If you are having trouble getting started with your Website Tonight site, you should first take advantage of GoDaddy's own Website Tonight Tutorials (link below) and live support staff (phone number below). If you are already working on your site but you come across something you need help with, you can still turn to GoDaddy's live support staff but you can also look for answers to specific questions on either GoDaddy's FAQs Page (link below) or right here on our own FAQs Page. The phone number for GoDaddy's live support help is (480) 505-8877. You will need to have your account number handy when you call.
Here are links to GoDaddy pages you might find helpful:
Website Tonight Tutorial Website Tonight FAQs Page
Website Tonight Templates, Fonts, Images, Flash Intros and Music Preview page
If you have tried all of the above and you have read through our FAQs below and you still need help, feel free to contact us via our Contact Us page (click here) to see if we can help you with a specific problem. While we do not mind taking a few minutes out of our day to help you with a specific question or problem, keep in mind that we are not in the web design and/or support business. Therefore please do not expect us to be there to hold your hand through the website building process.
Finally, if you are not sure about building your own site and you are considering having one built for you, I am now offering my custom website design, construction and maintenance services at very competitive rates. If this is something which you would like to know more about, please visit my personal website by clicking on the button below for more information. Thank you!
Luciano Guerra
Webmaster
The following questions and comments have been taken from actual e-mails we have received about our site. If you are looking for help on a specific topic, click on the link to that topic below to go directly to that section of this page:
Template Questions - Slideshow Questions - Music Questions
Translator Question - General Questions
Template Questions:
Question:
I commend you on the design of your website and would like to ask you which template that you used from GoDaddy. I'm researching which package to purchase from them as well so did you go for the unlimited page package. Thank You,
Answer:
Thank you for the kind words about our website. The template we used is Sunflowers from the Home and Garden category. I liked the green background, the way the links to other pages were along the top and not on the side (which takes up space and requires visitors to scroll up and down to see them all) and the fact that it included an image in the lower left hand corner of each page (even if we did replace it with one of our own). We did go with the unlimited package. Mostly because it was not that much more than the others and it gives us a lot more pages to work with.
You will find the Sunflowers template on GoDaddy's Template Preview page by clicking here and then clicking on the Get Started button on the page that opens and then selecting the Home and Garden category on the left side of that page. The Sunflowers template is the second one from the left on the top line.
Question:
How did you get such a beautiful site? The choices GoDaddy has for us are limited and not very savvy. I'm a writer of children's books, songs etc. I want something playful with a hint of seriousness. The font change is limited too. Thanks for being you! Thanks for sharing!
Answer:
When you go to select your template, there are hundreds to choose from. I myself didn't realize this until I noticed that there are categories to choose from on the left side of the template selector page. The one I went with is under the Home and Garden category and is called Sunflowers. I did have to modify it a bit by changing the header picture as well as the picture in the lower left hand corner, but other than that I went with their template as-is. I went with that particular template mostly because I liked the green background and I liked the way the links to other pages were directly below the header.
As for the font, I just went with the default. It's not very creative, but the main thing I wanted was for it to be easy to read. I wanted the whole website to be easy on the eyes and I think I was successful in doing just that.
It may take you a while, but with a little bit of trial and error I'm sure that you will be able to design a website you are happy with. Good luck! I embedded the music in our intro page with Website Tonight's own "Insert - Media - Music" option found in the Page Designer. While GoDaddy does have their own music which can be used with Website Tonight sites, we were looking for something different than what they had to offer. That is why we decided to purchase the music on this site from premiumbeat.com which sells royalty free music for websites and other purposes. The music we went with is titled Lush Tango and it is available for purchase here. Thank you for the kind words about our site. I forgot to mention in our FAQs page that the songs purchased at Premium Beat are .wav files and not MP3s. That is why I had to use an MP3 convertor program called Shuangs WAV to MP3 Converter to convert the file to MP3. It was a free download available here: MP3 Converter Good luck with your site! Question: I have three different Website Tonight sites. TropicalForest.us, BugsBirdsandBeyond.com and LoneStarSportsStars.com. They are all three premium sites with unlimited pages and cost me approximately $10.00/month. Renewals are a bit more expensive, around $140.00/year, but still a bargain IMO. If you can design and put together your own site, as I did with all three of mine, you can't beat the price. The only hidden costs I can think of is the security certificate which you will need if you are going to have a storefront with your site. I don't have one with any of mine, so I don't know how much that is, but I believe it is around $40.00 or so. If there are other hidden costs, they have not applied to any of my sites either. The live support is great! If you have any problems and/or questions, just call GoDaddy support and you will be connected to a live human being who will either answer your question(s) right then and there or who will get back to you if he/she doesn't know the answer at the time. If you are still unsure about it all, I suggest that you sign up for one month. Then if you decide you don't like it, you simply don't renew it at the end of the month and you're not out very much money at all. If on the other hand you find, as I did, that Website Tonight is not too good to be true, then you switch to a 12 month plan and you save money in the long run. Good luck with your site.
