Best way to design a website please?

caringa · 9 October 2015 at 10:52AM

Hope someone can give me some advise. Basically my husband and I want to let outr a property we have just inherited for holiday lets and thought it might be a good idea to advertise it on our own website.

How do we go about setting it up? Is it best to pay someone to do it for us?

AndyPix · 9 October 2015 at 10:58AM

That is kind of like asking "how do I write a novel" ..
Its not something that can be explained fully to you in a forum.

First you have to learn the language (html - php - javascript) etc
Then you have to be good at it

Then there is hosting, domain name etc etc etc ..

As you sound like a complete beginner, you may want to sign up for a hosting package with godaddy or the likes, and use one of their "website builders"

I think your best bet would be to pay someone to do it ..

BUT

For the purpose that you require, you would then have to generate traffic to your site - be it through the natural listings (optimisation) or payed adverts

It all sounds like massive overkill and I would suggest advertising on one of the already established sites for this purpose as you would just be competing with them (badly) if you didnt

Hope this helps

Andy

kwikbreaks · 9 October 2015 at 11:35AM

What he said about advertising with an established site ^^

samsamesggsandham · 9 October 2015 at 3:52PM

AndyPix wrote: »

That is kind of like asking "how do I write a novel" ..
Its not something that can be explained fully to you in a forum.

First you have to learn the language (html - php - javascript) etc
Then you have to be good at it

Then there is hosting, domain name etc etc etc ..

As you sound like a complete beginner, you may want to sign up for a hosting package with godaddy or the likes, and use one of their "website builders"

I think your best bet would be to pay someone to do it ..

BUT

For the purpose that you require, you would then have to generate traffic to your site - be it through the natural listings (optimisation) or payed adverts

It all sounds like massive overkill and I would suggest advertising on one of the already established sites for this purpose as you would just be competing with them (badly) if you didnt

Hope this helps

Andy

You are pretty much right but it is worth mentioning that there are some cheats around the "learn the language (html - php - javascript) etc" part.

If you are only looking at a one or two page (/small) site you can create you pages in something like Microsoft Word and when you have it all formatted well you can Save as HTML - you then need to worry about getting it hosted somewhere. This is not the professional way to go but if you really want to do it yourself you can get some results quickly.

"Google Sites" is worth researching. Microsoft do an similar service and offer free hosting to some degree - may be suitable for what you need.

kwikbreaks · 9 October 2015 at 4:21PM

The real problem with any home brew site apart from looking laughably amateur is getting it up there in search results with the competition. Then you come to accepting CC deposits or full fees online or over the phone.

Tropez · 9 October 2015 at 5:03PM

You could probably set the site up in Wordpress and find a premium theme (can cost anywhere between a few quid to a few thousand, depending on what you're after - "builder" themes like Divi might work but it's not particularly inexpensive) to make the site look professional enough.

If you needed to take payments, you could use something like WooCommerce integrated with PayPal on your Wordpress site.

This would require self-hosted Wordpress as opposed to using Wordpress.com. Self-hosted Wordpress comes with quite a few hosting providers and isn't too expensive (a few quid a month). You'd need a domain name (.com is about £9 a year, .co.uk or .uk is about £6 per year, occasional sales notwithstanding).

On the optimising for search engines side of things, you're probably going to need a few Wordpress plugins for SEO and you'll need to register with Google Webmaster Tools, Microsoft's version, possibly Alexa as well. And be pretty active on social media to promote your endeavour.

It's not so much the cost that's the issue but whether you have the time (many hours go into these projects) to learn how to build your site, how to manage your site, how to promote your site etc.

MalcolmY · 9 October 2015 at 7:12PM

Good explanation, Tropez (except I don't see the need for a premium theme when there are so many great free ones about).

However, all of the above requires considerable tech skill despite what WP fans say. There's a steep learning curve! Wait till your .htaccess plays up, a plugin messes something up or you make a small (URL) change on the WP General Settings page and your entire site becomes unusable. It's not something I'd recommend for a newbie.

Why your own site? Why not a page (or sub-domain) on someone else's site, particularly one of those services where they handle all the merchant services for you?

Fightsback · 9 October 2015 at 7:16PM

MalcolmY wrote: »

Wait till your .htaccess plays up, a plugin messes something up or you make a small (URL) change on the WP General Settings page and your entire site becomes unusable. It's not something I'd recommend for a newbie.

And then learning to use GIT (for example) for revision control, so you can change any whoopsie daises.

Do you want to learn to change your own car gearbox or do you want to go and earn the money doing what you are good at to pay someone else to do it who will do it quicker and better ?

Tropez · 9 October 2015 at 8:29PM

MalcolmY wrote: »

Good explanation, Tropez (except I don't see the need for a premium theme when there are so many great free ones about).

Fair point, although I've found many of the free ones to be either rather limited (particularly if one was setting up a site for commercial purposes) or deployed on too many installations so as to be obvious it was a Wordpress site. Of course, by the same token, I've seen many supposedly premium themes that aren't that much, if any, better.

While it shouldn't matter too much (given Wordpress accounts for nearly 20% of websites on the Internet today), some might see a "blogging" platform such as Wordpress indicative of a scam site if they can easily tell it is a Wordpress site. The best Wordpress sites don't really look like Wordpress sites (and also do things like move /wp-admin/ and the like to less obvious locations).

However, all of the above requires considerable tech skill despite what WP fans say. There's a steep learning curve! Wait till your .htaccess plays up, a plugin messes something up or you make a small (URL) change on the WP General Settings page and your entire site becomes unusable. It's not something I'd recommend for a newbie.

I think anyone can learn how to use and manage Wordpress but it will take a lot of effort. It isn't entirely user friendly, although more user friendly than some other options. I will admit I've probably spent more time configuring things on the backend of my Wordpress sites than putting content on the site itself.