MRKT 10047 Weebly Website Project

For this project, students will use the Weebly Website Builder to start to start their own
portfolio website and gain experience with a CMS platform.

This assignment is worth 15% of your total course grade.

Students will follow the step-by-step instructions in this document to initiate a Weebly account,
set up a Weebly website, pick a website theme and complete a series of required website edits.

Students can take one of two approaches to this project:

• Follow the steps in this document to complete the required website edits to receive a
grade of 70% on the project (assuming all changes are successfully made); or
• Follow the steps to complete the required website edits PLUS make additional edits and
additions of their own to qualify for a higher grade than 70%.

There are 4 required edits/changes to the original website template:

1. Edit specific Homepage images
2. Edit specific Homepage copy
3. Create an image link from the Homepage
4. Modify a Contact Us form

Students hoping to qualify for more than 70% can do the following:
• Edit more copy and more images on the website to qualify for up to 80%
• Make more significant changes to qualify for more than 80%. These changes could
include but are not limited to:
o Adding a blog page and writing the first blog entry
o Adding a new website page and populating it with content
o Adding downloadable documents throughout the site

Upon completion of their website, all students must submit via Canvas a completed MRKT
10047 Website Design Project Submission Form. Among other things, this form includes the
URL to your website, so that the instructor can visit and assess the site. Students who attempt
extra website changes beyond the 4 required edits must also catalog the changes they’ve made
in the MRKT 10047 Website Design Project Submission Form.

This form must be submitted (via Canvas) by the deadline posted to Canvas. Late submissions
will not be accepted and will receive a grade of zero.

If you have technical questions related to the Weebly platform as you complete this project,
please contact [email protected]. If you have questions related to the project, please
contact your instructor.
Instructions

Important: please read and follow these instructions very carefully to ensure that you are able
to qualify for all of the available marks for this project.

Step 1: Set Up Your Weebly Account

a) Start by visiting the Weebly Pricing page to access Weebly’s free plan:
https://www.weebly.com/pricing
b) After you click on the link above, you’ll arrive at the “Sign up” page. Select the Free
account.

c) You will then be prompted to sign up. Enter your name, email address, and password,
and then click “Continue” at the bottom of the page. If you think you might want to
maintain this portfolio website after graduation, consider using a personal email
address.
 d) After you’ve created an account, you are asked to identify what kind of website to
create. Please select “Try Weebly Websites” under the “I want a personal website”
section. This will provide you with a free, personal website.

Step 2: Set Up and Install a Weebly Website

Now that your Weebly account has been created, you may continue with your website design.

After clicking on Try Weebly Websites, you will arrive at the “Choose a Theme” page.

a) On the “Select a Theme” page, choose the theme for your website by clicking on the
image for the designated theme. Important: for this project you must select the
following theme (“Hi, I’m Sarah…) from the “Portfolio” tab:
Students who do not pick this theme will have their submissions returned.

FYI – the Weebly platform allows you to change your Theme later, and you are welcome to do
so once you have met the requirements of this project, submitted your link and received your
grade.

b) After selecting the theme, a preview of the theme will open. To start your website using
this theme, click “Start Editing” at the top of the screen.

c) After finalizing your theme selection, a “Select your domain name” window will open.
Type in your preferred domain name (this will be the name of your website). Please use
your name so your domain is recognizable. Select “Search” to verify that your preferred
domain name is available. If the preferred domain name is available, that name will
populate in the “Subdomain” field at the bottom of the window. Select “Choose” next to
the preferred subdomain name. Do not choose from the Professional Domain list. See
screen shot below.

Congratulations! Your Weebly site is set up. You should see a page like this:
Step 3: Edit pages

Now that your website structure is in place, you can start building your website.

For this project, students are required to complete four editing tasks, successful completion of
which qualifies them for a grade of 70%.

Students are then invited to make more edits and changes to their website, if they wish to
increase their grade – as described on page 1 of this document.

When you log in to your Weebly website, you’ll be taken to a dashboard.

From this dashboard, select “Edit site” to begin building your website.

Your Weebly site builder will look something like this.

