Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

PasturesNew

fc123 - you see, it's about control of the domain, the logins.

If you had the ftp, login, password then if all you wanted to do was swap out two pictures you could do it in 2 minutes flat. That's why it's important you 'own the land' that your business is built on.

With a CMS, swapping out a picture would be easy as pie - and ftp's always an option too. Lots of choices, easy user interface... poke and hope usually works with an intuitive CMS.

Being able to adopt a poke and hope approach, without breaking anything, is important in my opinion, because you enable the person to do it for themselves easily - and gain confidence. Confidence then brings ideas, ideas breed development, development creates growth. And it's all part of the life-cycle of a business.

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

I can say it now ... I saw fc's old website and it wasn't a functional sales machine, it was something "designed". The design was more important than usability and accessibility of the products for browsing.

I do love Wordpress. I'd be tempted to say: use a Wordpress framework, get a company that develops on that and get them to bung in a straight forward open source good cart. I've never understood "reinventing the wheel" that seems to go on so often. Wordpress has millions of installations and won an award in 2009 for the best open source CMS.

Shop code will just slot straight into a page.

Job's a good 'un.

All a website consists of is:
- a domain name
- hosting, that's like a HD in the Internet for your files
- a way to hold and manage the content
- a design

It's when people start doing one-off stuff that the price goes silly and then the issue is that you need them to do anything for you.

One thing to check if you do get anybody to do it is: Who owns the code? Take these scenarios:

A] You fall out with the bloke and won't pay his bill, he takes down your website and refuses to hand anything over to you .... did you ever 'own' it, or were you simply paying him for his time to develop it, but with him keeping the copyright.
B] Your bloke goes AWOL, hosting bill isn't paid for by him, how the heck do you get your site back up and running?

You really need to:
- own the domain name yourself, with all the logins yourself
- own and pay for the hosting yourself.

You can give the bloke logins to work on it, but you need to retain control of the domain name and hosting at least. Which just leaves "who OWNS the design and the code".

Wordpress is just a framework. There are others of course. But here's a site that's built around that existing framework: http://www.champagnewarehouse.com/

A lot of blue-chips use it too. It's rapid, robust development. Ford used it on their microsite http://www.ford.com/vehicles/auto-shows

Not trying to "sell it to you", it's just I think a lot of people don't realise that it's a real contestant these days.

fab fab fab......thanks so much. I don't own the site and the domains were meant to be reg'd to me but aren't. I did a domain search to check

My brother still has my .com and .co.uk as Demon mucked upon the transfer but I think that was fate saving me.

As I now own .uk.com (which I like) we can set one up and see what it's like.........then I have to work out how to get q****uk.com directed to it as it's on all my tickets.

The bit about the 750k mess up scares me too....as could be us one day.

I will spec something out tomo......as I am getting looks from OH...it's Friday and he's been up since 5am and now has energy for you know what .....how?

fc123

tomterm8 wrote: »

If I were setting up a web business, I think a content management system is certainly the way to go, rather than bespoke. With a little tweeking you can have a business up and running very quickly and cheaply.

There are other CMS than wordpress, but wordpress is good. It is designed to be quite SEO friendly, too.

Really, setting up the web site should be the easiest part of the deal. Advertising your web site, and getting people to buy, is more difficult.

I have the opposite problem as I sell on a corp online so get traffic from that. I have to get a grip now as we applied for something quite mega this week (that I want really really badly hence the stressy posts tonight) that is also online.

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

I just googled for clothes shops themes, as a starting point. First one to come up was this:

http://themeforest.net/item/the-clothes-shop-wordpress-ecommerce/64132

Ignore what it looks like, this is just showing you how Wordpress as a CMS can be used to power an e-commerce store for a clothing supplier. So we're talking here of:

- Wordpress as the CMS
- some other basic functionalities, as required
- an e-commerce solution
- a theme (design)

Reading the blurb:
- optional blog alongside the shop
- flexible product display with videos and images
- customer wishlist

The e-commerce spec: http://www.sarah-neuber.de/NWS_shopping_cart.pdf
The theme spec: http://www.sarah-neuber.de/TF/TheClothesShop_features.pdf

Not saying "get this", just showing you an example.

The price there is for the theme, Wordpress is free. Not sure what other costs would be involved (SSL?). Domain name you'd need and hosting.

Shouldn't be more than a few days and a fistful of fivers.

This is where I get confused with the e commerce spec....I really struggle to fully understand it....but my freelance stylist/photographer/techy guy can work it all out.

