This hub explains, shows with videos and guides you step-by-step how to build your own website for free using the award winning and one of the word's most popular FREE website creation tools on earth that I see many people don't even know about!

If you find this hub useful and valuable in some way, or if you think there is something missing, feel free to add your comments. I'll be happy to make it even better and even more info rich.

Side note: When I say "build your own website", I am referring to building and managing a website that is hosted on your own unique domain name such as "your-domain.com".

I am NOT referring to uploading some replicated or generic websites that usually come with master resell rights for some eBook or some other product. I am also not referring to opening and managing your »profile« sites such as for example Facebook, MySpace, Hubpages, Squidoo and others.

(Sure, these sites too should definitely be included into your traffic mix, but I think you agree that having your own website hosted on your own domain name (e.g. www.your-domain-name.com ) is almost a "must have" today. There are many reasons why and it is also covered here in this hub.)

The first part of this hub is mainly focused on introducing this amazing cool tool to you, including:

• what features it supports,
• what are the benefits of using it, and
• why you should seriously consider using it for your online business adventures

Plus, I have also included a few practical examples how you can use and implements these featues into your online business.

In the second part I'll show you step-by-step how you actually start using it and how to actually build a website using this amazing tool.

You don't know it yet, but once you absorb the contents of this hub and you realize what an amazing tool this is, I am sure you will be literally "screaming" to learn more and everything about what you're about to discover here.

Facebook, Hubpages, YouTube, Squidoo and other popular "social media" sites can definitely be a great and effective tools for building relationship with your target audience, for gaining exposure and publicity, and to even make some extra money (e.g. affiliate links, AdSense..).

However, having your own website(s), hosted on your own unique domain name(s) (e.g. www.your-domain.com) is one of the key long-term assets you can have as an online business owner. There are many reasons for that and I'll list just the one that currently seems to most important one -- By having your own website, you can capture contact info of your visitors!

Side note:If anything else comes to your mind, as I am sure it will, I encourage you to share it with us in the comment capsule below.

If you're into Internet marketing, I would bet you've heard some marketer saying "the money is in the email list", havent't you? :)

While it is true email open rates and click-throughs have decreased over the past few years, you can and will make far more money by growing your own email list, than ny not growing it :)

One of the first reasons why having your own website is so very crucial for your online business is because on your website, you can capture personal and contact info (First name, last name, email...) of your visitors so you can later get in touch with them even when they leave you website.

Once you have their contact information, you can then follow up with them and build a relationship with them either automated follow-up system or through email newsletter that you send out on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

There are literally hundreds of different ways how you can make money on the Internet today and I'm sure you have at least a few. But here comes the trick -- no matter which one of your new Internet business ideas you choose to bring into reality, you need a website.

The way I see it, knowing how to build your own website for free by yourself without ever paying expensive programmers or designers (unless you really need them), and without ever buying or upgrading licenses to some expensive software is one of the key skills you can gain as home Internet business owner.

Just think about it - once you know how to build and manage one single website, this knowledge stays yours forever and you can build another one, and another one, and another one and so forth.

Lets have a fair deal here - you take care for your business ideas and how you will monetize your website(s), and I'll do my best to show you here and share with you how to build, manage and maintain your own websites even if you currently have no »website design" and "programming" experiences or skills and even if you are complete computer dummy!

So, are you ready :) ?

Ever since I have been involved in web design and Internet marketing, I have yet to find website design software, application or a tool that would do the entire "job" of building and managing websites so easy and so very effective as Joomla does it.

When I was first introduced with Joomla, my eyes were wide opened. When I realized how powerful website creation tool Joomla actually is, it wasn't hard to understand why it won so many awards.

In simple words, Joomla is one of the most powerful open source content management systems on the whole planet. No, really! As you will see in this hub, Joomla is easy to install and probably even easier to manage.

