Half of your work peers and family is on Facebook – but the other half isn’t. Some use Instragram while others don’t have smart phones. How can you share your holiday thoughts with everyone in one place? What if you want to share your business’ holiday specials or favorite photos? Make a holiday website!
Even if you aren’t technically inclined, it is easy using a free website builder like IM Creator. By using one of the free templates you don’t have to know much about design. The layout is done for you.
Just click on anything you want to change. For images, click the image and then ‘Replace Pic’. Here are some ideas for building a fun site for free:
Thanksgiving Get Together
Change the background to a group photo. Put a photo of the food front and center. Change the text to Thanksgiving 2014 Family or Business Name.
In the ABOUT ME section, change the text to ABOUT US 11.27.2014 and write some details about your get together in the paragraph under the date. Click on Info and write MORE ABOUT US with more details.
Click on gallery and add photos of the food and everyone in attendance. You can create as many pages for photos as you like. You can even add videos or turn some of the photos into a slideshow. Photos can be cropped on the screen and linked to another site (optional).
In the CONTACT ME section you can add contact details for the person in your family, business or group who keeps track of everyone best.
Holiday Specials for Businesses
If you don’t have a website or you have one that requires a web designer to update, you can create one yourself to feature your holiday sales products.
Under the fashion templates is one called Dream Play. Click ‘Customize Now’ and you can swap out the existing images for the products you have on sale.
To see how it worked I created a mock-up of an existing holiday specials page for Ad Premiums Unlimited. I know the owner of this promotional products company and helped them create the specials page within the Sage ecommerce solution they use.
You can compare the page I built using IM Creator (above and at the link to the left) with their specials page on their ecommerce site (below and at this second link):
How IM Creator Works
Much of what you can do is obvious, but if you get stuck you can download their manual or visit the support center by clicking ‘help’. If you decide you love your new creation, you can connect your site to a domain and have it hosted on that domain. This currently costs $7.95 per month and includes:
- Unlimited space and bandwidth
- Custom email address
- Google analytics integration
- Premium support
- Advanced SEO
- Ability to backup and move your site anywhere
- 14 day money back guarantee
Note that the social media icons were already in the template. Just add your url for each of your accounts and save. Be sure to test any links you include to make sure they work and land on the right page.
Experiment with different photos, text fonts and sizes. Just remember that there is no ‘undo’. In order to save the site you created, you need to publish it.
You do NOT have to upgrade to a paid account to have a live site!
What you have published will be saved on the i-m-mx domain under your username and the name you chose for the site you built.
To move between pages, click ‘Pages’. To customize the page, click ‘Add an Element’ to create a text box, an image box, or add a video, gallery, or contact page. There are additional elements, but those are the ones we use most often.
One of the coolest features is a button labeled ‘fit’. Clicking it makes any photo or image fit into the desired space. This is a much easier way to reduce images than learning to use editing software like GIMP. If you’ve ever used Canva you will have a good idea how to use IM Creator.
When using a template, be sure to visit every page and edit example text and change images. You can delete whatever you don’t want to use.
Whether you have a business need for a quick website or you want to share holiday photos with family and peers who don’t use Facebook or other online photo sharing apps, here’s a free solution.
Gail Gardner
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You have not only increased the options we have in creating an free online business site, but you have taken the trouble to help us understand how this works. Thank you for the enlightening post.
Thanks for sharing wonderful post. Explanation are perfect so easy to understand.
This article are really help how about IM Creator Works. I am sure all bloggers must read this article before start new.
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Very good post .Thank you your article have some really good tips.I really am going to look into this.Thanks for sharing.
Your post is really collection of sach useful information and I personally would to appreciate the efforts
thanks for the useful information…I am new here and i got lots of information from this article..
Hai Gail,
This is first time i met your blog and i feels more impressed,its a perfect article that helps an online buisness sites to improve.Anyway thank you very much for sharing this wonderful article with us.keep doing.
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Thanks for the sharing IM Creator. I’ll give it a try.
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Awesome. This is what I am looking for. Great article and thanks for the info.
Yeah! great Its really very useful post for whom who want to explore our business through online free for great contact and more people know about our quality of business. will definitely tell our colleagues who is having own business….will make their own business site…
Thanks for sharing
Paridhi
Bài viết của bạn rất bổ ích cho công việc seo của tôi, hi vọng rằng bạn sẽ có nhiều bài viết bổ ích khác, và chia sẽ nhiều hơn cho mọi người.
Thank you very much!
Translation: Your article is very useful for my job seo, hoping that you will have many other useful articles, and much more to share for everyone.
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This a a great piece about Free Online Business . I really agree with you when you say this. More people need to read this. Thanks again.
According to me most important part will be choosing shopify to design a beautiful online store. Then create a website store with all the bells and whistles.
Woww Such a best post ever… Thanks for the sharing …. Soo informative post for all .. hats off
this is such a great read! thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Hello,
I guess you have shared some wonderful resources for creating free websites. I’ll be checking them out now.
Thanks
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awesome post yaar really useful I suggest this post to my uncle actually he asked me about this last week thanks for posting
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Great post, I follow your blog and like your posts, always very explanatory and high knowledge, thanks for sharing.
Nice article giving the details of im creators. It will be helpull for bloggers and web designers like me 🙂 Thanks a lot
Great details, here, Gail, many thanks. There are so many template services around out there, it’s very useful to have a guide from an expert.
Thanks for sharing such an amazing article….keep it up
Hello Gail,
Amazing post, No doubt ! You shared great idea to build an online business site. I like This article and I hope all blogger like this post.
Thanks for sharing this useful article:)
Have a great day!
Regards,
Majid Uamar
I would recommend this on my buddies at work and my boss too, it’s worth sharing the christmas spirit. And I think IM creator is the best way to do it!
My one question is how do you host a site like this? Don’t you need a paid server to upload it to?
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Hi Mike,
If you host it on their domain you don’t pay for hosting. If you want to use your own domain then you have to pay.
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Such an useful article and so informative.. Thanks for your clear explanation.. Jaslynn, Svasamsoft
A good blog always comes-up with new and exciting information and while reading I have feel that this blog is really have all those quality that qualify a blog to be a good one. I learn a lot from it. I wanna appreciate you for this great effort.
Amazing article about IM Creator Works.I’m really impressed.keep it up.
Thank you your article have some really good tips.I really am going to look into this
Hi Gail,
First Really Superb and Great POst This is my first visit on your site and really got impressed WOnderful work and helpful information Article Great staff , Thank You very Much For SHaring me ,
regard
Jassica
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Hi Jassica,
Welcome to GrowMap. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or need help finding anything. Happy Holidays. How to Use Your iPhone Overseas is a very useful post as many who travel would want to know that.
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A perfect article about how IM Creator actually works. Thanks a lot mate, I’ve got the required information from this article. Keep up the spirit (Y) 😀
Thanks, Madhukar. I went through the whole process to make sure it actually was entirely free for those who don’t need their own domain name.
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I totally agree to this statement. But I just hadn’t the same achieve like you.
Is there an option to see the IP-Adress of the user? Could’nt find anything 🙁
Already thanks for the answer
Hi Gail,
This is my first visit on your site and really got impressed. 🙂
What an informative and useful post indeed.
Great idea to build an online business site.
Thanks for sharing……i am so glad to read such needful post…please keep continuing..
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