Website Building to Advertise my Business

louise3965

Ok, I think I may be embarking on something scary, but exciting at the same time. I work in a service industry and want to start doing bits as a Consultant. After years of working full time though, am scared of making the leap of faith, so thought I would try and do some work at the same time as continuing with my job, to test the water so to speak.

I need to build a website, and have it hosted. Preferably for free. But have absolutely no idea where to start, it just seems to scary and I have noone to help me.

Could anyone recommend a basic template which I can obtain for free, and one which I will be able to manage myself. I reckon 4 pages will do it, I don't need a shopping cart, just something that looks slick.

Once I've built this, I assume I need it hosting. The place where I bought the domain from is about £8 per month. Can I get it cheaper/for free?

Can I use this thread as my diary, I'd really appreciate the support as I take my first baby steps into being my own boss.


Thanks x

Ypaymore

You might find the small business board more helpful in this case .;)

NewbieMoneySaver**

Hello,

I had a business on ebay for about a year and found it really easy. The Webhost I used was 1and1 and they were brilliant. They have very competetive rates and have a really good upload time. They will have a website builder in with most packages and it is just a step by step building tool for your own website.

You can also have your website dynamic so it will look really professional.

I've just looked at there website and the 1and1 home looks good for you. If you allready have your domain name then they will transfer it for you or you can get one for free of them.

Any question just ask.

:beer:

louise3965

Thanks for your help, am currently scaring myself silly but will get by!

eporium

There are free Open Source web designs here OSWD

svmitche

I use Supanames (http://www.supanames.co.uk/). They are quite good and easy to use and I believe that you can transfer your domain name over to them.

For my site I pay £45 per year and it's well worth the investment to get a more professional look and feel to the site, as I was using a free hosting provider and the domain name was a total pain!

They also have a website builder to help you and provide email addresses etc.

Just as another piece of advice, if you can learn a little bit of web programming, just simple html then this will help you. Web builders are very convenient, but sometimes they write code that doesn't quite do what you want and you're a bit stuck, so just investing in one book or finding a really good html tutorial online will at least help you recognise the code that is being written so you can modify by hand if needs be.

Hope you get on ok anyway...

NewbieMoneySaver**

Just give it a try.

What have got to lose.

With 1and1 you can still pull out up to 90 days.

misskool

Hi,

I'm moving this thread over to the Techie board where you are more likely to get a better response.

djkaizen

Just found this today

http://www.letmehostit.co.uk/ 1 years hosting for £1

Cant be bad at that! If it goes wrong then you have one less pint of milk

Moneymaker

I wouldn't touch free hosting. It's usually funded by adverts and you inevitably get what you pay for!

I pay £10/two years for a .co.uk domain name (which I can transfer to any host - make sure you have that option!) and £12 a year for hosting. This means I can (have) choose the exact domain name I want (for example, your proposed business name or something associated with your products, like "sox4U.co.uk") making it easier to find/remember.

Note that free (or cheap) hosting will very likely "cap your bandwidth". Basically, this means that if your site gets too many visitors in the first part of a month, it will be closed for the rest of that month! Not good for business.