Building Your Own Website DIY

AAZ

Hi I want to build my own website to advertise my professional expertise, be able to add some videos able to link with some online appointment and ability to book and pay for appointment. I have never built a website so essentially looking for template and drag and populate. Google search has pointed to wix Wordpress, go daddy and square space. 
What do people suggest which one is best for newbie website builder. 
Many thanks for help

tacpot12

In the absence of any recommendations, I would suggest that you need to try creating a simple website using each ideally implementing as much of your desired functionality as you can for free. Your requirements are pretty standard, but they aren't simple, so you might have to pay for parts of the service beyond just hosting your webset, e.g. taking and remitting payments, streaming media, online appointment calendars.

Neil_Jones

Videos you can just embed YouTube (or upload what you want to YouTube, set them private if you wish and then just embed them yourself).

There is a plug-in for Wordpress for online booking and scheduling which may do what you want in that department.

Getting started with Wordpress is documented here:

https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/get-started-with-wordpress/

AAZ

Thanks Tacpo12 and Neil_jones. Which platform do you recommend be easier for newbie

DullGreyGuy

AAZ said:

Hi I want to build my own website to advertise my professional expertise, be able to add some videos able to link with some online appointment and ability to book and pay for appointment. I have never built a website so essentially looking for template and drag and populate. Google search has pointed to wix Wordpress, go daddy and square space. 
What do people suggest which one is best for newbie website builder. 
Many thanks for help

So you think others should use your professional expertise but you dont think its worth using the expertise of a web designer?

Have used Wix relatively recently and its fairly straightforward to create a site but relatively speaking the fees per month are high compared to using a normal webhost with vanilla Wordpress installed. These can escalate fairly quickly too when you start adding on apps to deal with your online booking (assuming you want that onsite rather than a link to an offsite tool)

Havent used Wordpress for many years, back then it was still transitioning from a blogging tool to a CMS and so was still a bit clunky for websites other than blogs however I am sure its improved over the years. It too has many available plug ins to add functionality

Not used GoDaddy's WYSIWYG editor and never used square space at all. 

Newcad

Have a look at Ionos website builder: https://www.ionos.co.uk/websites/website-builder

Review: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/11-mywebsite-basic

onomatopoeia99

DullGreyGuy said:

AAZ said:

Hi I want to build my own website to advertise my professional expertise, be able to add some videos able to link with some online appointment and ability to book and pay for appointment. I have never built a website so essentially looking for template and drag and populate. Google search has pointed to wix Wordpress, go daddy and square space. 
What do people suggest which one is best for newbie website builder. 
Many thanks for help

So you think others should use your professional expertise but you dont think its worth using the expertise of a web designer?

Well said.  Hopefully no-one ever comes on here and asks for help in doing whatever service AAZ provides for themselves .

I'm not a web designer, but amongst other things I do backed systems including interfacing to payment processors using their APIs, most recently Revolut. Not something for someone that wants a drag and drop website.  

AAZ

Thanks everyone for advice, manage to build a website with Wix, it is not great but at least I can keep updating in my free time and build up the content. 

Pescur

Wix is the worst ever, no wix website ever ranked for a competitive keyword.

your content is what is important, copy it to a word file and start over with Wordpress on your own domain.

Stay well clear of GoDaddy at all costs,

If you want an upmarket but good value then Dreamhost are good, if you want a no frills but mostly unlimited then Hostinger are cheap (I paid about $80 for four years - it was cheaper using US VPN and offer)

I do not use any of the above for domain registration, always keep domain registration away from hosting, that way if hosting company has a fault you can redirect the domain with ease.

coffeehound

Pescur said:

Stay well clear of GoDaddy at all costs, 

Can I ask why you say that?