And the best of all, you can use Joomla to build and manage everything from a simple website to a complex corporate web application. For example, you can use Joomla to build and manage:

• Typical direct response "sales-letter" website or "mini-site" for (re)selling single product or service (e.g. info product, software...)
• E-commerce site or product catalogue website with shopping cart if you're selling multiple products
• Blog and other types of content focused website if you're publishing lots of fresh content (articles, news, videos) and placing ads (e.g. Google AdSense...) or affiliate links into your content
• Website with multiple landing pages for your individual pay-per-click advertising campaigns
• Personal or business blog with commenting system
• Paid or free membership website where only registered users can access certain areas of your website
• Community website with forums and users profiles
• MLM website to present your mlm business and products
• Fan-club website, family website, music band website
• Plus much much more

In fact, the only limitation how you can use Joomla for your online business adventures is your imagination. You don't know it yet, but you too will soon realize Joomla is one of the best (if not the best) tools for building and managing websites like probably no other website creation tool on earth. Period!

But you don't need to believe on my words. If you've been into the Internet marketing or any other type online business, I am sure you've at least heard of tools for building your own websites or blogs such as WordPress, MovableType, Blogger or Mambo.

Just for fun, here is what Google Trends is saying when I last compared the popularity of several popular tools for building and managing your own website for free. The graph below shows trends comparison chart for WordPress, MovableType, Mambo, Blogger and -- Joomla :)

Joomla is loaded with most of the hottest features available today that enable everyone to become with little or no real skills to build and manage an empire of business websites.

Its powerful features can be used for creating and managing any type of websites, from little and simple websites, blogs and sales letter website to big and complex portals and web applications.

There are so many features in Joomla and so many benefits Joomla will bring to your online business, it is almost impossible to list all of them here. But I'll do my best anyway :)

Before we jump into the meat of this hub, let me first point out something very important here -- Joomla is FREE in a true meaning of the word "free".

Joomla is an open source software released under General Public License which simply means it is completely free of charge to download and use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes!

In simple words, you don't have to pay even a cent to use it for your personal and commercial needs and wants. You may use Joomla, change it, adapt it to your needs and add any modifications to its code you want. No only that, you may freely distribute it and you may even also charge for that service.

The only thing you however must not do in any case is to pretend Joomla is yours or your work. You must not charge people under any condition for Joomla as a software itself because it's free!

For example, when I and my team are building websites in Joomla for our clients, we are actually not selling Joomla as software itself. Joomla is free. We're simply selling our service, knowledge, experiences and time.

If something is too complicated to understand and use, we usually just don't use it (unless there is really no other better way).

Although you probably won't become Joomla expert in a day, it sure won't take long for you to realize and understand what Joomla can do for you and your online business(es), and how much time and money you'll save and gain by using Joomla for building and managing your own virtual real-estates -- websites.

Since installing Joomla on hosting account space and connecting it with your domain name will not take you more than a few minutes, you'll be able to get a brand new website or blog up and running in less than 15 minutes.

Once you upload installation files to your hosting account, easy-to-follow web based installation wizard guides you step by step through entire installation process. We'll get to that a little later.

Once your Joomla website is up and ready, the only two basic requirements to manage it (e.g. add a new page, add a new navigation menu link, post a new article, add new products...) are:

1. web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox), and
2. Internet connection

This way you can manage your website from any public computer, from a hotel room, from your office, from your home or from you best friend's laptop. It makes no difference.

Easy to use administration area is a password protected control panel of your website that allows you to easily control and manage every single aspect of your entire website, including:

• Configuration of your website
• Navigation menus
• Design templates
• Articles, news, blog posts, product pages and other content items
• Images, videos and other media files
• User accounts
• Third-party extensions
• And much much more

With Joomla you won't ever have to write or edit a single line of HTML or any other codes, unless you of course want to do so. Joomla uses WYSIWYG editors (What You See Is What You Get) that make designing, formatting and editing your pages (news, blog posts, articles, sales-letters, product pages...) as easy and friendly as using Microsoft Word or any other popular text formatting software.

The same goes for inserting images, videos, links and other web elements into your pages. Click, click, click, click...