Required Edit #1: Change 2 Homepage images

On the Homepage, change the top two images (the blue cloud background image and the
headshot of Sara) to something more personal to you, including a photo of you to replace the
photo to the left of the A Little About Myself copy.
Switch images by doing the following:

a) For the large image at the top (the blue cloud), click the image and then select Edit
Background near the bottom of the image. Then click Replace. You will be able to search
for new images or select an image saved locally to your device. There is also an option
to select from other stock Backgrounds; do this by clicking on Replace (as above) and
then closing the Select Images From box; you’ll then see a Select Background box. Note:
after changes, you may need to click Save to proceed.

As an example, I selected a New Background and ended up with the following:

 b) For the smaller image to the left of the A Little About Myself copy, just click the image
and select Replace Image. You should then be able to select an image of yourself that
you have previously saved to your desktop.

Required Edit #2: Change Homepage Copy

Personalize the copy (wording) in two places on the Homepage: 1) the top of the fold header
copy which reads “Hi. I’m Sarah Smith. A creative director”; and 2) the copy in the A Little About
Myself section.

To change text, simply click the text. Be sure to write crisp, compelling copy. Important: for full
marks, make the required font and text box sizing changes to ensure that the text looks
professional and can be easily read by the audience! And NO TYPOS please!! There will be
deductions for those.

Tip: you may find that the text box in your main above-the-fold section cuts across your new
image. To resize the textbox, drag a ‘Spacer” element (from the left menu) to the right of your
text element. That’ll nudge your header text box to the left.

Tip: Need to move your text box up or down? Do so by creating or modifying spacers above and
below the text box.
Here’s what my text header looked like when I first changed it, and then what it looked like
when I dragged a ‘Spacer’ element to the right of the text box and dropped it onto the canvas.

Required Edit #3: Create a Link

On your Homepage, make the image (of yourself) that you’ve inserted to the left of the A Little
About Myself wording a clickable link by doing the following:
a) Start by clicking the blue Publish button in the top right of your site editor. A pop-up box
will appear. There’s no need to upgrade, but copy your unique URL that is displayed.
See screenshot below.

b) Enter the URL into a new browser address bar to see what your website looks like. It’s
now live on the server.
c) Next, visit the About Me page, and Copy the URL.
d) Return to the site editor, and click on the new image you’ve posted to the left of the
new A Little About Myself copy you’ve written. Once you’ve clicked on the image, select
the Link option.

e) Next, click on Website URL option.

f) Paste the URL to your About Us page to create the link AND uncheck the “Open in a new
window” checkbox. See screenshot below.
 g) Click the blue Publish button again (in the top right of the site editor) just to make sure
the link you’ve created is saved, and then visit the URL (your live website) to test
whether the image is now clickable and hyperlinks to the About Us page.

Required Edit #4: Make changes to the form on the Contact page

Learn to change form parameters by altering the Contact Us form. Do the following:

a) In the Weebly site editor, select the Contact page.

b) Click in the form to the right of the page.
c) Next, select the blue Form Options tab.

d) Then, using the Form options functions, do the following:

1. Change the form name to Get in Touch!
2. Add your email address in the Email to: field
3. Add the Google Captcha by toggling
4. Change the Confirmation to: “Thank you for contacting me! I’ll be back in touch
as soon as possible!” Note: make sure you don’t have any typos!
5. Change the Button text to: “Submit Now”

e) Save your Form changes (the orange button – see screenshot below)!
 f) Publish, and then visit your actual website so you can fill out the contact form and make
sure it’s displaying and working properly.

Congratulations – you have now completed your 4 required edits.

If you’re satisfied with a 70% on the project, and confident that you’ve made all the
edits/changes listed above, you are ready to complete the MRKT 10047 Website Design Project
Submission Form. Find the form in Canvas, complete it and submit it by the deadline.

Students hoping to qualify for more than 70% can do the following:
• Edit more copy and more images to qualify for up to 80%
• Make more significant changes to qualify for more than 80%. These changes could
include but are not limited to:
o Adding a blog page and writing the first blog entry
o Adding a new website page and populating it with content
o Adding downloadable documents

Students who attempt extra website changes, beyond the 4 required edits, must catalog the
changes they’ve made in the MRKT 10047 Website Design Project Submission Form.

This form must be submitted (via Canvas) by the deadline posted to Canvas. Late submissions
will not be accepted and will receive a grade of zero.