that page. Search engines consider words in your address more relevant, and therefore more important when displaying search results.

Use keyword phrases in your links. Think before you link. Creating links from keyword phrases or descriptive text will pack more punch than linking from phrases like “go here” and “read more”.

So this:
Read our How to Create Links article to learn how to do this on your own site.

Is better than this:
Learn how how to create a link by going here.

Title Your Content. Search Engines see Titles as generally more important than regular text. You can add Titles to your site via our Title element.

But don’t write all your text in a Title. as that will make things worse for your site. You can’t trick the search engines like this, so don’t try. Plus, if you write everything in a title it’ll make it seem like you’re screaming at all your visitors.

Location-Relevance. If your site is only relevant to people in a specific area, use content to highlight your location. Create a Google Map and pinpoint your location. Also, refer to the physical location when applicable throughout your site, such as “Visit our San Francisco showroom” or “Located in beautiful Nome, Alaska”.

Alt-Text w/ Photos. Add alt-text to an image by clicking on it and using the Advanced Option in the toolbox, then enter a short description of the image. (Note: this only works with the Image Element, not Gallery or Slideshow. View our How to Upload a Picture instructions to see more detail on this option.

Blog for Life. By maintaining a regular blog, you are continually adding new content to your site. This appeals to search engines, because similar to princes of Bel Air, they like their sites fresh. Read our Create a Blog article to learn how to start one with Weebly.

The Power of Links. The more sites that link to your site (as a general rule), the more Google your site to be worthwhile. This is digital word-of-mouth, both for potential visitors and for search engines.

Build it and they may come. There is no fast or magic way to get links back to your site, but the effort is worthwhile, since this is the #1 factor in your search ranking. The best you can do is build interesting content and let people know it exists.

You can also: Link to your site from your social profiles (Twitter, Facebook). If you have an email newsletter, archive it via your email provider’s site, so that your own newsletter acts as another site linking to you. If you have a business, put a listing on Yelp, create a Facebook Business Page, and add a listing to Google Local.

Know Your Limits, Keep Working. Be realistic with your goals. If you’re a San Francisco-based florist, you aren’t going to show up at the top of the search results for “flowers” or “Mother’s Day”. But, you could end up at the top of “San Francisco exotic florist”.

Focus on the attainable. Focus on getting your site to show up in a search for your own name. Try to get the attention of bloggers who may write about your business. Encourage visitors to review your business at places like Yelp.com.

If you want more in-depth advice, check out Weebly’s Ultimate SEO Guide.

Verify Site with Search Engines

Verifying a site with Google Webmaster Tools gives you access to reports about that site’s visibility in search results and ensures that your site is indexed by Google on a faster and more regular basis.

To learn how to verify your site with Google, watch the short How’d They Do That? video below and/or read the article that follows it.

Setting up an account with Webmaster Tools isn’t an absolute necessity, but it’s a smart way to help your search ranking. You can find Google Webmaster Tools here:

Google Search Console

Follow the link above and then log in (if you already have a Google account of some kind) or create a Google account (if you don’t already have one). Any sort of Google account—like a Gmail or Google Apps email address—will allow you to log in.

You’ll be taken to the Search Console. Enter the address of your site and click Add Property.

If you own your own domain name, enter it as www.yourdomain.com (like www.ebay.com; the “www” is a necessary part of the submission).

You can also come back later and add even more sites to this same account if needed.

Clicking Add Property will open the Verify Ownership section. You have to verify yourself as the owner since Google doesn’t want a random person to represent your site.

It’s important here that you select Alternate Methods and choose the HTML tag option.

Copy the line of HTML code that Google provides to you.

Then leave this page open and go to your Weebly account. Within the Editor go to Settings > SEO and paste the line of code you copied from Google into the Header box.

If there’s already code in the header, place this code above or below it.

Be sure to Save and Publish your site.

When you’ve done this, go back to Google Webmaster Tools and click the Verify button.

If you see an error, make absolutely sure you’ve Published your site, give it a couple of minutes, and then try again. You should now see a congratulations message.

Clicking on “Continue” will bring you to the Site Dashboard. Now you should submit your sitemap by clicking on the Sitemaps link, and then Add/Test Sitemap.

We automatically created a sitemap for you, it’s at:

http://example.weebly.com/sitemap.xml or http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in the case that you’re published to your own domain name.

Either way, you just need to enter sitemap.xml into the box Google provides and click Submit Sitemap.

All done!

Google Webmaster Tools has a lot of cool features to play around with after you’re verified. These features can help you see how well your site is ranked. You never have to use them (verification is the only significantly important thing to do here), but they’re there if you want to check them out. Google provides an FAQ that covers all the features:

Google Support Search Console

Mobile SEO

As of May 2015, Google is updating their mobile search algorithm — the system that determines how sites are ranked when someone searches Google from a mobile device like an iPhone — to reward higher rankings to sites that are mobile friendly. This change is legitimately great, since it boosts sites that provide a nice mobile experience.