Joomla has several managers built in that let you painlessly manage, copy, edit, move, delete, trash, publish, unpublish and archive items on your website with ease, including:

• navigation menus
• individual navigation links
• pages (product pages, articles, news, blog posts...)
• design templates
• registered users
• plus much much more

And the best of all - all these managers work in similar fashion. Once you know how to use one, you know how to use all of them.

Manually wasting your time with graphics, colors, buttons, text styles and other things that affect the overall look of your website is one of those things that can eat away up to 80% of your precious time, but doesn't bring even 20% of the end results -- profits.

Joomla comes with very useful Template manager that allows you to change the layout (colors, borders, buttons, positioning, text styles...) of your entire website and all pages within it in a few mouse clicks without even touching and affecting the content itself.

The best of all, there are hundreds and hundreds of free templates available on the Internet which you can freely download, install in a few mouse clicks and use on your website without ever paying a cent.

If you already own any kind of Internet business (selling or promoting products/services/opportunities) and you're also building your email list (are you?:) ) you'll absolutely love this one.

With Joomla you can easily capture real email addresses of your visitors 24/7 without you ever lifting a finger.This way you can grow your email list on a complete auto-pilot.

For example, you can easily set any links, pages and any other information within your website to be visible and accessible only by visitors how register and confirm their email address. And the best of all, Joomla automatically does everything for you.

For example, once a visitor fills out a simple registration form, Joomla automatically sends him/her an email with activation link which he/she must then click to confirm his/her email address and to access content that is set for registered users only.

Once he/she clicks this activation link, he/she can log into your website and access content set for registered users only.

All users who register are stored into your website's database where you can easily edit them, email them and even export them for the usage with external email follow up and newsletter providers such as Aweber or GetResponse.

Again, the entire user registration process is done on a complete auto-pilot for you and it the same as everywhere else today. (e.g. Creating a new account/profile on Facebook, MySpace, Hubpages, Squidoo...)

One of the reasons why search engine spiders and human visitors (will) keep coming back to your website is fresh, interesting, valuable or entertaining content such as articles, blog posts, news, videos, guides, tutorials...

Not only Joomla allows you to control what pages, links and other information on your website registered users are allowed to access and view. With Joomla you can also let registered users to easily submit (and even publish) content directly into one of content categories of your Joomla website!

Once a user submits content through simple web form and WYSIWYG editor on your public website, you simply log into control panel of your website, review it (or edit it if needed) and then simply click "Publish" action button to publish it if it meets your publishing requirements or criteria.

You can even allow certain users who you trust to publish content to your website without you or anyone else even reviewing it prior the publishing. Try to think about how you could use this amazing "content submission" feature.

For example, here are just a few ways how you could use.

• You could invite (or perhaps even reward somehow) your visitors, existing customers, clients or newsletter subscribers to write and publish their own blogs on your website
• You could invite them to post articles to your website (their own or from article directories)
• You could invite them to write and publish short news from your industry or niche
• You could invite them to post interesting videos from YouTube or other videos sites
• ...

Another great feature of Joomla is that you can allow other people manage certain features of your website.

This way you can easily give an access to certain people to the control panel of your website so they can manage and publish news, pages, articles, product offers, special discounts, menu links and other website elements by themselves without you having to do everything by yourself.

For example, such individuals might be:

• your employees
• your co-workers
• your business partners
• your spouse
• your friends
• your clients
• freelance or ghost writers you hired
• guest bloggers
• ...

Here's another example how useful this feature can be. When we're building websites for our clients, 95% of them also want to be able to add new pages, news and other stuff to their website by themselves.

No problem. I simply create separate user accounts for them so they don't bug me and my team every time they want to publish a new company news, article, blog post or new product :)

Although Joomla by default already comes with lots of useful tools and features that make building and managing your website(s) a whole lot easier and simpler, another great benefit that you'll absolutely love about Joomla are third-party extensions.

In simple words, extensions are applications developed and maintained by third-party programmers, software developers and companies from all over the world that you can install into your Joomla website in a few mouse clicks.

