How To Create a Dynamic Web 2.0 Brochure Site in an Hour

http://support.bryght.com/adminguide/how-to/dynamic-web20-brochure-site-in-an-hour

bryght.com > Support HQ > How To Create a Dynamic Web 2.0 Brochure Site in an Hour Posted March 23rd, 2007 by Roland Tanglao Categories: Best Practices
What will you have after an hour? You will have a dynamic, easily updatable, search engine optimised 'Web 2.0' website (including RSS feeds so that you get the automatic high search engine rank that blogs enjoy assuming you create compelling content constantly): An About Page A Contact Us Form A Products (or services page) A simple front page with two paragraphs about your company and contact information plus a sidebar with links on the right which link to headlines from your five latest news articles. A news page with news articles about press releases, events and news. If you keep writing compelling news articles, you will have a high search engine rank.
Note that this is only one common configuration for a Bryght site. Bryght sites are flexible and can be set up in many ways. See Types of Sites for other common configurations. Prerequisites You need your Bryght site to have been created You need a userid and password for an account with admin privileges You need some content for your front page (a 2 paragraph sales and marketing intro with contact info), products page (same again this time with a paragraph for each product or service). You should have this anyway perhaps from your existing static brochureware site or your marketing collateral. You must set your site name and optionally Slogan and Mission (administer»site configuration»site information "Name" and optionally "Slogan" and "Mission" fields »Save configuration). Note that some themes like the Drupal 5 default theme, Garland, don't display the slogan and/or mission. Optionally, if you want to go live and have your site at your url e.g. www.yourdomain.com, you need to point your domain to Bryght servers. This is optional because you can use the temporary site URL until then. Optionally, a jpeg, gif or PNG of your logo
Step 1. Write the Front Page, About and Products (or Services) Page Unless you know HTML, we advise turning on TinyMCE (administer»Site building»modules»Check TinyMCE "Enabled"»Save configuration), the WYSIWYG editor. This will allow you to create bold text, links, etc. without having to know HTML. Create the Front Page We will do this by creating a page (create content»page) but you could do this in other ways e.g. by creating a story. Why a page? It's just a convention to use pages for static content. See How To Create a Page for creating pages in general. Here's some advice specific to the front page: Since you want this story to be on the front page on your site, check "Publishing options»Promoted to front page". For the title, we recommend something that greets your visitors like "Welcome to mydomain.com". Since this is the front page, for the body text you want something short that succinctly describes who you are and hooks in your customers. Probably two or three paragraphs (don't forget to include your contact information, name and main products and services because alot of people won't bother clicking on "About" or "Contact Us") at the most so the page doesn't scroll in most people's web browsers.
Create the About Page This is also done by creating a page. Here's some advice specific to the "About" page: For the title, we recommend something that indicates that this is the about page e.g. "About". Seriously! Since this is the about page, for the body text you probably want something short that describes your organization and team. Probably two or three paragraphs at the most so the page doesn't scroll in most people's web browsers. Set the "URL path settings" to "about" without the quotes so that it will have this friendly URL: http://yourdomain.com/about [1]
Create the Products (or Services) Page The products or services page is just like the About Page (please read the "Create the About Page" above if you skipped it!) except of course: i) you set the title to "Products" or "Services", ii) you put some text about your products or services in the body, and iii) you set the URL path settings to either "products" or "services". Step 2. Create The Contact Us Form This is easy. Just follow How To create a 'Contact Us Form' Step 3. Create the News Page and some news articles Create a vocabulary for the articles on your news pages See How To Use Categories and How to Create a Taxonomy using Vocabularies and Terms (Categories) for general information about vocabularies, terms and taxonomies. Here's some advice specific to the News page: Create a vocabulary (administer»categories»add vocabulary tab) called "News" with "story" checked under "Types:", "Hierarchy:", set to "Disabled", "Multiple select" unchecked and "Required" checked Create terms (administer»categories»add terms) under this "News" Vocabulary as follows: "News", "Media Releases" and "Events"
Configure the Front Page to show the latest stories on the left hand side Create a "latest stories" block view Administer»Views»Add tab Under "Name", enter "recent_stories" Under "Page" Check "Provide Page View Under "URL" enter "news" Under "View Type:" select "Teaser List" Under "Title:" enter "Recent News"
Under "Block" check "Provide Block" Under View Type", select "List View" Under "Title", enter "Recent News" Under "Nodes per Block:", enter "5"
Under "Fields" Under "Add Field" select "Node: Title" and click "Add Field" and leave the default options unchanged
Under "Filters": Under "Add Filter" select "Node: Published" and click "Add Filter" and leave the default options unchanged Under "Add Filter" select "Node: Type" and click "Add Filter" and change "Value" to "Story" by clicking on "Story"
Under "Sort Criteria:" Under "Add criteria" select "Node: Updated Time" and click "Add Criteria" Select "Descending" under "Order" to show the list of News items sorted reverse chronologically by time.
Click "Save" to save your "latest stories" block view
Display the "latest stories block" view Click "Administer"»"Blocks" Next to "recent_stories", select the appropriate region for your theme. For the default Drupal 5 theme, the correct region is "left sidebar" Click "Save blocks"
Write a test Media Release article This is done by creating a story (Create content»story) (don't forget to uncheck "Promoted to front page" so that it doesn't appear on the front page) and selecting "Media Releases" under "News:" and entering a title like 'Acme grows 100%' and text like 'blah blah blah'. Once you have submitted the story, a link to it should appear on the region where you placed the "recent_stories" block which for the default Garland theme is the left hand side of the front page. Step 4. Configure the Primary Navigation Bar to point to Products (or Services), About, Contact Us and News Click Administer»Site building»Menus Under "Primary links", click "Add item" for each of the following Primary Links and then About Page: Enter "About" under "Title", "about" under "Path" and then click "Submit" Products (or Services): Enter "Products" (or "Services depending on which you chose) under "Title", "products" (or "services") under "Path" and then click "Submit" Contact Us: Enter "Contact" under "Title", "contact" under "Path" and then click "Submit" News: Enter "News" under "Title", "news" under "Path" and then click "Submit"