Question:
I have found your web site from Go Daddy featured Web Tonight Site. I like your site a lot. May I ask if you did modify Go Daddy Web Tonight template by yourself OR if you have hired a web designer? If you did it by yourself, how did you do it?
Answer:
To replace the original pics with pics of your own, open the Website Tonight Page Designer and click on the "Edit Template Images" button at the top of the page. That will open up a new window where you select which background image you want to change. It will give you the size of the image just below the preview window. For example, in the Sunflower template the two header pics measure 404 x 184 pixels each and the image in the lower left hand corner measures 196 x 127 pixels.
You then have to edit whatever images you want to replace the original images with and make them the same size as the ones you are replacing (unless you go with the "Stretch to Fit" or "Tile Image" options which I did not use so I do not know much about). Don't worry about making a mistake because even if you do, all you have to do is to click on "Revert To Original" and it will restore the original template pics.
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Slideshow Questions:
Note:
I have decided to do away with our flash intro page and insert the slideshow from that page into our home page instead. This is because search engines, such as Google, look for key words in home pages and using a flash intro page as a home page adversely affects the number of times a site will show up in searches.
To see what our flash intro page looked like, click here. (To return to this page, close window that opens. Links on the flash intro page have been disabled.)
Question:
Great site with beautiful photos! What program did you use to create the slideshows?
Answer:
We used a program called Flash Slideshow Maker to create our slideshows. There is a free version and a professional version which you have to purchase. As far as I know, the only difference between the two is that with the free version a slide promoting the software is automatically inserted at the end of each slideshow. Both of these are available for download by clicking here.
Once you have created a flash slideshow you can insert it into whichever webpage you want by using the "Insert - Media - Flash" option in the Page Designer mode of Website Tonight. This allows you to upload flash files, such as slideshows, directly to your site without needing to go through a photo hosting site.
To use this option you first have to create a flash slideshow with a program such as Flash Slideshow Maker and then you upload it to your site as a file (not as an image). Next you go to the page you want to insert your slideshow, place the cursor where you want the slideshow to be inserted, click on the "Insert" tab, then place your cursor over the "Media" button and then click on "Flash" in the Page Designer mode.
Note: When using Flash Slideshow Maker to create slideshows for use in a Website Tonight site, do not use the "Advanced" theme for your slideshows. Use the "Basic" theme instead. I recently found out that slideshows made with the "Advanced" theme will not work in Website Tonight sites.
Question:
I have made a slideshow with Flash Slideshow and uploaded it to my website but when I preview it it is only the size of a postage stamp or smaller. Is that what you experienced?
Answer:
First you have to make sure that you created your slideshow the size you need it to be for your website or larger. Then, once you have uploaded it to your site as a file and inserted it in one of your pages, you can change it's size by changing it's properties. In the Page Designer, you single click on the slideshow (to select it) and then click on "Edit Flash" in the Options menu (directly above). Next click on the Properties tab where you specify the width, height and background color. The background color I use for this website is 0F501B.
Question:
I would like to create a slideshow like you have on the intro and the homepage. You mentioned that you use Flash Slideshow Maker, and PHotobucket. But, you don't mention exactly how to do it. I downloaded the flash slideshow maker, and I uploaded photos and created a slideshow. I did this with photobucket as well. I tried using the Insert, Flash, as well as insert, script. neither are working. Also, if I were to get it working, how did you create the intro, where there are initially 12 photos, which fade into other images, not exactly, but, 6 at times, and at the end it's one picture. The total area of the slideshow stays constant. Then, on the homepage, you have a landscape view of a slideshow. How do you configure the sizes?
Answer:
When using a photo hosting site such as PhotoBucket to create your slideshow you have to embed the slideshow's HTML into the HTML of your page. That is the only way it will work. However if you create the slideshow with Flash Slideshow Maker and have the SWF file saved onto your hard drive, you can then upload it to your website and insert it as a flash.
As for how I created the flash intro slideshow to this site, this answer is so long and detailed that I've created a separate page for it which you can view by clicking here.
Update: I've recently created a similar flash intro for one of my photography websites. In this one however, I did not leave any space between the images which make up the individual photo collages. If you'd like to see what this other flash intro looks like, click on the button below which will open a new browser window and will take you to the flash intro page of my other site.
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Music Questions:
Question:
I had a few questions and comments for you. WOW! was my first impression of the visual as well as the audio. I would like to know how you implanted the music as I want that for my site as well. I am a teacher and a writer and would like my students and whoever visits my site to hear me and some music in the background.
Your other feature I love is the translator. Could you share? I am just starting out! Any HELP would be appreciated.
Answer:
As for the translator, this is a free download that you can get by clicking here.