This way you can add a new very useful feature, tool or functionality to your website without you ever writing a single line of code and without ever paying expensive programmers.

For example, here are just a few of the coolest extensions you can install and add to your website:

• Online auction systems, shopping carts, product catalogues, payment systems...
• community forums, guest books, commenting systems, mailing lists, online chats
• image galleries, video galleries...
• plus much much more

There are currently more than 2,700 third-party extensions available that you can easily install into your Joomla website in a few mouse clicks.

The best of all, most of these extensions are completely free of charge to download and use on your website for both commercial and non-commercial usage. While you'll find some of them also payable, I've yet to find a commercial extension that would not be worth its money.

Please note again that there are just too many benefits Joomla will bring to your online business that it's almost impossible to list and describe all of them here. What you've seen above is just a tip of an iceberg, really!

Adding "Internal" search engine to your website or blog will not only make your website more "user-friendly", but it is also one of the best ways of getting into the minds of your visitors. Let me explain...

As you'll see in the video below, internal search engine lets you see what your visitors want, what info or solutions they're searching for and even what problems they might have which you can solve.

"Internal" search engine is a "must have" feature of any website with more than 15 pages and allows your visitors to search your website in case they want to find something specific. For example, an article, news, price of your product, your contact info or some other information within your website.

Plus, having an internal search engine on your website is just another way of ensuring that your visitors find information on your website as fast and as easy as possible.

Here comes the most interesting part. Joomla already comes with "easy to use" internal search engine. The only thing you need to do in order to add search functionality to your website is to publish Search module into one of available module positions. That's it. See the video below.

Now when you know at least a few beneficial reasons why you should consider using Joomla and what Joomla can do for your online business, it is time to go step-by-step how to install and start experiencing all the powers of Joomla.

There are 4 steps to installing Joomla onto your web server and they won't take you more than 5-10 minutes. Once you are done with installation, your new Joomla website is installed, the rest of the steps are focused on setting its layout by installing a new template, adding navigation links to it, product descriptions, articles, news, pages or anything else you need to add before your website goes public.

We'll get to that a little later.

The first thing to do is to download onto your computer core files of the latest stable version of Joomla. As of writing this hub, the latest stable version was 1.0.14.

Joomla core files are system files which are required to install and run Joomla on your web server. You can download Joomla here at the official website.

You will probably notice that there is already a new version 1.5 available to download, but you will however want to use version 1.0.14 because most of the third-party extensions have not yet been adopted to work with version 1.5.

Since this will probably take while to happen, I recommend you download and use version 1.0.14.

Once you have downloaded Joomla core files onto your computer, transfer and upload these files into the corresponding directory on your hosting account web server.

For example, if you wanted a home page of your Joomla website to be accessible at www.your-domain.com, you would upload Joomla core files into the root directory of your domain name.

Side note: One of the most common "every-day tasks" when building and managing your websites is managing your web files.

There are two ways to manage your web files or to transfer them between your computer and your hosting account web server. You can either use any FTP software or you can use File manager tool in your hosting account control panel.

Joomla is dynamic and database driven application, this is why you need at least one MySQL database to install and use it. Since most website hosting plans include at least 2 MySQL databases, this should not be a problem.

Once you upload Joomla core files to your web server, log into your hosting account control panel, go to MySQL Databases tool and then create a new database and a user that can connect and work with this database. Creating a new database and a user should not take you more than 3 to 5 minutes.

Once you have transferred Joomla core files to your web server and created a new MySQL database, run a web based installation wizard that will guide you step-by-step through the final steps of the installation process.

To run installation wizard, open your web browser and visit URL address under your domain name where you have uploaded Joomla core files.

For example, if you uploaded Joomla core files into:

• "public_html" directory on your hosting web server, you would type in and visit "www.your-domain.com"
• "blog" sub-directory under your "public_html" directory, you would visit "www.your-domain.com/blog/"
• "support" sub-domain name, you would visit "support.your-domain.com"

Please note that once you install Joomla, it is not yet ready to go public. Before it goes public and you start promoting it, you'll probably want to set its layout by installing a new design template, add few pages (about us, sales-letter, product descriptions, articles...) and then link all these using navigation menu. So, lets go do that :)

As you know by now, Joomla is a web-based website creation and management tool that you can manage directly from your web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox.