Step 5. OPTIONAL - Add your logo This only applies if your theme has a place for a logo. Some themes (e.g. kubrick) don't have a place for a logo and therefore won't display a logo unless you modify the theme. If you are in doubt, experiment! You can always switch back! Rather then repeat ourselves, all you have to do is follow the directions in How to upload a logo to the Drupal 5 Garland Theme Step 6. Congratulations, Welcome to Web 2.0 and a high Google rank! Well, it's not quite that easy. There's no such as thing as a free lunch! A high search engine rank is not something you get overnight without effort. You have to create compelling content constantly about your keywords, topics and domain and be a newsmaster. As your site is configured currently, the way to do this is to create news articles (Press Releases, Events and News) in the same way you created the test Press Release above. The good news is that your Bryght site is search engine optimised and is a Web 2.0 site out of the box. SEO and Web 2.0 are competitive advantages that together mean that your site will have a higher search engine rank than a non SEO, Web 2.0 site. Yes, that's right, your site has a competitive advantage over all the sites on the web that are non SEO and not Web 2.0 sites; in other words your site has competitive advantage over most sites out there! Therefore, if you make the effort (and really it's not much more effort than answering your email and doing normal Internet marketing) to continually add content to your site, you will have a high search engine rank for your keywords in months (probably sooner). Footnotes [1] where yourdomain.com is the URL of your site e.g. if your site is www.acme.com , the URL to your about page will be http://www.acme.com/about Login or register to post comments

Comments

I am so glad I found this On August 26th, 2009 donnys says: I am so glad I found this article it contains all the information I need to get started with my website. All I have to deal with now is Web content creation, I need to get creative on that. Any tips? Login or register to post comments
Thanks For Sharing The Amazing Knowledge On August 3rd, 2009 Desouza says: Thank you very much for this useful information.
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Sam desouza Login or register to post comments