Wanting to build a professional website for my new business

Blacksheep1979

yes you can create simple websites with tools, unfortunately by the sounds of what he wants to do he'll actually have to understand the code as well as being able to use php and sql

joe5000

Hi, I am a website designer and coder and i feel that your ideas are great.

After reading this thread some people quite honestly dont know what they are talking about. The idea is great and the ambition is there. All you need it effort.

Companies are always looking for new ways of advertising there selves and plus, if you go round visiting these places then i dont see why you cant ask them at the hotel if they would like an advert on your site.

Some people on this thread who i like to call " the wannabe techies" have decided to tell you about needing to no html, css, php and sql.

My first point is that software like Macromedia dreamweaver will let you design your website in a design layout and provide you with the code as you are going along. This means that you need very little knowledge of actual html and css.

My second point is WHY WOULD HE NEED PHP???? Does he say anything about making the website dynamic in anyway??? Why would he possibly need to connect to sql and use basic sql commands. If he is simply displaying content.

Yes, he would eventually like to make search forms and querys but at the moment, to start off he could just display adverts by placing them in categories rather than search forms and results.

n57602000 I think that your idea is great. There is nothing stopping you at least emailing these hotels and hostels asking for advertisments. Make sure that you give them an explanation of your websites potential. Good luck with it and if you need any help, post on this thread and am sure that some people who know what they are talking about may help you.

When you start, you will need both hosting and a domain. There are plenty of free hosts out there which offer great services.

If you are starting off, i would use a relieble free host who offers a subdomain (yourwebsite.freehost.com) which you can then redirect to using most domain registrars.

I recommend for starters "http://www.freehostia.com"

Dont get me wrong there was some great advice on this thread from thecapt and bananabus etc but ignore the negative advice. As everybody needs to start somewhere, and those who think negatively will obviously never be a thinker, and will never complete ambitions.

Good luck, Joe

wolfman

I can partly agree with your advice, and see the point you're trying to get across.

Firstly though, even learning Dreamweaver can take a while. To use it I'd always advise having some prior knowledge of html/css etc... If this is to be a professional site you'll most likely need to manually adjust certain parts.

I think the idea is good, but looking at the bigger picture I can understand the above comments. They may seem negative, but in order for the site to be truly successful it will need traffic, which isn't an easy thing to come by.

Also to be manageable, it will at some point (when it gets to a certain size) need to be (or would ideally be) dynamic.

It's certainly worth trying out the idea though, see if it takes off. Then if it were successful you could look into making it more dynamic, improving the design etc... Or something whereby you no longer need to manage it so much, but instead the hostels etc... go to your site and sign up/pay themselves, and the system enters them automatically.

millwalll

a good site i use all the time is http://www.webmaster-talk.com

it's forum but has loads web designers from all over the world who u can ask help or advice from also have competition where u can get logo's and other graphics or template for cheap like $10 what is about £5 pounds may be worth a look and it covers everythink from html,css,java,php,mysql so on so on hope this helps.

joe5000

In response to wolfmans post i agree. I mean, I do expect that he will be interested in learning a bit about the html language and css but i just fealt that the previous negative and unsupported comments were uncalled for by some of the other replys. I like to see positive replys and I also love to see peoples ideas been backed up.

well done millwalll aswell. Thats a good website which i sometimes use and i feel that this would be a good one for him to use.

Regards, Joe

gamma

It is a great Idea and it is really not that difficult todo - Websites are a pain to market and to get the visitor numbers up you need to do some serious thinking about search engine optimization as this is where most of your traffic will come from.

I recommend using opensource software, for instance Joomla (https://www.joomla.org) and you can even use one of the add ons specifically for this task. Joomres springs to mind https://www.joomres.com

There are loads of templates available free so you can be up and running in no time.

Blacksheep1979

joe5000 wrote:

Hi, I am a website designer and coder and i feel that your ideas are great.

