How To Build Your Free Web Presence

This post is related to my previous post on "More Than a Storage, You Can Turn Your Cloud Storage Into ECommerce Platform". Here I will give a concrete example of how to have a free web presence (that is if you opt not to hire the services of a web developer or designer). Otherwise you will have to settle for the very inexpensive option.

First thing to do is open a free Dropbox account. If you already have one which I would presume is positive, then check your storage capacity. Though your web capacity does not require so much amount of space, I suggest you leave at least 250 MB reserved for this purpose.

Next step is register you dropbox account with Site44. Register with your Dropbox account. Then give your consent for Site44 for access to your Dropbox file. Do not worry as Site44 will only create a folder named site44 and this is the only folder Site44 will have access to.

Once the folder site44 is created in your dropbox files, go back to Site44 and give your web site its name. If you do not want to pay for a domain name, then you have to settle for a website address as yourwebsitename.site44.com.

Now your web site infrastructure is established. You now have a domain host (Site44) and a web server (Dropbox). For a web site that is meant only for display these are all what you need. Now let's build your web site.

Remember you prefer to work on your own and there is no web developer nor designer working for you. So how do you do it?

There are thousands of free templates  available in the internet provided by very nice people who only want their name or company retained in the code. I think that is a fair deal. Select a free web template (a sample site that offers free templates can be found here) from hundreds of templates that suits your taste. Download your selected template to your computer not yet on your Dropbox folder. Since your Dropbox folder is synchronizing what ever you save there.

After you have made your selection comes the tricky part - modifying the template for your own web site. You are not a web developer nor a web designer, again you ask the question how do I do it? Simple. These templates include instructions or notes on what items have to be edited for your own purpose. So it is really easy to modify them. There is no need to modify everything.

Ok, let's see how you could modify these templates for your own use. For this you will need a tool web developers use. I recommend Kompozer. This is a free developer tool. With this tool you have a choice how to edit your web site code - in developers view or graphic view. In graphic view you can see how your web site will look like and you can perform your editing here. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIG) in our developer language. Yes, instantly you see what your web site will look like while you are editing the template.

After finishing your editing and you are already satisfied with what you have done, copy the entire folder where you have saved your template to your Dropbox folder created by Site44. After Dropbox finished uploading your finished template, it will synchronize with Site44.

You now have a website of your own without spending a single cent.

If you are still having a problem on how to do this, just send me an email and let us talk how I can help you, or contact my company, EC Mobile Solutions. We offer this kind of services for the small business. Please click on this link for more information.

On my next post, we will tackle how you can turn your website into an inexpensive ecommerce web site. So you will not only have a web site that is a marketing tool but a sales tool as well.

More Than a Storage, You Can Turn Your Cloud Storage Into ECommerce Platform

By now, most of us have one or more preferred cloud storage - Dropbox, Box.Net, Google Drive, SkyDrive. We know how it is used: primarily for storing our files into the cloud so we can access them from anywhere or from any device. Another most common use is as a sort of a backup storage in case of a computer crash.

But what you may not know is that your cloud storage can be used into any e-commerce or m-commerce (mobile commerce) platform. There are quite a number of tools or apps that you can use to maximize your use of your cloud storage, whatever it may be.

I will cite just a few and limit to what I have tried, some are free and some requires a monthly fee. Even if you are charged for a fee, I can assure you that you will get your money's worth for its very functionality:

1. Document signing function.
There are a number of apps offered to let you have a e-signature for documents - Adobe EchoSign, DocuSign and my favorite HelloSign. The HelloSign is more to my taste as it is very simple to use, no limit and most of all it can be integrated with your Gmail account, what more can you ask? So if there's a document or a contract to be signed, store it to any of your storage cloud and let HelloSign do the rest.

2. Sales Ordering Function
Handshake is an app that can be installed in your Box storage so you can use your Box folder as repository of all your sales record done via Handshake. Handshake serves as your product presentation platform, Sales Ordering platform where you can fill up sales orders and your office can instantly pick up that sales order and prepare the delivery to your customer in a jiffy. Isn't that efficiency?

3. Web site function
Need a web site? Then turn a folder in your Dropbox into a web site. Site44 is an app that can be integrated with your Dropbox account. The drawback is you have to have knowledge of HTML programming code so you can have a real fantastic web site of your own. Actually HTML programming is not that hard to learn. There is a ton of templates you can use for website you have created.

4. Other useful tools you can use. The Practical E-Commerce has other apps which can turn your cloud storage into powerful platforms for e or m commerce. Visit their web site here.

As you can see, there are a lot of things you can do with your cloud storage. Maximize them and you can profit from them.