GoDaddy Website Tonight - Answers, Tips, “How to Article”

I get a tremendous amount of traffic from people researching GoDaddy’s Website Tonight. Some are looking for reviews, but most are looking for ways to customize or change something on their site. So I went through my stats and copied about 100 questions. Many are the same and I am going to try and answer them all for you in this post. Wish me luck

Properties Page

If you are on a page you are designing look up to your Website Tonight toolbar. You will see a drop down area that lets you choose which page you want to work on. Right next to that you will see “Show Properties”. Click on that.

“Adding meta tags to Website tonight”— “Changing Title tags in Website Tonight”

You have access to the title-tag (browser title in this program), description and keywords in your properties section. All the meta tag areas are listed with boxes where you can customize your meta tags for each page. There is also a place for custom meta tags.

“How can I change the URL?”

In your properties page you will see an area called “Filename”. You can change your url structure there. Remember to use dashed instead of underscores as the program automactically does.

“What is Heading Title in the Properties Page?”

On each Website Tonight template there is a section on each page that replicated whatever you named the page. If you delete the text in the Heading Title on the properties page the program won’t autogenerate text for that section.

“How do I customize my XML sitemap?”

At the bottom of your properties page you will see “Sitemap Details”. Here you can choose frequency and priority for each page. OR if you exit the designer you can click on “manage” (top green bar) and then click on “google sitemap” here you will see every page of you site and can choose the frequency and priority.

“How do I add Google Analytics to Website Tonight?”

Go to your footer and then go up to “insert” and click on Script. This will open up a box, enter your Google Analytics code here and click “OK”. For whatever reason if I use the editor it right justify the script box it places the code where Google wants it.

XML Sitemap

You don’t have to create one, the program automatically creates one and updates the sitemap as you add or delete pages. You can choose your frequency and priority in the properties page of each site OR if you exit the designer you can click on “manage” (top green bar) and then click on “google sitemap” here you will see every page of you site and can choose the frequency and priority.

Organizing Your Site and Navigation Structure

If you are out of the design section you can click on “manage” and then “organize site”. When that page opens you will see all the pages of your site. You can drag and drop pages to create subpages and it is here that you can tell the program which pages to publish and which not to publish. You can organize your main navigation here, but there is an easier way to do that…

Modifying Navigation Order and “Why is the navigation not the same for every page?”

Go to your home page. If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and there you will see “Edit Navigation”. Here you can use the up and down arrows to move pages. If it is at the bottom and you want it near the top and you have 15 pages it is quicker to delete it and then go back to the top and reinsert the page/button.

You have 5 options for each navigation button:

• Email- add an email address here
• Forum- in case you paid for a forum for your site
• Page - Which ever page you want it to go to
• Upload- you can link to a PDF, Word file etc
• URL- You can link out of your site.

OK, AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BOX you will see two options:

1. Copy Menu buttons across all pages
2. Add or delete menu buttons when adding or deleting pages

Think about these carefully! If you are creating a new site you just want to get your main navigation in place for those page then use the the “copy menu” option. If you are creating a new page that is going to end up being a subpage of another uncheck “add or delete menu…”. When you use the organize site option subpages never end up being an issue, but it is up to you if you want to check or uncheck this box.

“How do I Change the Header Pic in Website Tonight?”

You can be in any page for this, but you must be in the design section. If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and then click on “edit template images”. Here you will be able to see all the template images and change them. Website Tonight does have an image library you can use.

“How Do I Add a Page in Website Tonight?”, “How do I delete a page?”

You have two options. You can go to “organize site” and add a page or if you are within the designer If you look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. You want to be on “Page” and then you can see “Add Page”. Click on it, name it, choose a page layout and click ok and you are done. You can delete pages in the organize site section.

“Can I insert flash?”

Yes, choose the page you want to add flash to look up to the toolbar you will see some pages that say “Page”, “Insert” and Options”. Click on “insert”. Here you can insert, Flash, scripts, RSS feeds, images, forms, tables, date, calender, video and music.