But what does it mean for you as a Weebly customer?

The good news is that all sites built using our service are mobile ready without you needing to do much of anything. All of our current themes are what are known as Responsive. This means that the theme itself is designed to automatically adapt to the size of the screen and device it’s being viewed on. Responsive themes like these are exactly what Google wants to see from a mobile site.

If you’ve decided to keep an older theme that isn’t responsive, it is still ready for Google, since we display a different, mobile version of those themes when a visitor views them from a phone. This is not necessarily as modern as a Responsive theme, but in the eyes of Google it is just as good as far as search engine rank is concerned.

You can verify that your Weebly site is mobile ready by using this simple tool from Google:

Google Mobile Friendly Tool

But what if you fail Google’s mobile test?

This most likely means you’re using an older, non-responsive theme and you have the mobile version of that theme turned off.

How can you fix this?

There are two approaches to take to fix this issue:

Turn the Mobile version back on and Publish your site again. This Mobile setting is a check box that you’ll find under the Settings tab when editing your site.

Switch your site to one of our newer, Responsive themes. Go to the Change Themes section of the Theme tab choose a theme from one of our 24 themes and Publish your site.

What if you don’t want to do either of these things? What if you prefer to use an older theme and leave the mobile version of that theme off?

Then Google will not consider your site to be mobile friendly. But this is not necessarily going to be that terrible of a thing. Google considers dozens upon dozens of variables when determining how to rank your site in a given search. Whether or not your site is “mobile friendly” is just one of those variables. There’s a perfectly good chance your ranking won’t change at all if you leave things as they are.

Still, we recommend ensuring your site is ready for Google’s changes either by using one of our Responsive themes or by ensuring the Mobile version of your older theme is turned on under Settings.

Google Analytics

You’re welcome to add Google Analytics to any site to augment the stats that we already provide for each site. It’s a free tool enabling you to analyze your website traffic in more depth.

To add Google Analytics to your site, sign-up for an account and add your site (ex. http://example.weebly.com) to that account.

Google will provide you with a block of code to add to your site. Copy this code – you’ll need to paste to a specific area of our editor. If you have trouble finding this code, take a look at Google’s help page.

Log in to Weebly and click Edit Site.

Then go to the Settings tab and select the SEO section. Paste the code into either the Header or Footer area. Google prefers the Header currently, but it really doesn’t matter that much.

Save and then Publish your site.

Google will now begin tracking the traffic to your website. Please note that there is a 24 to 48 hour delay between when you add the code to your website and when stats become available in Google Analytics.

Descriptions and Keywords

Looking to boost your site’s search ranking? One of the first (and easiest) steps to take is filling out the Description and Keywords both for your entire site and the individual pages that make up your site.

Description and Keywords for your entire site can be found under Settings > SEO.

Description and Keywords for each individual page can be found under Pages > Edit Page > Advanced. The Advanced settings are accessible by selecting the Pages tab, which opens your Pages list in the sidebar, then clicking on the individual page.

We highly recommend utilizing these fields on all of your pages except for your Home page. The Home page fields should be left blank as it’s best that this page relies on your site level SEO settings.

Both of these fields assist search engines in properly categorizing your site, but the Description field is the more important of the two as it’s what Search Engines actually display as the description for your site in their own results.

Your site’s Description should be two to three sentences long and provide a fairly detailed description of what your site is about. Are you a florist in Denver? Then write something like:

Flowers and Such is a professional florist in Denver, CO with 25 years experience making birthdays a little brighter and anniversaries a little rosier. We have roses, lilies, orchids, tulips and every other flower under the sun.

This example Description lets visitors know exactly what the business is about, where it’s located (which makes this site more likely to show up in local searches), lists some flowers people may be searching for, and shows a bit of personality to boot.

Page Descriptions work in exactly the same way, except they should be specific to the page for which you’re writing the description.

For the Keywords field, you’ll want to use around 10 to 30 words that match your content and the types of searches people may do to find that content. The imaginary florist we’ve written about above might want a list of Keywords like Flowers, Florist, Denver, Colorado, Birthdays, Anniversaries, Weddings, Apologize, Roses, Lilies, Orchids, Tulips for their site settings.

And, of course, that could get even more specific with their word selection when filling out fields for individual pages relating to certain flowers, holidays, people, etc.

Keywords are ultimately only helpful with search engines if they are words you actually use throughout your site. Otherwise Google (and other search engines) will think you’re trying to game the system by using Keywords that are irrelevant to your site and will simply ignore the words you’ve written.

