Weebly is a drag and drop website builder. It can be used for e-commerce, building a business website or blogging.
I’ll look at Weebly for building web pages, it’s editor and support for SEO.
Table of Contents
- SEO and Weebly
- Weebly Hosting
- Weebly Editor
- DNS Configuration for Weebly
- Weebly Apps
- Weebly Forum and Support
- Weebly Terms of Service
- Weebly Prices
- Weebly Alternatives
SEO and Weebly
Weebly supports SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by providing settings you can use to help you with your SEO.
For each individual blog post you can set the SEO Post Title and SEO Post Description. You can find these settings in the ADVANCED section of the Blog Editor.
On the Settings page for your site you can set more SEO settings:
From the SEO setting page you can set the Site Description and Meta Keywords for your site. Meta keywords description isn’t really useful for SEO anymore, Google stopped using that along time ago.
Footer Code, as the page suggests, is useful for dropping in your Google Analytics code, if you want to use that for tracking visitors to your site. You can of course use other tracking code or any other code you want here.
The page also lets you define redirects on your site, in case you change the URL of one of your pages.
Weebly Hosting
Weebly hosts the website for you. You don’t need to worry about finding a web server to run your website on.
“Experience exceptional site speed and reliability with Weebly’s free website hosting service. The data center redundant, cloud based hosting infrastructure ensures optimal performance and provides a fluid online experience for visitors to your Weebly site.”
— Source: Weebly
Focus on your business not the technical stuff
Weebly’s free hosting system means you don’t need to concern yourself about technical details, like servers, IP addresses and DNS configuration.
It’s all taken care for you so you focus on the business side of your website.
Also, importantly, Weebly does not inject ads into your site.
Weebly Editor
The Weebly blog editor is shown on the left hand side of the page.
It consists of a number of buttons you can drag and drop onto the page.
You have all the elements you need for a typical blog page:
- Title
- Text (add each time you want a new text section)
- Image for a single image
- Gallery for multiple images
- and more…
Creating a Weebly Blog Post
Creating a blog post by clicking the “New Post” button on the bottom right hand area of the editor page.
Give the blog post a title and then drag and drop elements to the page.
Add text, images, even video to your blog post until it is finished.
Finally, click on the “POST” button in the top menu. It’s highlighted in orange.
You now have a new blog post published on your site!
Flash element
Flash is outdated and shouldn’t be used on a website. Some browsers don’t support Flash anymore so don’t use this element.
Weebly Custom HTML
The Weebly Blog Editor has an element called “Embed Code” (you may need to click on “Show All Elements” before you can see it). Drag this element onto the page to add Custom HTML.
Click the “Edit Custom HTML” button and write your custom html. You can, for instance, use this element to embed a YouTube video on your blog post.
Weebly Fonts
Weebly lets you set the font to use on many different parts of your website including:
- Site Title
- Navigation Menu
- Headline
- Sub-Headline
- Paragraph Titles and Text
- Links, Buttons, Blog Post Titles
- Image captions and Gallery captions
Change Font Element
From the Change Font element you can select from a large number of fonts.
You have to be careful about using different fonts for many parts of your page.
Don’t use too many fonts
Each font will need to be loaded so using too many could slow down your site which will cause a bad user experience and is bad for SEO.
Weebly Undo Changes
The Weebly editor doesn’t contain discrete buttons for undo/redo.
A common question from people using Weebly for the first time is “How do I undo my changes?”.
The answer is to use your standard operating system shortcuts to undo/redo changes.
As a reminder:
- Windows: CTRL and z keys will perform an undo, for redo press both the CTRL and y keys
- Mac OS: use the Command key instead of the CTRL key
Here is a Weebly community article on this topic:
DNS Configuration for Weebly
Before you can publish your website you need to select a domain name. You have several options.