The next thing you should know is that your Joomla website is divided into two areas:

1. public website, and
2. control panel

In simple words, while everyone can access, view and browse your "public" website, control panel is password protected and is accessible only by you as a Super Administrator (owner, maintainer) or other users which you can also give an access to if you want to. Here is where you have complete control over your website.

You can access control panel of your website 24 hours a day and 7 days a week from any computer with Internet connection. It is located in sub-directory named "administrator" under your Joomla root directory.

To log into and access control panel of your website, open your web browser and visit:

• www.your-domain.com/administrator/ (if Joomla is installed in the root of your domain name)
• www.your-domain.com/pets/administrator/ (if Joomla is installed in sub directory named "pets")
• blog.your-domain.com/administrator/ (if Joomla is installed in sub-domain name "blog")

One of many benefits Joomla brings to your Internet business is that you can easily change design layout of your entire website (how it looks) and all web pages within it in no more than a few mouse clicks.

Try to imagine how much time you would spend if you wanted to change design layout of your entire website, but you had to manually edit and "redesign" each of 100 web pages within your website.

There are hundreds of templates freely available on the Internet which you can freely download, install and use on your website at no charge.

Simply install a new design template using Template Installer, set it as default one in Template Manager and there you go -- you have just changed design layout of all web pages within your website in less then 3 minutes.

Again, it doesn't matter if your website contains 2, 40, 200 or 1045 articles, news, blog posts and other web pages. Once you set a new design template as default one in Template Manager, this template applies to all pages within your website.

Side note #1: Template Manager is just one of the managers in Joomla. It enables you to manage design templates for both, your public website and control panel as well. Once new template is installed, you can change visual layout of all web pages within your public website or control panel in a few mouse clicks. Joomla already comes with a few default design templates, but there are many templates on the Internet freely available to download, install and use on your website.

Side note #2: Installers are simple interfaces used for installing/uninstalling Joomla third-party extensions such as templates and languages.

Installing a new extension or removing existing ones is simple and work in similar fashion to installing new programs onto your PC, Mac or laptop. Once you download an extension, it won't take you more than 2 mouse clicks to install it and add new functionality to your website.

As you can see below, all you need to do in order to install a new template to third-party extensions is to select a ZIP file of an item you wish to install and hit button "Upload file and Install". Everything else is done automatically behind the curtains.

You can have as many different templates installed in your Template manager as you want and you can even assign different templates to your menu links in your navigation menus.

For example, you can have template A set as default one, but you can assign template B to "About me" menu link. This way your entire website will be designed based on template A, but as soon as your visitors click menu link pointing to your "About me" page, template B will take place. (Because you assigned template B to your "About me" menu link)

Organizing pages within your Joomla website is very similar to organizing your documents, music songs, photos and videos on your PC.

For example, if you want to keep documents on your computer well organized so you can easily find, browse and manage them without getting lost, it is a very good idea to organize and group related ones into folders/directories. It is very similar with pages in Joomla.

If you throw product pages, your blog posts, articles, news, promotions, tutorials, interviews, videos, reviews, legal pages and all other web pages into the "same basket", your website will sooner or later become one big unorganized jungle of web pages where nobody will find an easy way around.

When organizing and planning pages within your Joomla website, think about what type of content-related pages will you be adding and publishing on your website besides general pages such as "About me/us" and "Contact me/us" and legal pages such as "Term us use" and others.

Content-related web pages are simply web pages which you can group and organize into categories based. Here are the most common content-related web pages:

• Product pages (where you show, present and explain your individual products)
• Articles
• News
• Blog posts
• Newsletter Archives
• Tutorials
• Video pages
• Sales-letters
• Interviews with other people
• Product/service reviews
• Guides of all types (city guides, country guides, product guides, service guides...)
• Success stories and case studies
• Testimonials of your customers, clients, visitors, newsletter subscriber testimonials...
• Special offers and promotions (Sales-letters, time-limited promotions...)
• Pay-per-Click landing pages
• ...

