Building a website from home

awesome2_2

Hi:j
My dh wants to setup his own website to sell some of his artwork on and also adverise his expertise. We have not got a clue how to do this. I have googled it and found sites where you can build them for free (even ones for beginners like us), how do I know if these sites are kosher or how do we go about building our own website.
Many Thanks :beer:

Ms-Pacman

i used a program called webpage maker which is very basic to use with no knowledge needed of html. its basically a paint type program that uploads. my site is fightingdebt.co.uk and i created it by using this software. I originally used free space found to upload to but then hated the advertising plastered all over so paid for my own domain name, the most i pay each year for it is £20!

Kailua

Hi,

Not very knowledgable in these matters but would moonfruit be any good. I set up a website yesterday for my family history hobby for free and I noticed that you could use templates for selling and there were paypal buttons to do the payment?

http://www.moonfruit.com/

PS I found out about them through doing the competition via twitter that was advertised. 2.3 m websites have now been set up according to the front page - here is the link to the competition, winners had to set up websites about where they would like to fly too.

http://www.moonfruit.com/flymeto.html

and here is the link to the competition winners so you can see what their websites were like

http://www.moonfruitlounge.com/post/2009/11/06/flymeto-creative-website-competition-10-top-and-winners

Kind Regards
Rachel

camron1102

you can try Google Page Creator. It is a simple, free tool that allows you to publish your webpage.

timmmers

What would he want to put on this site ? A Gallery of images or some way to actually sell them from the site on a cart..or both ?

It's quite easy to obtain a gallery template ...in this type of site a flash one works well...stops people nicking your images and usually updates very simply for a novice running the site. Upload the pic, the name of the file becomes the caption.

If your other half puts a set of pics in a folder roughly the amount he wants on the site...and checks the folder filesize it will give him an idea how much space the site will take as a bare minimum.

If you don't know anything about web design, don't start now with a site that you intend to make money from...much better to use a content management system like Wordpress or Joomla which you can login to and use quite like a word processor to update your site. No coding required. Just getting used to the system.

Many hosts can easily supply all you need from domain to site tools for less than a tenner a month ..and some get lower if you pay for a year at once. Cheap enough not to need to mess with crappy ones anyway. A bad host will let you down.
Use a host with a telephone number you can ring preferably in the UK.
Heart aren't bad at all and are cheap as you can see here ;-
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/web-hosting/

I had dealings with their support a while back for a customer and they were really good.

t

Something like this wouldn't be hard to set up to show images ...that's what this demo does.
http://demo.tufat.com/dali_gallery/red_skin/index.html

cuppajoe

I wouldn't go through the time and effort into creating your own site from scratch until you know that you're going to be successful.

Instead I would list your works through an art portal where you can build your own micro site within their established website. This way you are guaranteed traffic as the site is already established.

http://www.theartistsweb.co.uk/Sell-Art look like a potential option. UK based and seem to have quite a few artists in various fields. Call or email them with your questions and concerns. They should be able to help.

timmmers

cuppajoe wrote: »

I wouldn't go through the time and effort into creating your own site from scratch until you know that you're going to be successful.

Instead I would list your works through an art portal where you can build your own micro site within their established website. This way you are guaranteed traffic as the site is already established.

http://www.theartistsweb.co.uk/Sell-Art look like a potential option. UK based and seem to have quite a few artists in various fields. Call or email them with your questions and concerns. They should be able to help.

Yeah, that's good advice. Deviantart are good too.

t

Bermuda_John

i have built 5 websites from scratch and had no knowledge of html

I bought the domain through go daddy and you get a website builder with it. they also give you over 200 tmeplates to use

you simply type wha tyou want and it converts it to html

i have 1 site at

1 of 70 million
1 of 40 million
1 of 9 million

on google

im trying to get https://www.rankfirstingoogle.com at 1 of 410,000,000!!!!! Just for fun! I set it up yesterday so i am hoping to do it before xmas!

Sparhawke

I am planning on doing this myself in the near future and have recently started looking into the pro's and con's of free domain hosting vs paid and I really don't like the whole idea of free hosts, while they may give you an idea they really wouldn't be suited for you I suspect due to the bandwidth you get, a few large graphics will eat up your allowance quite easily, you will find it hard to get traffic to come to such a place and if your provider goes belly up you will simply have to start all over again. For example there was a huge furor some time back when AOL took down its free hosting and thousands of people lost their sites...and all the time it took to build a loyal footfall.

Getting your own domain-name would be far better, it can be whatever you wish it to be or you can simply buy an existing one from others...though this can run into many pounds depending on what it is, obviously art.com will not be picked up for the price of an ice-cream but there is always the option of registering or buying art.biz if it is available

It shouldn't cost you that much, maybe £10 per year to rent the domain name, you can move it around to other registrars at will if you wish and it will simply follow you for as long as your pithy payment may allow, I think the maximum is 10 years, but 10 years for £100 has to be a good thing?

The biggest cost really is actually hosting your website and though they have come down massively over the last few years...(if you do PTC sites you will probably earn enough to put into your paypal account to pay these charges)...and if you get some related advertisers on your site that pay per page impression (though it is tiny) it will all build up as traffic to your site hopefully builds up.

This is a wonderful resource that i have been taking a look at over the last couple of months, it has given me some great hints from someone who has been there and done all the mistakes himself

http://www.thesitewizard.com

Good Luck

PS, my wanted domain-name will cost me £25 plus hosting costs or so if I can convince the holder to sell it, but it is a real bargain for what I want it for, and with a building traffic flow it will in time start to pay for itself with advertisement

awesome2_2

Ms-Pacman wrote: »

i used a program called webpage maker which is very basic to use with no knowledge needed of html. its basically a paint type program that uploads. my site is fightingdebt.co.uk and i created it by using this software. I originally used free space found to upload to but then hated the advertising plastered all over so paid for my own domain name, the most i pay each year for it is £20!

Hi Thanks for the reply could you post a link please so I could have a look at you website.:T

Bermuda_John

go daddy do free hosting and offer the website tonight program

simply buy the doamin and include NO extras should cost £7 and thats it or £9 if you chose private registration so no one know who owns your site ie

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

www.rankfirstingoogle.com