Setting Up a Simple Website?

dinofabio

I need a very simple website for my start up business.

Probably half a dozen pages with filled with text and a few uploaded photo's. Basically it's going to be an information site, so no ordering / payment facilities required. Just telling people about the services I offer, and a contact page.

I was going to employ someone to do the website for me, but as I will probably need to make regular changes, especially in the early stages, I thought it may be better if I learned how to do basic web design myself. That way, I can update and change it at will, without having to rely on someone else to do it for me (and charge me of course!).

I was thinking of going on to amazon, ordering some books on the subject, and going from there.

I've got no website design experience at all. My only computer experience is trawling the internet, and basic microsoft office skills using Excel and Word.

I've got a work free week soon. I'm hoping to get something up and running by the end of the week.

Qu:

1) Is it relatively straight forward to build a simple website from scratch with no experience whatsoever?

2) Is a week enough time?

3) Can anyone recommend a good webite building site that is completely free with no subscriptions. I've found Moonfruit and Wix.com that appear to be free - are they any good?

4) Can anyone recommend any good books for website building beginners?


I know some of you experienced guys can knock a decent website up in a couple of hours, but I'm really after replies from people who have built their own websites, with no previous knowledge, without any help at all (exc text books) i.e haven't received training at school, college, uni, friends etc

Appreciate any replies

Browntoa

no need to learn programming if you use this

http://www.moonfruit.com/

free to set up

guide here

http://support.moonfruit.com/entries/444970

Browntoa

then a domain name host such as

http://www.123-reg.co.uk/

get yoursite.co.uk

point at

yoursite.moonfruit

set up yoursite.co.uk email address to point at your personal email ( so they only see the yoursite email )

steve1980

For a business website don't use Moonfruit, Google or any other similar system.

Pay out once and be done with it.

Mista_C

steve1980 wrote: »

For a business website don't use Moonfruit, Google or any other similar system.

Pay out once and be done with it.

I have to agree with this. Nothing looks less professional than a website or email address such as mybusiness.moonfruit.com or mybusiness@yahoo.co.uk.

It might be worth paying someone for the initial basic site and doing any modifications in a WYSIWYG editor.

Farway

You could have a look at Web Plus, free edition, http://www.serif.com/web-design-software/

It is not latest version obviously, but may suit your needs, at least to try it out

Then off to 123 reg to buy domain, and more importantly free e- mail [ref comments above]

bennybroadbean

Browntoa wrote: »

no need to learn programming if you use this

http://www.moonfruit.com/

free to set up

guide here

http://support.moonfruit.com/entries/444970

+1 for Moonfruit - Very user friendly:beer:

googler

For business use you absolutely HAVE to have your own domain name, which, if you pick the right hosting company, will also allow you to have e-mail addresses with the same domain

For instance - https://www.dinofabio.co.uk or https://www.dinofabio.com for your domain name.

You could have e-mail addresses such as

enquiries@dinofabio.co.uk
sales@dinofabio.co.uk
aftersales@dinofabio.co.uk

which looks far more professional than

dinofabio@btinternet.com or
dinofabio@hotmail.com .....

---

I built my own site with Microsoft Frontpage, with absolutely no prior experience. It's very intuitive and requires no programming knowledge for basic websites.

I use Namesco for hosting the site and for domain name registration - they're UK-based, and I recommend them for the basics of the service and also for having UK-based tech support, with someone at the end of the phone or e-mail to actually talk to.

dinofabio

googler wrote: »

I built my own site with Microsoft Frontpage, with absolutely no prior experience. It's very intuitive and requires no programming knowledge for basic websites.
.

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I do not have Frontpage. Which is a pity because I would have liked to have given this a go. Are there any free alternatives?

---

Contrary to some; I quite like the idea of using a template. I've looked at a few, and to the untrained eye, they look quite good imho.

The other benefit is that they offer complete control of your site, so text / photos can be amended at anytime - unlike if I had someone design it for me.

Yes there are the issues of email addresses etc not looking professional, but as people have pointed out, there are ways around this.

Browntoa

NVU is free and full featured

http://net2.com/nvu/

video guides to use

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvu&search_type=&aq=f

Welshdebtor

I built my website using Dreamweaver without any prior knowledge.But that software is expensive.

For a cheap alternative, this is a good - http://www.one.com/en/ their cheapest is 90p a month, which is currently reduced to free for 12 months. You get a good amount of space, unlimited e-mail accounts plus much more.