Once you have determined what type of content you will be publishing on your website, organizing your content into well structured and easy to browse website will literally be piece of cake.

Plus, once you determine what type of content you will be adding to your website in the future and how you will organize it, it will be very easy for you to create and add an "easy-to-follow" navigation menus to your website.

When it comes to organizing your web pages in Joomla, you have two options:

1. Static Content
2. Dynamic Content

The best practice is to organize your general pages (About us, Terms of use, Privacy policy, Earnings disclaimer, 404 Error page...) as "Static Content", while it is very recommended you organize your articles, news and other content-related pages as "Dynamic Content".

When you create web pages as Static Content, all web pages are located and organized in the "same basket". But when you create your web pages as Dynamic Content, your web pages are organized into Sections and Categories.

In simple words, a Section contains one or more Categories, while a Category contains individual content items as shown below.

Managing Sections, Categories and Content items is in Joomla very simple -- click and type.

Once you've created at least one section and a category, its time to add your first few pages to your website. To add a new page, go to either Content Items Manager or Static Content Manager and then

1. Click New action button
2. Set a title and name of your new content item
3. Format body text by using "easy-to-use" WYSIWYG editor
4. Set a few publishing settings and
5. hit Save action button.
6. That's it -- your new content item is published on your website

Once you've created at least one section and category, and you've also already added a few pages, the next step is to create and add navigation menus to your website so visitors will be able to easily browse your website.

Side note: As you probably know, there are two types of visitors that will be visiting your website:

• human visitors and
• search engine spiders.

Both human visitors and search engine spiders use and heavily rely on "links" to browse, navigate and find web pages within your website.

Since navigation menu is nothing but a group of one or more links pointing to inner web pages, it is very important to give human visitors and spiders an effective guidance system in the form of navigation menu so they will easily browse your website without getting lost somewhere on the road.

Your main navigation menu should allow human visitors and spiders to reach every single page within your website (which you want to be found and browsed) from any page in 2 or at most 3 mouse clicks/jumps.

You can have as many navigation menus as you like and you can place them into several different positions on your website.

For example, you can use one of your navigation menus as your "main" menu for the most important links and you can also have another one positioned at the top or bottom of your web pages for other links such as "Search" and "Site map" to name just a few.

Once you have outlined structure of your web pages, grab your mouse and then:

1. go to Menu manager
2. creating at least one navigation menu
3. start adding menu links into it.

As you will see in training guides and training videos of Website Secrets Video Course, there are several types of link you can add to to your navigation menu and it probably can't be easier to manage your navigation menus and links using Menu manager.

This hub is basically just a tip of an iceberg when it comes to using Joomla for your online business, but you probably already realize by now that there are trully many benefits Joomla will bring to your online business. With Joomla alone, you'll:

• save lots of your valuable time that you would otherwise spend doing things manually, and also
• save lots of your money that you would otherwise spend for buying software or hiring expensive programmers or designers

There are many books and resources available on the Internet, which will teach you how to build, manage and grow your own Internet empire of websites using Joomla. One of them is Website Secrets Video Course - which "stands out of the crowd" in some way. Why, you ask?

Besides 190+ page text guide packed full with practical tips, trick and strategies, you also get more than 40+ easy to follow training videos (similar to the ones on the hub, but in higher quality and larger resolution) that will take you by your hand, guide you step by step and show you everything you need to know to start, manage and grow your own Internet empire of websites using Joomla.

To watch all training videos of Website Secrets Video Course, simply follow this link to its website: Make Your Own Website For Free

Don't forget - you absorb, retain and remember up to 80% of what you see, hear and experience, but only 10% to 20% of what you read.

By watching training videos, you won't only learn and absorb new information and knowledge easier and much better than by reading it, but you will also memorize and master new information, skills and knowledge 10 times faster.