If you haven’t yet checked out my list of my favorite tools that I use to run my business, I’ve added a few new ones to the list that I think you’ll enjoy.

Today’s post comes from a reader question based on one of the tools I recommended: Save Time by Creating a Homepage Dashboard.

I made a video to explain how I made my Homepage Dashboard – it’s the first time I’ve done a screen capture video so I hope you enjoy it!

If you have any questions about or want me to make a video about a different tool that I recommend, leave a comment below and let me know!

Video:

Transcript:

Hi I’m Evan Carmichael and welcome to a video edition of Ask Evan. Today I am going to answer question from one of my readers Max. Max’s questions is hey Evan, I was taking a look at the tools you use and was wondering what program you used to create your homepage that you load for the internet? You show a pic but don’t tell how you did it. If it requires programming I might need my programmer to do it for me but if I could do it myself that would be best, Max.

So what Max is talking about on my website, I have a list of my favorite tools and these are a lot of the tools that I use as help save me time and it really help grow my business without having to add a lot of man power. Underneath if you scroll down, you will see a lot of different tools that I like to use and under this section here, running your business, I recommend save time my creating a homepage dashboard. I have included a full picture so you can kind of see a little bit better on my Facebook page. And this shows you all the different tools that I use on a regular basis and it saves time by having it all in one spot so that I can have access to everything quickly as I flick through on my website.

These are the most popular websites that I use on a day to day basis to run a business. Some of them you can see are personal, some of them are my key suppliers, business and then the social media stuff that I am involved in as well. So what I am going to do is show you if I load a new tab, go to home, this is what is going to load every time I load a new browser. I am going to show you two quick ways to do it. One is how I actually do it and the I am also going to show you easier method if you are not as technically savvy.

Here we go,

Method #1: Dreamweaver.

Okay so the first method I am going to show you is what I actually use to create my homepage dashboard. I use a program called Dreamweaver and it is a pretty common program that you can use to make really advanced flip sites but it is also great for beginners as well. So this is what it looks like, click on my homepage and editing is almost like I editing in a Word document. If you know how to do word, you can get started with Dreamweaver. So say I want to add some to my homepage and maybe under personal I will add in Toronto Dance Salsa which is where you do a lot of Salsa dancing. I can either add a text link like this, so I have done that a couple of times here, well I will do that if I am feeling lazy or I could try to go out and find a picture that would make sense for that website.

So say for this one I want to find the logo for Toronto Dance Salsa. I can go to Google images, google.com/images and I will type in Toronto Dance Salsa and here is the logo so I will click on that, I will save the picture and I will call it Toronto Dance Salsa Inc. Here we go, I will go back to my Dreamweaver, I will make a new line and then I will go insert image and let’s find it, Toronto Dance Salsa. Okay and there it is so I can either make a text link here or the picture link as well.

Now if I actually go get the link. So the link is torontodancesalsa.ca. Here is the website, I will copy and paste the link, go back to my Dreamweaver, I will highlight the image and works as link, I will just copy and paste that in and if I want over the text I will also put the link here. Now for our pictures, you will see the blue border has come around that, I tend to find that little ugly so all I will do is click zero for border and it get rids of my border. I will save it.

And then if I go back load my web browser. If I click home, you will see that now I have added my image my text link to Toronto Dance Salsa and if I click on it, there I am.

Saving your file.

So once you have gone through the step of adding all the different pictures and text links that you want into run your business, we have to save the file properly. To do that you just go file, save as, and then you name the file whatever. I created the new folder on my computer called homepage and then I called it homepage. You can be more creative if you like but that is what I did for my own site. Then you will see there is a file that is run off of my own computer so this isn’t anywhere else in the web for other people to use, it is just stored on my computer and here is the exact route. So this will change depending on wherever you want to save it but it is going to be on your own computer.

Then when I load up my internet browser, I am using Chrome in this example but all the different kind of browsers will have different option. From here I am just going to click, I will go to my options and it will say homepage, open this page and you can give it the URL. So this is now going to call my new Dashboard home page whenever I load up a new browser. I can see if I go home, there it is. So if you are using chrome, firefox or internet explorer or any other different browsers, they all have an option to set your default home page and you want to make that your local file so you can see here this is the same extension name that I used when I saved it through Dreamweaver.

Method #2: Notepad

Okay so I promised you another way to do it if you don’t have Dreamweaver or you don’t want to invest the time into learning it and it is simple and it is through notepad. So this is really bare bones, yet little bit of html but it is not that complicated. So what I am going to do here, just to show you, I am going to create a new file, I loaded up my notepad and I will call it Evans cool resources and if I want to make it bigger I will just put a h1 in front of it and I will close a h1 tag at the end of it and if I want to link to Toronto Dance Salsa as an example, it is important to know that if you are going to create a link it is a href equals the link Torontodancesalsa.ca then you put in the text that you want to actually show up, so Toronto Dance Salsa and then close that off. Okay so this page is only going to say Evan’s Cool Resources with the h1 so it will be bigger and then in regular font will show the link to the site.

Okay so this is very bare bones, I can go save as and I am going to put i in the same folder so home page and I am going to call it homepage 2 and here it is important, you want to call it dot htm instead of dot txt which is the default. So save it dot htm okay and it has been saved. Now, if I go to my internet browser, I should be able to click here and put the 2 at the end of it and here is my site. So Evan’s cool Resources Toronto Dance Salsa and if I click on it, that will now work.

If I want it to add the picture in, instead of this text here, a quick way is go img src for source equals put it in quotes and close that off and then we have to go find the picture again so if I just quickly load my Google images, dot com, images, find Toronto Dance Salsa, find that logo, I am going to copy the image URL and as I go back into my note pad,  I am going to paste it in here and now I am going to save it again. Save, then if I go back to here I refresh this page, you see there is a picture and if I load that there is the website. So you can keep going on and add more links and more pictures until you have made it to your satisfaction and you have got a cool list of tools that you use on a regular basis to help save you some time.

If I want to, then set this page as my default, I would copy that link, I would go back to my options and then I would here, paste the link and that would be it. Then in the next time I load my browser, this new page will load instead of the existing one. So, hopefully this is an easy way for you to be able to create your own homepage and if you have any other questions I would be happy to answer them.

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan. If you liked the video please give it a thumbs up. I would also love to hear your thoughts and feedback below if you want to leave a comment and stay tuned for the next episode.