Thing 9: Creating a Protopage page

Below you will find step by step instructions to creating a Protopage start page. If you would prefer you are welcome to try out any of the other start pages you have come across instead.

 Go to www.protopage.com

Your first impression will probably be of something very messy. Don’t worry. it will look fine when you've tidied it up.

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Protopage initial start page

Register your page and choose a name for it by clicking on the link at top left and completing the form. You will need to respond to an activation e-mail so choose an email address you can access. You will also need to decide if you want your page public or private. You can always change this later.

Now delete most or all of the existing widgets and ads by clicking the X button in their top right corners. Unfortunately the ads do come back when you move away from the page but they are fairly unobtrusive. 

You will end up with a page which looks something like this:

Now for the fun part.

Have a look at the Colors/Settings tab and choose which colours and wallpaper you like.

Practice adding an extra tab by clicking on the New Tab tab. Give the tab a name by clicking in the box and  typing then choose a colour and layout for the tab by clicking on the dropdown menu.

When you are happy with the colours and layout add some widgets to the page.

To see the list of available widgets, click the 'Add widgets' button at the top of the page then select a widget from the pop-up menu or click on "Explore the Widget Showcase" to see more. When you select a widget from the pop-up menu you will need to drag it onto your page.
NB: For this Thing please select Widgets from the bottom half of the menu rather than adding feeds in the top part of the menu. We will look at adding RSS feeds in the next Thing

Widgets are arranged into columns according to how you have set up your tab options. You can drag and drop them to re-arrange them by clicking and dragging the title bar. You can also resize them by dragging the corner.


Some widgets have settings that you can edit. For example, a weather widget will let you choose your city by clicking 'edit'.

Experiment with the different widgets. For example you can add sticky notes on your page. To edit the text, simply click inside the widget and start typing. You can also add to-do lists, calendars, photos, and much more. Be sure to try out the Protopuppy widget


If you decide a widget is no longer wanted you can remove it by clicking the 'x' button as we did to get a clear page to start with.

RBH Protopage

The picture above show the Royal Berkshire Hospital Library's Protopage  with some handy widgets which is under development as an alternative to Netvibes. How does your page compare?