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

This stuff, finding the building blocks, outlining the ideas ... is what I love. Brainstorming systems, systems analysis, marketing and ideas.

I recently did a Uni level e-commerce course... hated it. What I found out was: I never ever want to create/build an e-commerce site

It was hideously dull.

Maybe if I did one I'd feel differently, but I am not really interested in getting involved in 'the build', just looking at the possibilities and how things can be achieved.

That's why I enjoyed my project management work mostly - I wasn't actually 'doing' any of the work, just steering and advising and consulting ... and making sure the thing worked and was delivered on time to budget.

So you could manage a web project...do you know how many 'me's' are out there?....and I am actually (tho I say so meself) quite up on techy stuff compared to most in my field...we are too busy making and thinking in 3D.

One company (husband /wife team) are being done 25k by the cold call guy......they just don't 'get' google and so on.

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

....then I have to work out how to get q****uk.com directed to it as it's on all my tickets.

What one would normally do is: go to the website where you registered the domain, login to your account, find that domain, poke about in the settings to find an option to redirect it, then type in where you want to redirect it to... every interface is a bit different though ... and I'm guessing you might not have that login etc right now.

This year I've had one host go completely under and managed to get my domain name moved across to me with another registrar, but I lost all the content, that's because that host wasn't really that good and it was my very earliest/first website. It was so old-fashioned that I just stopped bothering with it except for emails. I must rebuild it, but I want to move the domain name across to 123.

Domains and hosting should always be with big sites. It's easy to get sucked into cheaper prices, but bigger boys would at least disappear gracefully, with somebody else stepping into the breach. Smaller companies just stop paying their bills and disappear.

I've got about 30 domains with 123, one with powerdnn, one with ... er, somebody else, I forget now

For hosting, I'm using eukhost, bluehost and powerdnn.

I've got well over 700 passwords and logins now that I use for all my online memberships, domains, websites I am a member of etc. I made sure I gathered them all together finally earlier this year when I lost my email domain.

Next I lost my main website - the one that keeps churning out money. The host got bought out - and the new owners migrated my site - but it didn't work. So they migrated it back and I had to quickly find another host that could take on a specialised CMS I run... which itself was a pain in the butt from month 1 but by the end of that month I'd already spent a month setting it all up so you keep going with things once you're in that deep.

It's been an odd year.



But I still love Wordpress.

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

So you could manage a web project...do you know how many 'me's' are out there?....and I am actually (tho I say so meself) quite up on techy stuff compared to most in my field...we are too busy making and thinking in 3D.

One company (husband /wife team) are being done 25k by the cold call guy......they just don't 'get' google and so on.

25 years' IT, installation, training, helpdesk, helpdesk manager, 10 years' project management, web project manager, e-learning web project manager, image library manager, UK agent for an international online digital library, internet marketing assistant, article-writer, SEO optimiser, PPC campaign setup/management/analysis, my 'half a degree' with the OU in databases/data modelling, programming, html/css, web usability, e-commerce ....

I could probably manage a web project.

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

fc123 - you see, it's about control of the domain, the logins.

If you had the ftp, login, password then if all you wanted to do was swap out two pictures you could do it in 2 minutes flat. That's why it's important you 'own the land' that your business is built on.

With a CMS, swapping out a picture would be easy as pie - and ftp's always an option too. Lots of choices, easy user interface... poke and hope usually works with an intuitive CMS.

Being able to adopt a poke and hope approach, without breaking anything, is important in my opinion, because you enable the person to do it for themselves easily - and gain confidence. Confidence then brings ideas, ideas breed development, development creates growth. And it's all part of the life-cycle of a business.

OK....I have c+p'd your posts into a doc called The FC123 Guide to getting website sorted''.

I will PM you the new site too.......:beer:

fc123

Thing is PN.....all this stuff is done with writing and it suits you.

It's 'just' the marketing of yourself that's the hard bit however, if we do this and I cost it up at the end I will tell others, give them your details and my design guy and there will be work flowing in for sure.

Set up a website called The PN guide to affordable websites....no that sounds sh*** but you know what I mean.
I'll do the testimonial :cool:

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

Thing is PN.....all this stuff is done with writing and it suits you.

It's 'just' the marketing of yourself that's the hard bit however, if we do this and I cost it up at the end I will tell others, give them your details and my design guy and there will be work flowing in for sure.

Set up a website called The PN guide to affordable websites....no that sounds sh*** but you know what I mean.
I'll do the testimonial :cool:

LOL. Yeah, I'm not good at the people bit.