Moonfruit 1. What is Moonfruit In 2010, 30.1 million adults in the UK (60 per cent) accessed the Internet every day or almost every day, highlighting the importance of having a web presence. Moonfruit is a multiple award-winning website building service that allows you to quickly and easily create professional looking websites. Moonfruit is simple to use and packed with powerful features allowing you to achieve results beyond your expectations! Moonfruit can be used for any kind of website or online content. From an information web page to e-commerce stores, Moonfruit makes publishing and designing your website quick and easy. You can layer, crop, animate, colour and apply transparency to objects on your page. It has many features including those discussed in this guide. 2. Getting Started With Moonfruit You will begin the set up process through the email you will receive from Moonfruit. After clicking the link in this email you will need to enter your Moonfruit web name, username, password and email address. Once these have been entered you need to agree terms and you can then launch your site. Once the site has been launched you can then start to edit the site. 3. Customising Your Site The template can be then changed using the Design icon to enable you to put your company logo on every page. Adding a logo to every page To add a company logo or company name to every page you will need to amend the page master.
This can be found via the Design tab and the page master is the first option on the left hand side of the screen. You can then add in text or upload your logo so that it appears on every page of your website. Uploading media To upload pictures, music and videos use the Files icon. This opens up a pop up box, choose Upload select the files you want to upload and click Upload. To use these files click on Use This. This will then upload it to your site. Using audio/video files If you are uploading music you will need to put the jukebox in first and if using videos the video player. These are found via the Insert icon and selecting Audio/Video. It is important to be aware of copyright if you are using pictures and music and that you have permission to add them to your site.
Using pictures Pictures can be moved around the site, cropped, made into links and have the transparency changed by using the Editor function. The Editor box will appear every time something is uploaded or added in Insert options The Insert icon can be used to perform various functions. The basic objects option enables you to insert titles and text boxes. Once these have been entered in, the Editor will allow you to amend the font and colour and use the text to link to websites or other pages in the website. To do this, highlight the text to be used as a link and use the link section in the Editor box. Pictures can be amended, again by using the Editor function, but can also be put in a gallery or slideshow via the image tab in the Insert menu. Smart widgets will enable you to add Paypal and Google maps.
Pages Pages can be added in, deleted out, renamed or reorganised using the Pages icon, then Organise your pages. People The People tab gives you control over who can access certain pages and who can make amendments to the site. Members and groups can be added here. It is also possible from here to make the site members only by using the Settings tab and the Members tab within this section. Moonfruit will also connect with Facebook and Twitter. This will then show your message and a link to your site in your newsfeed and your followers and friend s newsfeed.
Domains Moonfruit will allow you to check domain name availability and register it. If you have received a voucher as part of your subscription package it will be shown here to use for or towards the cost of purchasing domain names. Admin The Admin button allows you to view statistics such as how many visitors there have been to your site. If you have registered for the free Google tools, information from them will also be shown here.
Services There are free Google services that you can use. These are accessed via the Services icon. Google Analytics enables you to receive information about how people move around your site, how long they spend on each page, where they came from before they went to the site and where they go afterwards. Reports and graphs are also generated based on keywords that have been used to help maximise the site. 4. Support for Your Site Social media integration All Moonfruit sites support a full membership/login system allowing you to create members only pages and give edit rights to different users of your site. This all links in with your social networks so that you can message out from your site to Facebook or Twitter, and invite people to become members of your site from other networks. The Moonfruit Library Moonfruit provide a free library of images, animations and widgets for you to use in your site. They are available in a range of styles, individually customisable and help you achieve the look and content you want. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
All Moonfruit sites are optimised for search engines by default. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving the visibility of a web site in search engines. As well as the Flash version of your site seen by your visitors, it also produces a clean and simple HTML version for SEO. All normal page content is represented in the HTML version which correctly marks up all text formats (e.g. Headers, etc.). Integrated Google tools Building and editing is only one part of running a successful website. After that you must generate traffic, track visitors, and master the tricky world of Search Engine Optimisation. Google offer support in these areas and Moonfruit allows you to easily use these free and powerful tools to help manage your website. An unlimited number of additional features can be added to your site from Google Gadgets, Wigetbox and Amazon widgets - games, ecommerce tools, and video/music players. Sell things on your site Moonfruit also makes it easy to start trading online. Use the PayPal widgets to set up 'buy now' buttons that link to a PayPal shopping cart. Add nicely designed product pages from the templates.