Building a Better Website with Bravenet

Bravenet.com is a resource for intermediate website builders. The site hosts a wide range of tools to help web designers spice up their website. The purpose of the website is to help novice "web designers" or, outgoing entrepreneurials add a professional touch to their website. Bravenet offers website tools such as online calendars, chat rooms, and instant messengers.

Who it's For

While Bravenet is fairly simple to use and provides exceedingly simple directions on how to use their tools, it does require some basic HTML knowledge. If you find your self able to learn quickly and are not intimidated computer code, then you can learn how to use the website tools on Bravenet.

Pros

· FREE to sign up.

· Tons of free website tools

· Easy to use

· Offers lots of helpful articles

Cons

· Free service has small ads on website tools

· Requires some basic HTML skills

About the Website

Savvy business owners listen up; there is no arguing the fact that you need a killer website to stay competitive. With a limited budget and basic web designs skills, this could be a problem. However, if you know about Bravenet.com, it won't be.

When you were looking around for ideas for your website did you ever come across well designed sites with lots of neat features? Say, a photography studio that had an online calendar showing open appointment times or a computer repair business that had a live chat room? You probably though to yourself, I wish I could put that on my site, with Bravenet you can.

Bravenet offers all sorts of tools to help get your website competitive. Some of the tools include:

Chat Rooms: You can use these to host live chats with your customers. This is a great way to offer live help or to have online meetings with clients.

Tell-A-Friend: This is a simple way for visitors to promote and share your site. Almost any website design book will tell you; this is a must for any website.

Vote Caster: Lets you create simple polls for website visitors to participate in. Use this tool as a way to get some direct market research from your visitors or just as a fun poll. Either way, it is a great website tool for keeping visitors on your site.

This Day in History: Adds in interesting historic fact about something that happened everyday. Why would you want this on your website? As simple as it is, it will help keep your website "fresh", which search engines love.

This is only a few of the website tools offered by Bravenet; others include classified ads, photo albums, blogs, mailing lists, and more.

What if you don't have a website yet? No worries, Bravenet offers free website hosting as well as an affordable paid hosting. The paid hosting of course sports the typical google ads and link backs. Still, it is a good way for you dabble around with the website tools and test your website building proficiency.

If you are new to website building or eager to learn more, there is a comprehensive resource section. This section has tutorials, articles, quick refrences, free clip art, free fonts and more.

The tutorial section is pretty in depth. Just scrolling through some of the pages can make it seem overwhelming. The texts are pretty thorough and can get pretty in-depth. They cover a lot of good points, but it is definitely written for a more advanced user.

The article section has much shorter articles that get right to the point. This articles cover topics like how to make images into buttons or creating check boxes. These require some basic html, but are nowhere near as complicated as the tutorials.

The best section in the resources is the Profits section (found in the articles). This area covers a lot of helpful information about using your website to make money. It covers topics like choosing a good domain name, shopping carts, affiliate programs, and various other ways to make money with your website.

The Bottom Line Bravenet is an amazing resource if you are willing to put some time into learning some basic programming and HTML skills. Once you learn all the Bravenet has to offer, you'll wonder how your website ever made it without the help of Bravenet