Creating my own website

[danshill]

I am looking into setting up my own website. I have no experience of creating my own from scratch so was wondering if anybody had used any third parties to setup sites for them which they are happy with.

Cheers in advance

[MarkCook]

My hosting provider is 34SP . This is a nice fast provider with good monthly bandwidth allowances.

They provide support for Content Management Systems which will allow you to build a site fairly easily online without a lot of technical know how. My preferred CMS solution is MODx , there is even an easy install option on the 34SP site if you want them to install it for you, then you simply login via your web browser and create pages and structure using tools similar to Microsoft Word ! Very Easy....

As for Photo Albums, I use Jalbum. Appart from the hosting, the rest is totally FREE

Of course, you can pay more for bespoke online photo album solutions but it's horses for courses ... and what do you feel comfortable with ?

IM me if you want more info, hope that all helps....

Mark

[GaryNikon]

I've been creating websites for some years now as a hobby business in my spare time. To give you an idea of costs I'd charge £600 for a standard website. Design companies will charge alot more. There are plenty of sites that will allow you to create your own with little or no technical knowledge. So it really depends on how much your willing to spend.

[Paul_R]

I've been creating websites for some years now as a hobby business in my spare time. To give you an idea of costs I'd charge £600 for a standard website. Design companies will charge alot more. There are plenty of sites that will allow you to create your own with little or no technical knowledge. So it really depends on how much your willing to spend.

I was watching a program on TV the other day where a retired lady was starting up her own chocolate business. It showed her talking to a company who were going to set-up a website for her and the cost was going to be around £3,000. Now, I have set up my own little website and ok, it isn't the best in the world but, it cost me nothing and does what I want it to do. So, what benefits are there in paying someone £3,000 to design/build a site for you (apart from the obvious of not having to do any of the work yourself)? I'm not knocking website designers, on the contrary, if I was going to set-up my own on line business, I would probably look into having a site designed and setup for me so I'm genuinely interested. I suppose there is the issue of rankings etc but again, aren't there plenty of free/cheap software packages available which would do this for you?

[pachinkofan]

shouldnt this be in the help section?

[TheFatControlleR]

shouldnt this be in the help section?

Seems reasonable.


Also, can I just say, let's not get too close to promoting one's self for gain/business...

[Malcolm_Stewart]

I would imagine that the magic word here is "business", and that the lady expects to be able to rely on her website to sell her wares and make her some money, and that the transactions will be secure etc.

I've been using an old copy of Frontpage Express to help me create my website. When I first used it about a decade ago, it was bundled with Win 95 (I think), and linked in with the then current version of IE for seeing how the page was going. Not any more. It simply doesn't recognise the current version of IE or Firefox, but I get by. I'm not trying anything sophisticated or secure, so a free copy of the original Frontpage Express does fine.

I imagine that there are better ways of working, and now, probably some excellent free website editors available.

[MarkCook]

When you start paying commercial website designers your normally paying for more than just a website. Of course your paying for the actual site, the impact of visuals, how it all flows, the eCommerce (buying) bit if that's relevant and of course Google Ranking which is an art so in a nutshell your paying for the expertise of someone who knows the in's and out's of all of the above - and more !!!

Your right though, lot's of free tools out there as well - you get what you pay for or don't and sometimes not paying is the better option as you gain the skills and satisfaction of doing something for yourself

[Paul_R]

Thanks for the advice guys. I too used Frontpage to build my walking site and I still need to load the software on to this PC since upgrading as I can't add anything to my site! Doing it myself was a good way of learning but I didn't really get into the HTML etc of it all so it was a limited learning curve I suppose. At the end of the day it also boils down to having the time to dedicate to learning everything about building a site and all that goes with it. Paying someone else to do it for you is appealing just for those reasons