Serasi

Yola, formerly Synthasite, is a free website building application that lets you build a online presence without software. Yola also provides free hosting. Today I’d like to show you how to build your first website in minutes using Yola.

1. Choosing a Template
There are plenty of options even Wordpress-like templates. When choosing a template be sure to choose one you can customize the header.

2. Customizing the Template
Customizing your website is easy. You can create a header simply by following the dimension describe on the template and upload it in minutes. The site will allow you upload image files up to 20mb.

3. Blog or Website?
You can build a Blog or Website with ease using Yola. I admit websites are labor intensive. I prefer building blogs, because they are easy to get indexed with search engines. To start building your first page drag and drop a text widget and began adding your content. You can also add videos, and pictures in the same fashion.

4. Add widgets
Yola has the most widgets I’ve seen on a free website builder. Add a Google Adsense widgets and start earning money. Add comment widgets to create a dialog with your visitors. Use Spring widgets to stream your latest YouTube Video. I love using widgets. They create a website that is continually changing and interacting with your audience.
Add an html widget to add banners to your website page. I use this widget to place Google Analytics on my website. I recommend Google Analytics to anyone who has a website. It will allow you to track the number of visitors and where they came from. Every website should use it.

5. Get a domain
Once you’re done, the next thing to do is grab a domain name. You can choose a sub-domain for free or purchasing a domain for a small fee.

6. Publish Your Website
Once your website is complete, you can publish it with a click of a button. While Yola is one great alternative to Paid hosting,, there are many other ways to create an online presence. My advice is to research other providers and compare features.

Weebly and Synthasite, which recently changed its name to Yola, are among the leaders of free website building applications. These websites together have over 300,000 active users. Many of these users have found the ability to create free websites drag and drop without html knowledge a huge value. While Weebly and Synthasite (Yola) offer the same templates and drag and drop style web building feature, there are some big differences.

Weebly’s templates and headers are a bit oversize, however Weebly has an advance editing feature which lets you customize every aspect of your free website. I recommend this feature for the computer savvy only. Synthasite on the other hand has a good number of templates and great variety of colors to start with.

Both Website building applications were easy to navigate and use. I found Synthasite troublesome when attempting to copy and paste an article from Microsoft Word. Weebly’s also had a major flaw; the ability to build a blog only.

With an endless number of widgets, Sythasite, or Yola, provided the most features to build an interactive websites. Widgets allow you to add features seen on popular Wordpress or Joomla websites. Both Synthasite and Weebly provide numerous widgets for guestbooks, forms, forums, text, videos, pictures and more. The websites also provide widgets to easily monetize your website. Google AdSense and Affiliate links are easily installed drag and drop.

Google Page Rank (PR7) is another great advantage of Weebly. This can easily get your website indexed in search engines, however both sites are SEO Friendly.

Domains are available for $19.95 a year ; however sub-domains are offered at no charge. Both website allow you to use a pre-purchased domains. This is an excellent feature which allows you to point a domain at your free website.

In closing, there are several others websites that offer free website building applications. My advice is research before you began building your website and choose a service.