Tutorial: Create Your Home Page

So what is a home page? The home page is the first page you are going to create for your website, and is also the page your site will open up to. Your homepage is like the "welcome mat" to the rest of your site.

When you create your home page, keep in mind it should catch the attention of your visitors, and give them a good idea about the rest of the content on your site, and a clear way to navigate to this content. Beware of having too much information or general "clutter" on your homepage. The idea is to get your visitors to dig deeper into your site by navigating through the different pages you will be adding.

Once you have successfully created your free Yola account and verified your e-mail address you only need to log in by entering your email address and password as shown below.

That's it! You are now ready to create your first website!

When you create your account you will be taken through the steps of creating your first website. You can create up to 5 sites in your Yola Free account. We know you are going to want to create lots of great sites, but let's take it easy for now and just get started on one!

In the Create New Site dialog box you will be prompted to:

1) Give your site a name and choose a website address

The name of your site is the title of your website. It should be clear and simple, and be a good description of your site.

Next you'll be able to choose your website's address. You can choose the website address you would like to have, for example a free subdomain (www.example.yolasite.com) or purchase your own domain (www.example.com).  If you would like to skip this option and publish your site later, click on the third option. By the way, we have a tutorial that explains how to publish your site on this link: Publishing Your Site.

2) Select Your Style

There are a wide variety of styles to choose from. Scroll down the page to view all of the styles available on Yola.  If you hover over a particular style, a larger image of the style will pop up. Remember: It is easy to change your style, so don't worry if you aren't quite sure which one to use. You can always change your mind later on by clicking on the "Change Style" button.

We have a super-handy style guide available: Yola Style Guide.

3) Go Site Building!

Immediately after choosing whether to publish your site or not, you will be taken to the first page of your website.

You have just created your first website! Now you can start creating your home page by adding content. There is a content sidebar located on the right-hand side of your screen. This is where you will find all the tools to add content to your site:

4) Style Layout Options

After you have selected your style you now have the option of one of 9 layouts. Click on the "Change Layout" button to view the options.

You can start with a blank page, or use a preset layout with drop zones to give you greater control over your content.

Drag and drop widgets vertically OR horizontally to easily achieve the best look and feel. You can use the same layout for your whole site, or a different one on each page.

You can also change the banner image and background color and picture on a lot of the styles. For more information, view this tutorial: Personalize your Style.

5) Adding Text

Drag and drop the text widget onto your page.

Click inside the Text widget that you have just added to your page to start adding text. Just type in a few short paragraphs or, if you like, copy and paste some text you would like to add to your page. You will notice that a Text editing toolbar opens up at the top of your page. It looks very similar to the Text toolbar on other software you might have used.

Let's use the Text Editing toolbar to change the formatting of some of our copy. Try doing any or all of the following:

• Make some text bold, and underline or italicize it
• Cross out (strike-through) a few words of your text
• Change the font style
• Type in a heading at the top of your text and change the font format to "Heading 1"
• Change the color of some of the text, or add background color for your text
• Change the alignment of your text Make a mistake? Just use the green left arrow icon on the Text toolbar to undo. Deleted something by accident? Use the green right arrow icon to redo.

Here are a few more things you might want to try, if you are feeling really energetic:

• Create a bulleted list
• Indent some text
• Center or left align it
• Add a link to another website
• Add an image

Well done! You are now an expert at text editing in Yola! Remember these options when you add more text.

Remember to save your page frequently to avoid losing your hard work. Yola will prompt you to save at key moments, but you should save after every significant change.  If you Update your site, it will automatically prompt you to save your site.