Starting a Website

[jcooper]

I am interested in starting a turning site (to show my work, attract potential buyers, ect) but i dont know where to start. I am good on a computer but i know jack about website design and HTML. Any advice from those who have there own site? how much does it cost and do you see more buyers then before? where should i begin?
Thanks! Jon

 

[cypher]

You will need to start with a good site/company name. I suggest you go to godaddy.com to find a name that is not taken already. They offer really good deals on domain names and hosting services. Before anyone responds, yes there are many other hosting services out there. I just like the service I get from godaddy.com. I would also get a copy of a simple web design program like MS Frontpage. Easy to use and you do not need to know any HTLM code. Since you are new to web design I would not start from scratch, but instead you should find a company online that sells or gives away web site templates and use one of those until you get better and web design. The templates range from free to $160. This will give you a good, easy starting point. I set mine up at godaddy.com and it cost me about $150.00 for 3 years. I do the desiging myself so i don't have to pay them for it.

I have seen in increase in sales since I started my site. I sent my address to everyone i knew and asked them to promot it form me. These forums are good places to get the name out as well. you can pay sites like godaddy.com to advertise for you but that is not required.

The other cheaper option is to have your service provider host the site for you. Some providers like comcast offer their coustomer free hosting service. This is good but you have to understand that it is not a WWW address and it is very limited in storage size. You may want to explore this option since you are new to web design. post the site wiht your provider to make sure it works and you like it and then convert it to WWW.

Hope this helps!

 

[Brent@TurnRobust]

I agree with Cypher, go with a web hoster that has templates if you are just getting started. I would, however, advise against using FrontPage. Users with Macs won't be able to see your sight very well without you doing a bunch of special stuff. I know this because I did my first website in FrontPage and I was always getting emails from Mac owners because they couldn't see things, like pictures. A month or so ago I overhauled my entire website to Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is not an easy program, and I consider myself pretty darn computer literate, so I wouldn't advise starting out on it without taking a class first. Bottom line with the Dreamweaver based site is that just about everybody can see it, so it was worth the trouble.

Anyway, back to Cypher's recommendation, go with a webhost that has a templates you can use. (no html to learn) It will save you a lot of grief and they will have already tested it to make sure it works accross all popular web browsers.

Good luck, and when you're done, come back to the forum and let everybody have a look at your new site !

 

[Sean Troy]

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Ho...DE1D6361AE4AEFA2D.TC60a?__reuse=1172784057376 This hosting company is the number one in the world and for good reason. I would highly recommend going with GoDaddy for your domain name. Don't have your domain name and hosting company be the same company.

 

[mlchapman]

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Ho...DE1D6361AE4AEFA2D.TC60a?__reuse=1172784057376 Don't have your domain name and hosting company be the same company.

Sean, could you explain why having both domain and hosting with the same company is a bad idea. Thanks

 

[Dario]

I use godaddy for my domain name too and SiteKreator for hosting.

SiteKreator is super easy to set up and maintain. Best of all, it is FREE (unless you want an upgrade).

You do have to pay for the ease by being a bit limited with the flexibility and a bit slower. Check my site and time it as well as look at what you can do with it. I only used a few features by the way and there are lot smore...you just have to play with it.

BTW, it only took me about 6 hours to get it to that ...and then more to add contents (maintenance).

Again, did I mention it is FREE??? lol

Good luck!

 

[Stacey S]

I went with yahoo. They have templates that you can use or if you have your own html editing program you can use it. I have had the service for a couple months now and have been very pleased.
Stacey

 

[Sean Troy]

If your hosting company screws up or goes under, your domain name goes with it. One of the reasons not to have your domain name registered with the same company that hosts your site.

 

[Jerry Hall]

Try Google Docs

It isn't fancy but it is all free, easy to create and simple and fast to update. Neither Google nor Yahoo is going to disappear any time soon.
For a recent discussion on this approach see:
http://woodturner.org/vbforum/showthread.php?t=3228

and also:
http://www.woodturner.org/community/chapters/practices/LowTechWebsite.pdf

googlepages.com gives you a nice free address for example:
goldturnersweb.googlepages.com
But I only use it as a portal to the easier to build googledocs pages because the page creator software is limited and buggy.

http://geocities.yahoo.com/ is also free, and has much better page building software, but has ads on the page. You do get a free address that looks like for example:
geocities.com/goldturners

 

[Ken Grunke]

I took a look at SiteKreator and even though I'm a semi-pro webmaster and don't need that type of thing because I develop my sites from scratch, I gave it a try just to see what it was like. I already had my site developed so I used the same basic layout with my choice of SiteKreator's template and if I may say so myself, it turned out pretty good:

http://sitekreator.com/kenturns/main_page.html

And here's my "real" website, to compare:

http://www.token.crwoodturner.com/

SiteKreator is great if you are intimidated by raw HTML code, but it's somewhat cumbersome at least for me. I don't know if it was because of my dialup connection (updates were quite pokey) or because it uses Flash for it's interface and my Linux OS doesn't have the greatest support for that. But it was fun to work on anyway, although I recommend having a layout planned out in advance with all the images ready to upload--that just makes everything so much easier.

 

[Rob Wallace]

Free Web Site Software - Try Nvu to build a web page.

I am by no means a computer/techie guru (....in fact, I'm far from it...) but I created my own web site (link below) fairly quickly using a free software package available at www.nvu.com. This is essentially a WYSIWYG web site creation package, with a downloadable support manual (.pdf), that is fairly intuitive if you are familiar with Word, or other document word processing software. While I'm not done with all of my links or gallery yet (....sorry for all the "404's"....the day job gets in the way of doing important things like turning, coaching soccer and baseball, and finishing my web site!!), the program is very easy to use and my site has operated cleanly for over 6 months since I put the original pages up.

Nvu (pronounced "N-view") also has the ability to look at the html created by the main page-building program, so those who are facile with html coding can go in and tweak things directly if they so choose. I have since taken two basic courses in Dreamweaver, and eventually may switch to that package, but for now, Nvu works great and the cost is excellent - it's free, and is easily downloaded. The instructor of my Dreamweaver classes is one of our University's 'html Grand Gurus', and he was quite impressed with Nvu's capabilities and the "cleanness" of the code it creates, especially for those of us who are 'html challenged'. Although there are not nearly as many bells and whistles with the Nvu package than there are in Dreamweaver, Nvu works great to put together a web page fairly quickly for essentially zero software cost.

Have a look at this package, and perhaps you can get started working on your web site quickly, inexpensively, and fairly painlessly....

Good Luck!

Rob Wallace

 

[rbieniek]

I went with yahoo. They have templates that you can use or if you have your own html editing program you can use it. I have had the service for a couple months now and have been very pleased.
Stacey

I also use Yahoo and am quite pleased, lots of templates, and easy to use..

www.masterwoodcreations.com