website building websites!

sparkychris

hi team

There are plenty of website building websites that all claim to be simple to use and totally ace but I wondered if anybody had any experience of actually using them?

I need a reasonable looking website for a part time business I am building up slowly- more for examples of my work, really- so all I need is a site that I can post photos to, a bit of a bio and a contact page called www. (Whatever) .co.uk and an email address or two, for example info@ (Whatever).co.uk

I seem to remember looking into something similar a few years ago and it seemed horribly complicated to transfer the domain name to the new website...

Do I have to purchase the domain name first (From where?!) or is it more of an 'all-in' experience these days?!

Thanks in advance

EdwardB

I have had a lot of experience using them, they can be as easy as you need but also need to do some important things, most of which don't cost money.

The most important part of a website is the content, use a word processor like Word in outline mode and write out the structure.

You sound like you want to build a brochure site, but these things expand,

The domain name can be a brand in which case it needs some thought, are others using the name, have they got a trademark.

The domain can be registered for around $10 depending on TLD (,com .co.uk)

The domains are controlled by independent organisations (e.g. Icann and Nominet) and sold by registrars. there is also an after market for domains that have expired or are owned by domain investors.

You need to research the name carefully, consider your market, what is their demographic, are they only UK based, does the business have a local aspect, DevonScones. Do you think it is global, MatchedBetting but is online gambling illegal in your target market.

There are good and bad registrars, best price for UK domains at the moment is Namecheap.com, for anything else name.com are good. If you want to buy a domain already registered then Sedo.co.uk will have some. Age is a ranking factor although you sound like you want a biz card or brochure to refer people too.

So after the domain is registered they will try and sell you hosting, resist this, I can PM you a link that will get you started for under £30 for the domain, privacy and hosting for first year, (note .uk privacy must be paid for if site used for commercial purposes, you can hide your address otherwise).

So a domain sits there, in the portal of the registrar they have a place where you enter the nameservers, these tell the web where to go to load the site, the hosting company will have the nameservers for the server you are renting, you simply enter the nameserver in your domain registrar portal, after that all queries for the domain (website, email etc) get sent to the hosting company.

ns1.myhostingco.net
ns2.myhostingco.net

About 5 minutes work but it takes 2 to 4 days to propagate to the web.

You then install a website (usually with a simple click) then you have to enter the content of text and images. these days a website is often contained in a CMS (content management system), this separates the text, images, code and design so they may be updated separately, so an editor can edit without coding. The site can have a refresh by swapping out a theme or template.

A common CMS is Wordpress

http://www.ashfield-electrical.co.uk/

uses this theme,

http://demos.artbees.net/jupiter5/

it costs $60 but you must never buy a theme until you have it working and most of the work is configuration so you could pay 5 to 50 times this depending how prescriptive you are.

you can see it is only using the a small amount of the capability of the theme.

Here are a few thousand free themes but there are many thousands more

https://wordpress.org/themes/

Wordpress has over 48,000 plugins for everything from social media buttons, secure contact forms, spam filter and anti hacking,

https://wordpress.org/plugins/

Some of these play nicely together, some not so well.

A website can be a labour of love that grows into something huge or just a 5 page brochure. Content is king.

For the email, it is a config thing, you just create the email [EMAIL="chris@prosparks.co.uk"]chris@prosparks.co.uk[/EMAIL] then you can point all other mail to it or create other accounts.

You can get your existing gmail to collect the mail if you want and to send from that server or you could use Outlook, Thunderbird or whatever.

Here endeth lesson 1

Zola.

Get a pro, needs a human touch.

Everyone can spot a cookie cutter self made site, for the most part they look very amateurish.

mandySaver12

Big fan of wordpress. Don't fret if you're not too techy because there are various great tutorials online to help you with all the different features. Just may take a bit of time to get used to it

S0litaire

if you do go with wordpress site, the first plugin you should install is "Wordfence"
https://www.wordfence.com/

It's a nice one-stop-shop for securing your wordpress site from most attacks. I've been using the free version for a few years

forgotmyname

I buy from easily and host on 50 webs. It works for me buy im lazy and swapping would involve uploading a ton of family pictures again and hoping my stuff works on another hosters platform.

Plenty of posh buttons and links out there for free which maybe better than what you can create yourself.