Be sure to Publish your site after you’ve added Descriptions and Keywords, as they will not have any effect on your live site until you click the Publish button.

Keep in mind it may take a few weeks to see results based on your efforts.

Membership: User Registration

Note that this article describes a service available to Business customers.

There are two ways someone can become a member of your site:

• By signing up through a registration link on your site.
• By you manually inviting them to become a member.

This article covers how to add a registration option to your site.

Activate a registration option for your site, by going to Settings > Members and clicking the “Allow people to register with your site” checkbox.

This will turn your site’s Log In link into a Log In / Register link next time you Publish your site. Simple as that.

There are two other options connected to User Registration that you may want to use. The first of these allows you to Require Approval for any new members. If you turn this on, no registrant is able to access members-only pages of your site until you approve them via the Members list in Settings.

You can also set a Default Group for New Members. Any registrants will automatically become a part of this Group. It’s a good idea to do this if you’re using groups to control access to your pages.

Membership: Inviting New Members

Note that this article describes a service available to Pro & Business customers.

There are two ways someone can become a member of your site:

• By signing up through a registration link on your site.
• By you manually inviting them to become a member.

This article covers how to invite someone to become a member.

You can invite new members using the Add Member button found under Settings > Members.

Enter an Email Address and their Name. Then choose if you’d like to send an email invite that’ll allow them to sign-up. If you don’t send them an email invite, you’ll need to provide them with the sign-up link (we’ll show you where this link can be found at the end of the article).

You can also select pages you’d like them to be able to access or groups you’d like them to be part of before adding them as a member.

Finish up, by clicking Add Member. They’re now officially a Member of your site. But before they can log in, they’ll need to follow the link that was sent them from the email invite. If you didn’t send them an email invite (or they didn’t receive it), you can find the Invite Link next to their name in your Members List.

Membership: Groups

Groups are the easiest way for you manage varying levels of access to different pages / sections of your site.

Create groups by going to Settings > Members and using the Add Group button.

Give your group a name. Something like All Members or Attendees or Probably a Robot or Elves (those last two are only useful if your site is often visited by robots or elves).

If you already have members, you can add them to your group through the Select Members option.

Use the checkboxes to choose individual members or use the Add All Members button to do just that: add all current members of your site to the group.

At any point in this process you can click Add Group to add it to your list of Groups.

You can then edit this group later (possibly to add more members, for one example) by clicking on its name from this same list of Groups.

Membership: Limiting Page Visibility to Members

Please note that this article describes a service available to Pro & Business customers.

Every page on your site has a Visibility setting that defaults to “Public”. This default setting, of course, means that any visitor to your site can see the page.

You can change each page’s visibility so that it is password protected, or so that only certain members or groups can see that page.

You can view and change this setting by selecting the Pages tab, selecting your page in the Pages sidebar, and clicking Visibility.

Changing this setting allows you to limit access to any page so that only registered members (or even just certain registered members) can see it.

Site Password

If you’d just like to password protect this page, select Site Password. Then, go to your Settings tab and scroll down to Site Password, enter the password you’d like to use and click Save. When you next publish your site, your changes will be live.

Select Members

If you set a page to only be accessible to specific Members or Groups, then you’ll need to choose which Members / Groups will be able to view the page.

The Select Members button will display your entire list of members so you can select specific individuals who will be allowed access to the page. This is really only useful if you have a small number of members.

Select Groups

The Select Groups button gives you more control over larger numbers of people by enabling you to provide access to a group (or groups) of members you’ve previously created.

Once you’ve limited visibility in this way (and republished your site), only the members or groups you’ve selected will be able to access the page.

How to Password Protect Your Website

If you’re a Pro or Business customer, you can lock pages with a password.

Under the Settings tab > General > Site Password, you can enter the password you’d like to use to protect your pages, then click Save.

Entering a site password here will automatically lock all the pages on your site. If you only want to password protect certain pages, you can go to the Pages tab and selectively enable or disable the password protection using the visibility menu.

How to Hide Your Site from Search Engines

If you’d like to hide your site from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, you can do so under the Settings tab > SEO, then scroll down below the Header field and select Hide site from search engines. Click Save and Publish your site.

If you want to hide individual pages from search, click the Pages tab, select the page you want to hide, then Advanced, and check the box Hide this page from search engines.

How to Hide a Page from Your Site’s Navigation

If you want a page to be public, but not appear in your navigation menu, click the Pages tab, the individual page, then check the Hide in Navigation box.

How to Un-Publish Your Website

Under Settings, then General, at the bottom of the page we show you the last time you published, as well as giving you the option to Un-Publish your site. When you decide you’re ready for people to view your site again, just click Publish. It’s that simple.