Among the various sites that allow you to create websites for free, quickly, immediately and easily, there is a platform that aims to be one of the best in the world. Compared to similar services, Jimdo free has the advantage of providing an online editor to open the site and manage the web pages, in Italian and, therefore, absolutely understandable for anyone.
Jimdo is very easy to use and full of features so it deserves a little getting started guide for those who want to start their own internet business.
The important thing is to check the possibilities and potential of this type of online application that make anyone open sites with guided and automatic procedures.
Let's see here how to open the site with Jimdo, how to customize and modify it and to what extent you can use this service for free.
The creation of your personal web page is immediate : just open it.Jimdo.com, enter the internet address of the new site (using a word that has not already been used by others) and an email address.
The site is immediately opened and is accessible at the internet address which will be of the pomhey.jimdo.com type.
After receiving the password via Email, you can click on the link at the bottom right " Access " to enter the control panel and edit the contents.
You can immediately notice a feature that some may consider unpleasant: the newly created site contains advertising that can only be removed if you pay .
Jimdo however provides a very intuitive interface to use which, also thanks to Italian, cannot be misunderstood.
In the left part there is the navigation menu which contains the links to the pages inside the site.
Here you can create a tree by inserting links to the other pages of the site.
As you will see, some pages have already been created: in addition to the homepage, there are the " Who we are " and " contact ".
Among these there is also the " E-Shop " section which allows you to create an Ecommerce portal for the sale of products in the online store .
This is a very interesting free feature that balances the presence of advertising.
All pages are editable by clicking on the various sections in the center of the page, which can also be moved with the mouse.
If you put the mouse on the top, you will see the link to customize the header of the site .
You can choose an image, you can decide the size and height of the header and you can choose the title of the page.
However, you cannot insert a personal logo because this function is only available for a fee.
On the right side of the editor there are some buttons:
- Change layout is used to customize the site's graphics by choosing one of the themes made available by Jimdo in a free version.
In the settings you can choose how to arrange the text (if centered, right or left) and the distance between the edges.
By clicking on " Own Layout " you can edit the website code, CSS, HTML and uploading new images or data scripts.
Each change is applied immediately and the visual result can be looked at immediately.
- Style allows you to choose the font styles, the text colors, the fonts for each type of section, the background motif and the background image which can also be a personal one.
- Blog allows you to introduce the blog functionality on the website.
In a nutshell, a blog is made up of web pages that allow you to post comments to other users while the site is normally made up of static pages on which visitors cannot intervene.
Generally a blog is added if you plan to update the site frequently.
If you activate the blog function you can write new articles that will be visible, in chronological order, on the homepage.
To write articles there is a text editor very similar to Word, on which you can insert images and whatever you want.
- Settings is the site configuration menu in all its forms.
There are many settings to manage, among which the most important ones are related to the site: title, description and tag of the website to optimize it on search engines; Google Analytics code to know the statistics; changing alt attributes for images.
From the settings you can also add code to edit the head section in the HTML, you can change your profile, you can choose the name of the blog (if it has been activated) and there are also different settings related to the Shop functionality, in case you want to create an online store.
If with some services it is possible to make a site yourself, professional or personal, free, with Jimdo, despite the absolute simplicity of each operation, there is much more to work on .
This certainly allows greater customization and the addition of different features that other similar applications do not have (such as the possibility of making an online store ).
Jimdo therefore becomes a possibility to create really important and professional websites if it were not for free, there are some annoying limits .
As seen above, with Jimdo free you cannot remove the advertising, you cannot insert a logo at the top and then there is a web space of only 500 MB.
This means that if a lot of images were loaded, the space would run out soon.
As you can read from the offer, Jimdo Pro costs 5 Euros per month (not a little) and allows you to increase space, remove advertising, insert a logo, modify meta tags, add products to the online store, add payment methods, and to buy a personal domain.
Jimdo Business costs 15 Euros per month and provides more management tools and more flexibility.
In conclusion I could say that, as a platform to create a free website for non-professional purposes and to create a personal page, Jimdo is a very valid alternative, full of features and customizations easy to implement for anyone, even for those who just don't know what both make a website.
Since we often cross websites made with Jimdo we must also highlight a good optimization to appear on search engines like Google.
As far as the Pro and business plans are concerned, I would say that Jimdo could be a good product, especially because it takes care of the management of the domains and the space that could become a nuisance if you do not have experience.
Those who already know how to move with domains, hosting, databases and, above all, with CMS such as Joomla or Wordpress, will absolutely not need Jimdo.
It is not a trivial fact that Jimdo presents a very rich Italian section, where you can read many detailed guides and where you can see examples of sites created thanks to them.
Next episode: Weebly
