1- Choose and purchase a domain name for your website. You do not need a a hosting package or anything else - just a domain name. The website where you purchase your domain name will be needed later.
2- Register with Jamroll this is a free hosting site where you can display your website.
3- You will now need to log back into the website where you purchased your domain name in step 1, go to the domain settings area and it should have a section for managing domain name servers. Sounds technical but all you have to do is type in ns1.jamroll.net and ns2.jamroll.net - this will point your website (domain) name to the free space that you now have with jamroll.
4- Once all this has happened (it can take time for them to process these changes so don't worry if nothing seems to be happening) you can log into Jamroll and start to create your website. Once you sign in you will arrive at the control panel - this can also be accessed by typing your website name ie- www.berisfieldhotel.co.uk followed by /cpanel later you can also access your email by typing your website address followed by /webmail
5- The first thing you need to do when you arrive at the cpanel is to set up the email address that you would like to use. As an example we created [email protected] and yours can be whatever you want followed by your website name. Firstly, click on MAIL then click on MANAGE/ADD/REMOVE ACCOUNTS at the bottom it says 'add account' - click this and create whatever email account and password you would like. You can have one or several accounts - one is easier to manage.
6- When you come to check your emails you have a choice of 3 programmes, we use Squirrel mail as it seems reliable and simple. You can check any accounts by going through the same process as above but clicking on READ WEBMAIL next to the email address.
7- Now that you have set up your email address you need to start creating your website. The easiest way to do this is to use a ready made template - if you are more advanced then you can use other ways but this is the easiest way. In CPANEL again click on FANTASTICO - here you will find loads of free tools that you can use within your website. Under the heading site builder click on TEMPLATES EXPRESS click NEW INSTALLATION then click VIEW ALL at the bottom - this will show you 60 templates to choose from. You may be lucky and find one perfectly suited to your website needs, but if not choose one that you like the style of and you can adapt it very easily later on. If you hate it, you can change it - it's not a major problem.
Click on the one you like and install it. You don't have to specify a directory, but fill in any other information that you want. Then that's it for now.
8- Go to CPANEL click on FILE MANAGER a new window will appear. You need to get used to file manager because this is where you will make your website. Click on the yellow folder next to public_html - this is where all your pages will be held! Depending on which template you chose you will have various page names. The main page is called index.html - click on this and in the right hand window you will have various options. Click on HTML EDITOR this will open up the editing page - basically you can do whatever you want here to make your webpage, it's very self explanitary, it's wysiwyg - just make sure you save any changes you want to keep and check that links work afterwards.
REMEMBER - if you make a total cock up you can always go back to fantastico in Step 7 and remove the programme then reinstall again - it's not a disaster!
9- Uploading pictures to put onto your website. Firstly you have to make sure that the pictures are on your computer. You can use websites such as cooltext to do simple logos and most pictures for links are right clickable - just save them to your pc. To upload ready for the website, it's really simple. Go to CPANEL, click FILE MANAGER then PUBLIC_HTML(folder) near the top of the list there will be a folder called images. This is the easiest place to upload all of your pictures. Click on IMAGES (the yellow folder) then click on UPLOAD FILES this will bring up the option to browse your computer for the images you wish to upload - you can upload 12 at a time and it shouldn't take too long. Once they are uploaded you will be able to use them on your site using the insert image button (then clicking on the images folder) when you are editing the pages.