- Free option – use a subdomain, e.g. mywebsite.weebly.com
- Search for and register a new domain name
- Transfer an existing name you have already registered (see buy a domain name for how to do this)
When you try to publish for the first time Weebly will show this screen below:
This can be confusing at first, as least it was for me. Weebly really wants you to use a custom domain, which requires you to use a paid plan. At first I wanted to use the free hosting so I did not select this option.
For the free option you want the Set up your domain screen shown above. From here expand the “Use a Weebly subdomain” section and type a subdomain, in this example it is “myfirstblog”.
I had trouble with this dialog, I kept pressing Change and nothing happended. Not sure why, anyway I did eventually get it to accept a subdomain.
I added lots of numbers after the name to get it to accept the subdomain. It was just for testing so it’s okay. For a real business you will want to purchase a custom domain name.
Weebly Domain Search
You can search for an available domain directly from Weebly. Select and purchase the custom domain directly from Weebly. It’s the simplest way to get your a working website without knowing any technical details.
Buy Domain for Weebly
Weebly makes it easy to buy a custom domain for your website. No extra setup is required with this option so for non-technical people it’s the best option.
Your website will be visible on the new domain within minutes of you publishing your site.
Weebly Apps
You can select from a wide range of apps to install into your Weebly site.
Some are free and some you have to pay for.
Use Apps to boost traffic to your site, increase sale, integrate with social media etc.
Nearly all of the features you want can be added with Weebly Apps, plus you can always embed content from other websites using the Custom HTML element in the editor.
Weebly Forum and Support
Support
The Weebly Support area of the website has many helpful articles on using Weebly.
Here is the link: https://www.weebly.com/app/help/us/en
In addition this area contains links to the Weebly Blog, Inspiration center and Community Forum.
Community Forum
If you are having problems with Weebly one of the best places you can go is to the Weebly Community Forums.
It’s very likely other people have had the same problem and the answer is already available.
Check it out here:
Weebly Terms of Service
You need to read the Terms of Service directly but a quick summary of stuff you are NOT allowed to use your site for:
- No adult content
- No copyrighted content
- Careful with your speech – don’t offend people
- No spam, scams, phishing or illegal content
- Don’t go crazy with ads – max 3 per page
- Illegal/Inappropriate catch-all clause
Again, you should read the ToS yourself to exactly what you can and can’t do. Here is the link to Weebly’s Terms of Service: https://www.weebly.com/sg/terms-of-service
Weebly Prices
To use a custom domain you need to use a paid plan from Weebly. Here is the price table from the Weebly website (Correct August 2022):
You only need to use a paid plan for your own custom domain, using a subdomain, e.g. <mywebsite>.weebly.com is free.
Still, for $5 – the price of a coffee you can have your own website. It’s hard to beat that price.
Weebly Alternatives
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular software for websites and blogging. So why not use WordPress? There are some advantages and disadvantages to using WordPress.
Advantages of Weebly compared to WordPress
- Weebly is easier to use than WordPress
- Get your blog or store published quickly
- No technical knowledge required
- Less expensive than WordPress
Disadvantages of Weebly compared to WordPress
- Software is open-source, this means you can hire software developers to customise your website
- Thousands of free and Premium themes for WordPress
- Ten of thousands of plugins including some high quality plugins like All in One SEO and others
- Many hosting providers are available for hosting your WordPress site, easy to transfer to other providers
Here is an article on setting up a WordPress website. It gives you an idea of what you need to do to get started with WordPress.
Wix
It’s a great platform to create a drag and drop website.
There are a few issues with Wix however.
Once you have selected a template for your site you can’t change it. WordPress by contrast allows you to easily change your theme without losing any content or features.
For advanced features you will need to buy third-party apps. This is similar to WordPress plugins, some of which are free with a few basic features but you need to pay for premium features.
Final Thoughts
There is no doubt that setting up a Weebly website is fast and affordable.
The question is does it do all you need? You are limited in how much your can modify your website in both look-and-feel and features.
If you are non-technical and want a business website, blog or store published quickly then Weebly could be a good option for you.
- Design and build website visually
- Paid plans as low as $5 per month including custom domain
- Good for blogs and stores