Not an expert by a long chalk, but i started by finding sites with the information i wanted and then stripping away the code until that part stopped working.
Maybe not everyones cup of tea, but my brain learns by taking something apart and looking at the components. Works with physical items and computer code etc.

Plenty of wordpress sites to get ideas from . Not quite the same but blogspot also. Some nice little sites to give you ideas.

EdwardB

Zola. wrote: »

Get a pro, needs a human touch.

Everyone can spot a cookie cutter self made site, for the most part they look very amateurish.

That certainly USED to be the case but what I have noticed is that a lot of very professional software developers and designers have realised that they can use Wordpress as a platform for their fine works.

The ones I tend to avoid are the ones that break from the standard file structure when there is no need to do so. They do this so that when you install a new theme you do not see the data as they defined it in a different table. This goes against the very spirit of Wordpress, it makes development take longer and it ties the client in.


I think it is all about the content, both text and image are important, you can get licenced images at reasonable rates these days.

The thing about Wordpress is that is is open source, so if a programmer wants to take an existing plugin and do it better, they can. Some obviously tie in their own infrastructure, for example Wordfence relies on their back end servers that take in the hacking attempts from many thousands of sites, they then shut down those attempts before they happen on other sites. So if you have a hacker using a tool which uses proxies on a one activity per site per proxy, a normal site would just not see it, but the back end of wordfence will see the same attempt across say 3 of it's clients and then lock it down for others.

I think some web designers get completely carried away with the so called design and forget it is all about serving the visitor.

The very best part of Wordpress is that the website owner can add what they want when they want, no need for the designer or the coder. That is where the term "cookie cutter" came from.

Wordpress can be anything you want it to be, a blog to rival Seth Godin, an ecommerce site, a brochure site or anything you can think of.

There is an army of people working all over the world at reasonable rates.

Leaving you free to pursue your core objective.

forgotmyname

Serving the visitor,, YES... Especially if its a site someone will want to get information from whilst out and about with a poor mobile signal.

I dont want to download a 30mb video and flash clips and loads of animated pictures when i just want the companies address and i barely have a signal.

Been there on the phone waiting for a site to load.

deskhelp

you can check wix or pagely if you are looking for hosting with free website builder company.

EdwardB

deskhelp wrote: »

you can check wix or pagely if you are looking for hosting with free website builder company.

They are both awful and look unprofessional, Google never ranked a site built with these.

Cornucopia

sparkychris wrote: »

I need a reasonable looking website for a part time business I am building up slowly- more for examples of my work, really- so all I need is a site that I can post photos to, a bit of a bio and a contact page called www. (Whatever) .co.uk and an email address or two, for example info@ (Whatever).co.uk

It's certainly possible to get a reasonable LOOKING website with these tools. Whether overall it is a reasonable website is a different question. Email and Website configuration can be combined or handled separately, depending on what you are looking for.

I seem to remember looking into something similar a few years ago and it seemed horribly complicated to transfer the domain name to the new website...

That kind of thing should be easier these days, though I don't have any specific experience of doing so with these site builder websites. I'd probably suggest starting at the opposite end, with hosting, as most hosting sites now have good site builders - some paid, some bundled with hosting.

Do I have to purchase the domain name first (From where?!) or is it more of an 'all-in' experience these days?!

Yes, this is the first step, wherever you choose to go from there. There are hundreds of hosting companies, many of which can also register domain names for you. Personally, I would keep those functions separate, although that can involve you in domain propagation described by EdwardB, above. OTOH, if you keep everything bundled together then there is a better chance that the company's tech support people will help out with whatever problem you encounter.

Neither hosting or registration is expensive (for low volume websites), so there isn't a huge amount to be gained on shopping around for those factors. I'd probably therefore go for a mid-market operator with a reasonable reputation or recommendation. There are also free options, if you prefer to start out with zero cash at risk (but tech support on these is necessarily limited). I have used both 000webhost.com and the free option of Hostinger (this is very good).

On the paid side, I've used FreeVirtualServers for a while, though not their bundled Weebly website builder. Their "Unlimited" plan at £3.33pm would be suitable for a starter site. If you want to get everything under one roof, then this would probably be a good option.

I've also used UK2.net and 123-Reg in the past, and both have good reputations.