Before you begin editing your website, let us first go over the basic layout of a website.  A website will generally have the following components: Buttons, Sections, Pages, Content Areas, Headers and Footers.

The layout we'll be working with is shown on the right.  This is how WE have layed it out, however, you can lay your's out differently, for example, putting buttons on the right, putting the sections on the left or not having a header or footer at all, but in general every website will have the components we are showing in the image on the right, they might be in those locations or they may be different.

Ok, now that we're all on the same page, let's get to it.

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Let's start with the navigation of your site.  Basic website navigation can be broken down into three parts: Buttons, Sections and Pages.

Buttons show up in your Main Menu, is the top level of your navigation and generally breaks your website up into it's major components.  At this level, one button will generally not have anything to do with another button, except that it is about you or your organization.  On a basic site these will be: Home, Services, News, About Us and Contact Us.  This is a good brochure site layout and one with which you should probably start.  View our page on Buttons for more information on how to create and modify them.

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Sections show up in your Sub Menu, is where you give a set of pages an identity and further categorize your content.  You can have many types of sections within your website: Content, Articles, Blogs, Photo Albums, etc....  The most basic section of a website is a Content section.  In fact many websites are made up entirely of Content sections.  Content sections allow you to create a basic web page with text, images, video etc.  Your looking at a Content section page right now.  We'll go into the details of a Content section and the other sections later, here we'll talk about how sections work in general.

When you create a section you specify what type of pages you want in that section.  All pages within a section are of the same type.  For example, if you create a Photo Album section, you can have multiple pages, and each page will be a new Photo Album.  If you create a Content section (like the one you looking at right now), each page will be a content page.  View our page on Sections for more information on what kind of sections are available and how to create modify and secure them.

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Pages are where your content actually goes.  Everything up until now went towards organizing your content to make it easy for your visitors to find and what they found is a Page.  On every type of page you are able to add content into the "Editable Content Area" with an editor right inside of your browser.  An example of this editor can be seen in the image on the left.

If the section in which you are editing is a "Content" section, the entire page is available for the content you add.  If it is any other type of section: Photo Album, Calendar, etc.. the content you add will go on top of the page and then the Photo Album or Calendar, etc... will go below your added content.

There are other type of pages as well, such as Blogs, Articles, etc... more information about those and all other types of sections can be found on the Sections page.

All pages can have their own Icon, Title and the ability for guests of your site to add comments.  View our Pages page for details about this and how to create and modify them.

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You now have all of the information you need to begin organizing your site.  Details on how to create and edit the components mentioned here can be found on their corresponding pages.

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But before we go, there are two special kinds of sections: Headers and Footers.

To add a header or footer, go to your home page for example and add a new section (go to our Sections page to see how to do this).  When creating the section, change the type to either Header or Footer.  Once you do that, instead of the section you just added showing up in the Sub Menu just like all of the other sections, they will show up as additional content on the top (header) or bottom (footer) of your page.

Headers and footers generally show on every page.  The header generally has your site's logo and a one line description or welcome statement.  The footer generally has your, or your company's contact information: Name, Address, Phone and such.

If you decide to put a main contact email address here, BE CAREFUL!  There are a lot of bad guys on the web, and they send out "Bots" or programs that look at your website and collect anything that looks like an email address and sell it to SPAMMERS.  One trick that I use is to place a space before and after the at (@) symbol.  I can't guarantee that this will work, but it has worked for me so far.

By placing the Header and Footer on the Home Page (the first page / button of your site), they will "Flow" down to every other page in your site.  You can override this behavior by adding a unique header or footer on a page other than your home page.  Each page from that page and below will have the new Header and/or Footer.  It's generally not good practice to change your Header or Footer part way through your site as it can easily confuse your visitors with the lack of continuity.

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Now go forth and populate your website!