Main Steps to Create Website

As a rule, the process of creating a website includes three main stages: planning, implementation, and website updating or maintenance.

Planning: The first and most essential stage in any project is planning. Before starting with iXs SiteBuilder, think about the purpose of your website and its target audience. After this, decide where your website will be stored, or, in Internet terminology, hosted. This stage is beyond the scope of this document. We assume that if you have access to iXs SiteBuilder, you have all resources required for website hosting. Then, you should develop a detailed structure of your future website and prepare its contents, including text information and graphics. The planning stage is extremely important because it eventually determines the usefulness of your website.

Implementation: The next stage is the implementation of your website. The five-step iXs SiteBuilder Wizard takes you through the entire procedure of creating your website, from initial design to publishing and maintenance. The following are the main steps required to create a website using iXs SiteBuilder:

1. Open the iXs SiteBuilder Wizard. You can start working with the Wizard without user authorization (no login and password needed).
2. Complete the first four Wizard steps.
3. Open the Publish tab. At this step,you will see detailed instructions about how to access your new website so that you can edit it. Your website created using the iXs SiteBuilder Wizard is saved as a trial site in a temporary storage directory on the iXs SiteBuilder server. On the Publish tab, you will see an automatically generated site identifier. Using this link to the trial website, which might look like http://site_identifier.sitebuilder.hosting_provider.com, you can later return to your website, edit and publish it (about editing your website, see the After Publishing chapter, later in this guide). Change the site identifier to some name you can easily remember (click Change My Site Identity).
4. After you purchase hosting services from your provider, you will be provided with a domain name. Tell the iXs SiteBuilder Administrator the domain name where your website will be hosted. The iXs SiteBuilder Administrator will enter your domain name in the publish properties for your website in the iXs SiteBuilder Administrator Panel. After publication, your website will be available on the Internet.
5. Enter the link to your trial website in the address bar of the browser window. Your website will open in the browser window. Click Edit at the top of the website to launch the iXs SiteBuilder Wizard. Now you can edit the content of your website. After editing, click Publish. The updated content of your website will be transferred to the server where your website is hosted. After publication, your website will be available on the Internet.

Maintenance: When you complete the above steps, your website becomes available for visitors. It is critical to keep your website content fresh because this is a good way to show your attitude to customers and services. Therefore, always be sure that your website is updated on a regular basis.

In iXs SiteBuilder, it is easy to keep your website content up-to-date. All you need to do is to log into the iXs SiteBuilder using the website identifier and your password, edit the content, and click Publish. iXs SiteBuilder will automatically transfer the updated content to your hosting location.

For detailed instructions about what you can do at every stage of creating your website, see the following chapters.