Help With Website For My Business Please

-MRS_T-

Hello

I would like to see if I could get some information and help with a website that I am trying to set up for my Dad's new business please.

I have currently bought a website domain name through mr site and have been trying to make a decent looking website through the site builder without much success.

Anything I try and make up doesnt really look that great.

I am only really looking for a small site with about 3-5pages and it will be and info only site ie I do not need a shopping cart or anything fancy like that.

I would appreciate any help anyone could give me with this.

Kind Regards
MRS T

sunshine54

i have some free time. sent you a pm

buglawton

I have been testing free hosting, and copied quite a complicated website to it with shopping cart etc. So far it is working reliably and I may keep it on the free hosting permanently to avoid regular traffic bills from Easily. A simple 3 page site would be very easy to place on free hosting. Have a look at http://www.000webhost.com/ - there seem to be no catches.

-MRS_T-

thank you for your reply buglawton. I really dont understand this hosting malarky lol.

I have been trying to play around with the vistaprint one as I quite liked a few of their templates but I cannot seem to upload any photos to it which is pretty useless as need to be able to do this. It keeps saying file type not supported even though it is.

I definetley need a simple site that I can be able to make changes often which is why I went for mr site but I just dont think the templates are great as I dont feel they look very professional unfortunately

M4RKM

Personally, if you're trying to make a business looking website, and have no clue about web design (i get that from not being able to upload images in the correct format to a template based service), and paying £72 a year for hosting only 5 pages is very very expensive, and are using template based websites, then I'd really say it probably ain't going to create much business for you

This is why there are people in the world dedicated to making websites, and won't use a template, but can create a simple website for you. They're known as Web Designers. I'm sure you could find one to design and host a 3 page website for about £100, which ain't much more than you're paying for hosting alone with only a template based, very limited vistaprint package!

M

buglawton

There are plenty of co's around that will create and host your site. Catches abound. A friend of ours wanted a site for a specialist acupuncture clinic. Despite a lot of shopping around, it still cost £300 for 4 basic pages. Then, every time the wording had to be changed there were fixed fees of £15 a time. Hosting is built-in but expensive compared to self-purchased or free hosting (see my post further up).

A bit more experience (and search engine promotion changes that I advised on which the web master did not do on their own) the same friend needed a 2nd site for a similar associated business. This time she found another web master to to the job and the artistic result is much better (I am told) that it looks like the 1st site has to be redone too.

The shopping around process can be a bit exhausting but worth the effort.

roguetrooper74

Web design can cost a lot of money, I am just starting out and got my first paid job, which paid me £150 and that was just for the site design on one page. As a suggestion I would contact your local college/university and see if they do web design courses. If they do get in touch with the head tutor and see if they have any students needing work experience. This will work out for both parties as you get a free site made for you and the student gets valuable experience. I finished my course last year and we had to do 4 months work experience and several of my classmates did sites for people in your situation and they looked very professional when finished, as all the students had already done 2 and a half years of learning.

M4RKM

I personally design websites that cost about £300 for 5 pages, however, i let my clients control their own webpages, by building them a simple Content Management System.

The log in to their admin pages, and they are able to add in wordings, and change the text to their hearts content, also upload a picture, and put that on the page.

If they mess up and need my help, then I will charge, but normally, most people get the hang of it, and i'm left to carry on building my own portfolio


the other option for people wanting to do good looking pages, is to use wordpress, and use some of the many nice pro looking templates around. I know it is designed as blogging software, but it's got some great power behind it, and the plugins to make it do slightly different things, is amazing!

M