Question:
Hi, I LOVE you site, very impressive. I will recommend your site to some landscapers that I know.
I have a question about the music that you have on your site. I purchased my choice from your referral of PremiumBeat.com, however; when I try to insert the file, it tells me I need an MP3 extention. The ones from PremiumBeat.com have a .wav extention. How did you get around that?
Answer:
Where did you get the line "To keep this window open in the background" etc. and how does it keep the music playing throughout the site? I inserted the same music on the first page of my site but as soon as I go to any of the other pages the music stops. The WebSite Tonight techie said it couldn't be done. But you did it. How?
Answer:
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Translator Question:
Question:
I tried the Nederlands (Dutch) translation as invited on your site's drop down box... and it led me to a link via Windows Live that was less than helpful - it did NOT give me any Dutch at all!
This isn't the best advert for a site featured as an exemplar by GoDaddy?
Answer:
The translator on our site has nothing to do with GoDaddy. It is provided by an outside company which I have been in touch with already and they have assured me that they are working on a solution. If they do not fix it soon, I will simply remove it from our site or replace it with another translator.
As for our site being "exemplary" and not being "the best advert for GoDaddy", nobody ever claimed that everything would work perfectly all the time. Websites have technical problems from time to time. Even those that cost thousands of dollars because they are designed, created and maintained by professional website designers which we are not.
I am assuming that you visited our site because you are (or were) considering using Website Tonight to create your own site. I hope that the fact that our translator is not working properly at this time does not discourage you from giving Website Tonight a try. I truly believe that for the money, Website Tonight is the best option available for those who want a professional looking website but do not want (or cannot afford) to pay a professional website designer thousands of dollars for something that they can do themselves.
Good luck with your site.
Update: I have figured out the problem with the translator. It seems to have had something to do with the fact that the URL addresses of my webpages were capitalized and the translator couldn't find the pages it was supposed to translate because it was looking for all lower case URLs. I have since changed all the URLs of my webpages to lower case (under "Manage" and then "Organize Site") and the translator seems to be working fine.
For those of you who would like to add a free translator to your site, you can get one like the one you see at the bottom of this page here.
Just copy and paste the script command you see there into a script box you add to your page.
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General Questions:
Question:
Did you truly do this wonderful site with Go Daddy's Website Tonight program? I love your site. Best of luck.
Answer:
Thank you for the complimentary words about our website. We did put it together with Website Tonight's program and we are very pleased with the way it turned out.
Question:
Hi - i am considering a web site through Godaddy and yours was one of featured sites. What can you tell me? Any ideas and help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much !!!!
Answer:
We are very satisfied with our Go Daddy website. Once I learned how to design a page, it was pretty much a matter of repetition for the subsequent pages. I especially like the fact that you get live phone support with Website Tonight so whenever I would get stuck on something, all I had to do was call GoDaddy and somebody would help me through it.
We decided to go with the premium package which has unlimited number of pages, not because we'd need that many pages, but because it was not much more money than the lower priced packages and because we would not have to worry about running out of pages.
Question:
How long did it take you to "master" website tonight to get to the point where you could do such good work?
Answer:
First of all let me say that it is possible to have a very basic website online within a day or two with Website Tonight (hence the name). How long it takes to put a custom website, such as this one, together will depend on many different factors. Therefore how long it took us to put this one together may or may not be revelant to how long it takes you or anybody else to put one together.
The Tropical Forest website is actually the second Website Tonight site I have put together. The first one I did was my personal website for my photography. I actually learned some things in putting together the Tropical Forest site that I plan to go back and implement on my other site.
As for how long it took me to "master" Website Tonight, that's hard to say. The fact that I had some prior knowledge of HTML and the photo-shopping of photos certainly helped. Not that you need to know HTML or how to photo-shop photos to be able to put a nice site together, but it doesn't hurt.
I started working on my personal website just about a year ago. I had that one put together in a couple of weeks. It took my brother and I closer to a month to design and create the Tropical Forest website because even after we had finished something, we kept looking for ways to improve it. While this was time consuming, I am glad that we did this because doing so played a big part in getting our site to look just the way we wanted it to.
Question:
Thank you for a beautiful website and sharing so much of your knowledge with others. I am making progress in my first attempt building a website for my granddaughter's flower shop and would like to create the outlined boxes for the slides. I see the HTML coding for the "box" but do not know HTML...would you be willing to share how you accomplished that?
Answer:
Question:
Tell me why you think goDaddy is a reasonable website hoster. Are there a lot of unseen, hidden add-ons, extras that creep in? also need to read the small print...To me, it is too good to be true.
Answer:
Question:
How did you add the flying butterfly to your site?
Answer:
The flying butterfly is an animated Gif file which you can save onto your hard drive by doing a right click on it and using the "Save Image (or Picture) As" option. You can then upload it to your image gallery and place it anywhere you want in your site.
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