After reading this thread some people quite honestly dont know what they are talking about. The idea is great and the ambition is there. All you need it effort.

Companies are always looking for new ways of advertising there selves and plus, if you go round visiting these places then i dont see why you cant ask them at the hotel if they would like an advert on your site.

Some people on this thread who i like to call " the wannabe techies" have decided to tell you about needing to no html, css, php and sql.

well as the only one who has mentioned those I guess you're pointing your finger at me. Before you accuse people of being wannabe techies you should maybe try find out their background. The fact that I'm employed by a large merchant bank in the technology department should hopefully mean that I'm not a wannabe, either that or they are gravely mistaken in employing me.

Everyone and their mother is a 'website designer' these days and tbh a proper website designer/coder wouldn't use dreamweaver and would do the coding by hand and would positively encourage the use of the things I mentioned and more.

If he wants to have a site like he seemed to imply which would be to find available rooms on a nightly basis and not simply advertise hotels (and if he wanted to make this searchable) he would definatley need an sql database and to interact with that he'd use something like php, personally I'd reccomend ruby on rails but as php is more supported and 'the norm' he'll find it easier to pick up and more support arround.

I'm not trying to say this project isn't do-able, just to full look into it before jumping in with both feet otherwise you could end up with bills to pay for hosting or people services when not needed or paying over the top to get something fixed at the last moment.

albertross_2

Whatever the technicalities of it, it's not a unique idea, it's a crowded market, it might be the next lastminute, but it also might get lost in the 375000 results from google.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=backpacking+hostels+australia&btnG=Search&meta=

nickmack

This is a fairly common question on this board and the answer is generally always the same. If it's a business website, it's very unlikely you can do it yourself unless you have extensive web design and backend skills.

As others have said, the internet is extremely competitive in many fields. Hotels and travel is one of these. It's a big advantage to have a Unique Selling Point if you're to succeed.

Any comment that you can do what you've described with a static website is way off the mark unless you really are aiming low. Websites like this need to be fresh and updating static content is time consuming unless it's a tiny site. You really need to use a database and server side scripting.

kev1n3

joe5000 wrote:

Hi, I am a website designer and coder and i feel that your ideas are great.

After reading this thread some people quite honestly dont know what they are talking about. The idea is great and the ambition is there. All you need it effort.

Companies are always looking for new ways of advertising there selves and plus, if you go round visiting these places then i dont see why you cant ask them at the hotel if they would like an advert on your site.

Some people on this thread who i like to call " the wannabe techies" have decided to tell you about needing to no html, css, php and sql.

My first point is that software like Macromedia dreamweaver will let you design your website in a design layout and provide you with the code as you are going along. This means that you need very little knowledge of actual html and css.

My second point is WHY WOULD HE NEED PHP???? Does he say anything about making the website dynamic in anyway??? Why would he possibly need to connect to sql and use basic sql commands. If he is simply displaying content.

Yes, he would eventually like to make search forms and querys but at the moment, to start off he could just display adverts by placing them in categories rather than search forms and results.

n57602000 I think that your idea is great. There is nothing stopping you at least emailing these hotels and hostels asking for advertisments. Make sure that you give them an explanation of your websites potential. Good luck with it and if you need any help, post on this thread and am sure that some people who know what they are talking about may help you.

When you start, you will need both hosting and a domain. There are plenty of free hosts out there which offer great services.

If you are starting off, i would use a relieble free host who offers a subdomain (yourwebsite.freehost.com) which you can then redirect to using most domain registrars.

I recommend for starters "http://www.freehostia.com"

Dont get me wrong there was some great advice on this thread from thecapt and bananabus etc but ignore the negative advice. As everybody needs to start somewhere, and those who think negatively will obviously never be a thinker, and will never complete ambitions.

Good luck, Joe

I'll second every word.

You go for it mate, you got nothing to loose but everything to gain. Expereince being the greater gain of all.

Kev