“Do I have to pay monthly?”

No, actually you pay for the year in advance. You can pay for up to three years. Use a coupon code

“How do I Crop and Resize a photo?”

Well, you cannot crop. You can resize a photo in that it looks smaller than it did, but if you have a 1 MB photo it is still going to be 1 MB. Resize your photos offline with a photo editing program and if possible save for the Web so the page will load faster.

“How do I wrap text around a picture?”

Once you have a photo inserted click on it. A box will pop up and give you several options:

• You can define width and height
• You can add a border and determine its width
• Choose a border color
• Add padding veritcally and horizontally
• Wrap text to the left, right or on either side of the photo
• You can rotate and flip images and also change the hue, saturation, contrast, brightness etc.
• You can add text to the photo
• Alt text

“How do I add Alt tags?”

See the question above. There is an “alt text” option within the image properties menu.

“How do I add an Internal Link?”

Highlight your text and then go up to your tool bar. There is a small grey vertical box with an arrow. Hover over it and it a box with options will pop out. You will see the “create link” icon; click on that.

You have options

• E-mail
• URL
• Page
• Upload
• Anchor

“Open in new window” is an option with a check box.

Preview- “What does it do”, “it doesn’t work”

Preview allows you to look at the site and play with all the links before you publish it for the first time or it can let you see changes before you publish. It is a nice feature that allows you to double check. Sometimes a pop-up blocker will stop the preview from working.

“How do I use Backup/Restore?”

If you mess something up you just go to the “manage” button outside of the designer, click on “Backup/Restore” and then choose the date of the last save.

“How do I use the Built in Google Webmaster Tools?”

Once you launch your site exit the designer and then look at the bottom of the page. Click on Google Webmaster Tools and click “accept” to create a new account. Here you can automatically verify your site and submit your sitemap.

“What about a 404 Error Page?”

Go to your hosting settings at the bottom of the page. Click settings and “404 error behavior”. You have 3 options to choose from:

1. Make my 404 Page my Home Page
2. Use Custom 404 Error Page: (i.e. YourPage.html)
3. Use GoDaddy.com, Inc.’s Default 404 Error Page

“How do I change the font in the navigation?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “advanced style options”. Here you will see the coding of the site. You can copy the area you want to change and then paste it in the box below. Change whatever you want and check “Apply” and then click “OK”.

“How Do I Change the Background Color?, Text Color?, Navigation Color? Link Color?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “advanced color options”. You can change any of the following:

• Body Background:
• Header Title Text:
• Sub-header Title Text:
• Page Title Text:
• Footer Text:
• Hyperlinks Text:
• Hyperlinks Mouse-over Text:
• Hyperlinks Visited Text:
• Navigation Text:
• Navigation Mouse-over Text:
• Navigation Visited Text

You can add color codes, click a color or choose an RGB.

“I chose a template and now I hate it. How can I change it?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “template and color”. Choose any template or color option and the site will change and typically the text remains, but copy it just in case.

“I want a login page for clients”

You can have password protected page, but the page can only have one password. You can also tell Google ignore the page.

“Where do I upload files?”

You want to be at the page that shows up first when you login in to Website Tonight. In the green navigation click on “Manage” and then “Upload Files and Images”. You can upload here, but you can also upload images when you click “insert image” within the site designer.

“examples of Website Tonight”

• SarasotaHomes4Sale.com
• SarasotaFloridaRealEstate.co.uk
• AlertProtectiveServices.com
• Pacific Rim Restaurant- redesign coming soon
• Bangkok Restaurant Sarasota - not completed
• Sarasota Printing- 301 Kwikie
• SRQ Web Design - Sarasota

Please feel free to ask questions and I will try to answer them as soon as possible. If you have Godaddy Coupon codes please comment with a link to your site.

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Obtaining An Extremely Professional Web Site and Save Thousands

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