Building a Website

How We Built Natural Parenting Advice

Building a website is easy with SBI!. Here's how a group of technically-challenged women built a website with over 60 pages in 2 months and started the parenting community they had been dreaming about!

The core group of women who founded Natural Parenting Advice made six attempts to create a website and/or blog about natural parenting. Six times our efforts failed due to lack of budget and lack of web knowledge. Face it, we didn't know the first thing about building a website. Worst yet, we just couldn’t seem to find an easy way to do it.

We didn’t want to go back to school and become webmasters! We wanted to focus on our passion for raising happy, healthy children. At the same time we couldn’t afford to hire someone to create and manage a website for us.

We knew why we wanted a website; we had knowledge and experience we wanted to share with others. We are all experienced writers. Problem was we didn’t want to write in HTML! We didn’t have a clue about creating and formatting columns and links and uploading pages. Worse yet, we all have full time, challenging professions to manage on top of our family.

Rather ironic when you think about it? Here we are - busier than can be - but wanting to share what we have learned about parenting with other busy moms and dads. Are we crazy to even consider building a website? Just how does someone who is passionate about their family make time to help others without getting their family pissed off?

We knew logically that creating an online community and sharing information online is much more time efficient than trying to get together in person. We all have young children - making it almost impossible to have an in-person conversation - even at the park! At the same time, babies and young children are one of the primary things we want to focus on because they are the most vulnerable to the toxins in our food and modern lives. We love children and want there to be more happy, healthy children for us to play with!

Enter Site Build It (SBI!) - so much more than simple web hosting. Site Build It makes it so easy to create a business or a community online that at first it almost seemed too good to be true. Could building a website really be that easy?

We have to credit Arrington for finding SBI! for us. She is the one person out of our group that just wouldn’t give up on the whole idea of creating a natural parenting community. She is also the “techiest” member of the group - being in product marketing and used to writing content for corporate websites. The rest of us are lawyers or in the medical profession – Arrington likes to joke that we are “technically handicapped” even though she didn't know anything about building a website!

Arrington kept telling us about the tools she had available at her company that allowed her to simply cut and paste information she created in Microsoft Word into a form that automatically formatted it for her corporate website. After cutting and pasting, she would simply preview the formatted version by clicking on a button. If everything was OK she would click another button to approve it and voila, new webpage created!

She kept insisting, “There has to be something like that for people like us – just regular people that want to have a website!” We would remind her that even if there was, there is alot more to building a website. For example, we still would have to design the look and feel of a site. We didn’t work for a company with entire web and branding departments to take care of that.

Finally, after spending over $100 a month for six months on attempt #6, leveraging a host that specialized in “coaching sites” but who failed miserably at being a “solution for non-technical folks”, Arrington finally gave up. Instead she focused on finishing the thriller (novel) she had started writing five years before.

Then the funniest thing happened. Having finally finished the text started the editing phase, she hopped on Google to get some information about punctuating dialogue. She found some really helpful advice on How to Write a Novel - a great site for writers. The site was great, so she clicked around and read about how the writer loved SBI! , the web host she was using because she didn’t know anything about building a website and by using SBI!, she didn’t need to. Instead, she focused on her passion – writing and helping others become better writers!

At that point, all thoughts of editing her book went out of Arrington’s mind. Instead, she clicked this link about SBI! and liked what she saw so then she watched this video

Then she called the rest of us and scheduled a meeting.

The rest is history. We have been surprised at how quickly the site has grown. When we have a moment, we write an article about whatever it is that we have been getting the most questions about from other moms. Then we cut and paste it into the “form” that SBI! provides. We preview it and click “Build It” and it shows up on the site. Best yet, Arrington clicked on a button and now many of our pages have invitations so that readers can submit their own stories and provide their own tips! It is so easy. Finally we are really are building the community we dreamed about!

Arrington’s Experience Building a Website with SBI!

You may be wondering about the look and feel of the site. I’m the one that handles most of the site administration. I’m not a webmaster and I don’t want to be a webmaster. Best yet, I don’t need to be a webmaster – at least not in the traditional sense. SBI! makes it so easy for me to manage our site. I get to use my creative “marketing” side to create the “vision” for the site and SBI! does all the heavy lifting to make it happen.

It really does seem like magic sometimes, especially after all the difficulties I have gone thru trying to create this site using other hosts and providers. I really had given up on building a website!

Back to the look and feel of the site… It took me about an hour to select the template for Natural Parenting Advice out of a library of templates that SBI! provides. If we wanted to change the look of the site, it would be as easy as selecting another template or uploading our own.

I particularly love how easy SBI! makes it for us to be plugged into the social media. I clicked one button and now people can subscribe to our RSS feed (see top right of this page). I clicked on another button and now people can like us on Facebook and Twitter (see bottom of page). A few more clicks and our Natural Parenting Forums were launched. This was really important to me because it allowed us to build the community of like minded parents we have always dreamed about.

And the price? I could host four websites with SBI! for the price I was paying at the coaching solution! Paying less than $30 dollars per month is just another one of the “small miracles” I’ve come to expect with SBI!.

A word of warning… I regularly get in trouble with my husband for working on the website too much - not because of technical issues - but because I am having a whole lot of fun and time passes quickly. This doesn’t need to happen to you, you can build your site at your own pace. We’ve built over 60 pages in a couple months… which we all agree is just crazy looking back. Chaulk it up to us having a whole lot of built-up passion that we couldn’t express until now! We had been dreaming about building a website for a long time. I’m just warning you because time seems to go by at light speed when you are having fun.

If you have a passion (like we do) and want to create your own website, we highly recommend you give SBI! a try. If you have a local business, we recommend you leverage SBI! to give it a strong web presence.

Have you been thinking about starting your own web business?

Watch these Video Testimonials from other people who have successfully turned their passion into a web presence and into successful businesses!

With SBI! You never have to figure out the "how to" for any part of building a website and making it grow into a business. It's all made so simple, even a 14-year-old can do it. And we’re not talking some tech-whiz-kid, either.

With SBI!, you get more than just a "site builder." You don't need any of these "add-ons" listed below. They're all included in SBI!

• Site Hosting
• Keyword Research Tool
• Domain Name Registration
• Wide Variety of Customizable Templates
• Additional Data Transfer (SBI!s is unlimited)
• Spam and Virus Protection
• Traffic Analysis Programs
• Form Creation Programs
• Separate RSS & Blogging Programs
• Search Engine Tracking Help
• Search Engine Ranking Help
• Real Keyword Supply Data Research (Your Competition)
• Separate E-Mail Distribution & Marketing Software
• Separate E-Zine Publishing Venue
• Costly Customer Support Programs

All of this is included and works together seamlessly! Here’s a quick slide show about how SBI! helps you create a website that rises to the top without years of continuing education to try to keep up with the constant changes on the internet.

What if you don’t want a website for business, you only want to share pictures of your baby with your relatives?

For those parents out there that simply want to create a website to share pictures with other family members, you don’t need all the features in SBI!. It will be easier for you to create a simple photo site with TotSites.

We look forward to seeing you on the web! We hope you have as much fun as we have building a website! Better yet, we would love to hear your parenting stories and see your pictures on our Natural Parenting Forums . Before you go be sure to sign up for our RSS Feed (top left) and our Natural Parenting Newsletter so you have all the latest information!

---

---