Beginnings are hard, even for the most adventurous characters, and even when the change is positive. Therefore, I empathize with customers who may hesitate before embarking on their website-building journey with Duda, regardless of its intuitive nature and their level of professionalism.

On a task to create a complete guide of our expert-led resources for beginners, a Duda 101 if you will, I turned to our customer education team to provide the ultimate list that will break down the essentials and guide you step by step - setting you on the path to creating stunning websites with confidence. 

So get ready to unravel the secrets of Duda with these indispensable Duda resources and learning materials:

1. Build your first site with Duda - a learning path in Duda U (5 courses)

This learning path provides 5 courses to help you understand the Duda interface and the steps to publish a site, from selecting a template to going live:

• Getting started with Duda - A 45-minute course that overviews the Duda platform and the Duda editor, covers the advantages of the platform and features, explains the importance of planning and goal setting, and explores how to select the right template for your website.
• Responsive Website Builder - A 1.5-hour course that picks up where the previous course left off, taking you from selecting a template all the way through customizing it with our editor. The course overviews the various tools inside the responsive website builder, walks you through how to build beautiful, responsive websites, and how to develop an efficient design workflow.
• Widgets & Layout - A 45 min course for anyone who knows how to choose a template and has created a site with Duda, and now is off to use columns and rows to design the site's layout, wishes to expand the site's functionality by adding and managing widgets and set to finish designing the site.
• Going live - A short 15-minute course for those reaching the step of publishing the site and setting up their site domain. The course includes a pre-publishing checklist as well as troubleshooting potential going-live issues
• DudaFlex - This 1-hour course explores DudaFlex, Duda’s editor that includes advanced design features such as auto layout, multiple element alignment and distribution, responsive size units, and enhanced control over columns. Throughout this course, we will delve into utilizing DudaFlex to harness the full potential of these features and will walk you through developing layouts using the Flex capabilities and generating new Flex section designs effectively.

All these courses include a quiz, a survey, and a summary for your convenience and at the end, you can earn an industry-recognized certification - Duda Certified Platform Specialist certification - by taking a 1-hour test. Once you receive the certification, you’ll receive the badge to display on your website and earn 500 Duda Community points.

2. Duda dashboard overview

This article is an orientation guide to Duda's dashboard—a central hub for overseeing and managing all your sites. Given its prominence within the Duda platform, it is crucial to familiarize yourself with this integral component. The content of the article comprehensively explores the features of the dashboard navigation bar, detailing all available options.

3. Duda site overview

This article, like the previous one, is also an orientation guide to familiarize you with the Site Overview, where you view and manage an individual site.

4. Editor overview

This article provides a detailed exploration of the editor's interface, highlighting its three key segments: the top navigation bar, the left panel, and the content area. Each of these designated sections serves a vital purpose in empowering you to enhance your site's overall appeal, or in other words, making it as awesome as possible, so take the opportunity to educate yourself on these components to maximize your site's potential.

5. Switch views

Our responsive editor lets users preview the website on desktop, tablet, and mobile while editing. This article explains how to switch between these three views to assess the appearance of the site on various devices before publishing, guaranteeing a favorable user experience for your customers, regardless of the device they use to access the site.

6. Edit by device

If you wish to customize content for specific devices, you can utilize our edit-by-device features, allowing you to tailor content for the device the site visitors are using with the exception of the header and footer. For more information, please visit this article. 

7. Manage and import content

This article outlines the various methods available for managing and importing the content that is used across your site, whether you choose to collect content directly from the client or utilize the Media Manager to import and organize content from your computer, social media, or the available free and premium content.

Please note: You can add up to fifteen thousand images, videos, audio clips, and files per site. The image, audio, and file size limit is 50MB per file and the video size limit is 200MB per video.

8. Site theme

This article reviews the Site Theme tool - a major time saver and productivity hack that enables you to implement changes that affect your entire site, including text, colors, buttons, images, background, and navigation widgets, ensuring a consistent design across all site pages.

9. Headers

Given the numerous ways available to manage the style of your header, this article lays out the different header types, such as Shrinking Headers and Sticky Headers, and explains how to change the header layout. Also, be sure to check out this blog post listing 11 tips for designing a great website header.

10. Footer

The footer, positioned at the bottom, serves as the concluding section on every page of the website. It provides a consistent location for crucial links such as terms of service, privacy policy, or social media, ensuring accessibility for site visitors regardless of the page they are navigating. Besides legal links, the footer is an ideal space for displaying copyright information and general contact details.

To learn how to customize the footer and how to hide it, please visit this article.

In addition, check out our blog on website footer design best practices & examples.