Building website for a business

Eridani

Hi There,

I need to build a basic website for my husbands business which does not involve retail, its purely service based.

I've looked online at various providers of "build your own websites" and to be honest I'm frustrated at the lack of functionality, the haziness of charges and contract times and they all seem to promise the world and not deliver. Some of them even continually crash during editing.

I don't want to keep chasing my tail looking for the right one, can anyone make any recommendations as to which is good to use. I do have some technical ability but I'm not good enough to use dreamweaver (had a go, was taking too much time)

Can anyone help point me in the right direction? neither of us are working at the moment so can't afford to pay someone else to do it.

Thanks

JuniorDesigner

weebly.com is a nice one, I used this for my online porfolio. If you want I can PM you the address to my site and you can look through it? Was a very easy set up, I only have the free version currently but there are decent options on there!

You can also amend the layout if you know some basic CSS etc etc which I worked out how to do EVENTUALLY!

Hope this helps!

Eridani

JuniorDesigner wrote: »

weebly.com is a nice one, I used this for my online porfolio. If you want I can PM you the address to my site and you can look through it? Was a very easy set up, I only have the free version currently but there are decent options on there!

You can also amend the layout if you know some basic CSS etc etc which I worked out how to do EVENTUALLY!

Hope this helps!

That would be very much appreciated, thanks

I do understand a little css, I've grasped the basics of dreamweaver but I am a little limited on time as I have a 4 month old baby!

Larnsky

Wordpress based sites are pretty easy to setup and customize, most people think they are only used for blogs but they can easily be customized in the control panel to form a website, I use Wordpress a lot for the sites I create.

If you're looking for a host then if they run cPanel and have Fantastico installed then the process of installing the Wordpress copy should be automated and then you can either download a pre-made template and modify it or just start from one of the supplied ones.

bilko1234

webplus 4 from serif is quite good ive done a few scouts and small business sites with it

steve1980

Some people will advise GBBO. Don't sign up with them, they use GoogleSites for hosting and builder which are shockingly bad. You can get a decent website for as little as £200.00.

The problem is that no one is allowed to advertise their own business on here so it recommodation only. On that basis I would recommend www.hostsphere.co.uk. You will deal with someone called Alex who is great, patient and reliable.

iwannabargain

I can vouch for wordpress. Very easy to install and use. There are also tons of free plugins to do all sorts of fancy things.

timmmers

HostSphere wrote: »

One thing you could look into is CMS (Content Management Systems) .... basically they are LIKE online word processing systems that allow you to create sites quickly and cheaply
The two most powerfull ones ( Joomla and wordpress ) are both free and can be downloaded from their websites and hosted by you.

Both take a little learning.. but well worth it! You can create some fantastic sites, and there are 1000's of free templates out there.

I personally prefer Joomla... as it's very very easy to use once you've got used to it and the support community for it is amazing! ( joomla . org )
Chances are there are a few people on here who use it and have a lot of knowledge on it too

Agreed. It'sm included in Cpanel too and has loads of addons for all your ite could need. Easy as pie to use, just a little getting used to the interface is all. Bonus may be that you can allow others limited access to parts of the site, meaning they can edit and add basic content if you like yet not screw it up...oh, backups are easy too.
I have some video tutorials on disc for joomla, from installing it which you probably wouldn'tm need...to adapting templates, which you may? Happy to whack some in the post if you need 'em...too big for download I think.

t

JuniorDesigner

I think I've been living in the dark ages......never thought Joomla was a content management system (there again I never really looked into it!!).

Anyone care to PM me some links to thier Joomla created sites to see the capabilities?