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Need a website Building.
Can anyone advise as to having a web presence created, looking for a reasonably priced starter package, 2 or 3 pages, domain registration, search engine submission, include pictures of our product ect.
Searched the web for hours, so many different offers out there but all looks a bit confusing !
any info/help appreciated………… -
30 Replies
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Do your site yourself.
This topic can get a little long winded, so if you need advice give me a call on 07792 072157.
Dan
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i would say do it yourself also.. but… having a website and a proffesional looking website is another thing. ive tried and failed many times.. even now almost 3 years with this site i still have changed servers about 6 times.. done this and done that.. at the end of the day i would have saved myself more money going with someone that knows exactly what to do and not trying to skrimp and save on some budget hosts.
think about it yourself.. you use the net… do you land on some sites and think these guys know what they are doing by the feel of their site. or do you land on some thinking, im not gonna feel good giving my credit card details over the net with this crowd?
its the same on the high street.. do you go into a curry house that looks minging from outside or just drive on by?at the end of the day, spend what you can afford. work out what it is costing you to do it on the cheap and then by someone that knows what they are doing.
the next problem comes trying to find the cowboys and the web designers.
as for a portfolio or links to sites that they have done. (not sites they claim to have done 😉 ) -
For that size , I would do it yourself.
I did mine myself in frontpage , and part of the reason I did it myself was that I hired a developer who was driving me dilly with a zillion questions , with asking how to photograph this and that , what text to put in , how the structure works and they wanted to put in a zillion little gee-gaws and animated this and that
All I wanted was a sort of online catalogue and not a work of art using SOTA web elements and the “webdesigner” would NOT listen to me!!! -
Hi, i would also do it yourself, i used Macromedia Dreamweaver for our site, and it is hosted with 1&1, they offer a range of packages and i have found there support useful.
There are many templates available freely on the net to give you a starting point to work from and develop. If you are unfamiliar with Dreamweaver however, 1&1 offer a Website Creator that basically does it all for you however the downside is the designs are set in stone so it depends if you like any of the designs available, you can add your own logo/pictures though. If you want to expand the site in the future then you may have to go down the route of doing it yourself or paying somebody else to do it, as website creator is limited to 12 page max and has limited features.
As for search engine submission, i think there are more effective ways of advertising for the money, all of the companies claim to put you at the top of the list, but then what about all of there other customers who make signs……not everyone can be first in the list!!!!
There are programmes available that will submit your site to search engines and it may be worth doing this so you are at least listed, if not at the very top.
Hope this helpful. -
Hi Paul.
All I can suggest is that if you have never built a website before then really you shouldn’t do it yourself.
At the end of the day it will be your business representative on the internet and if it doesn’t look / work right then nobody will take you serious.
You really should hire a professional to build it for you, and if you pick the right person you will find yourself extremely happy with the results.
Like Rodney says there are some people out there who claim to be able to build websites, but when it comes down to it they just baffle you with pointless rubbish to detract from what they should be doing. Beware of these people and check out who you hire in a similar way you would a new employee.
edit – admin
Cheers
Andy -
Just one point , building a website wihout samples of what you do is a waste of money , merely having a web presence saying you do signage etc is NOT going to do you any good. At the VERY least , you need samples of your work , not just that you CAN do this or that!!
We get a huge amount of orders from our website and that’s cos it has content , not promises and vapourware.
You must target your market , essentially you will only attract local ppl , you arent going to get a world audience beating a path to your door. Merely putting up a website will do nothing for you , you have to have a database of customers or potential customers to target and send notification of what you do. The best expresiion I have heard is this : “A business that does not actively advertise is like winking at a woman in the dark , no one but YOU know what you are doing” -
Hi Paul,
we did ours ourselves using Publisher…. not the best site in the world, but also not the worst!!! Not too difficult if you are ok with computers.
We are however in the process of having ours re-worked by a proffesional. Bit of a result really though…. he wanted a banner made for his car club and we wanted a bigger better site! We saved a wad of money and he got his banner for what is probably for him not a lot of work….. everyones a winner!
(:)
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(edit admin)
Paul, seriously, your website can be the difference between getting that order and not getting it. You should invest properly in it.
I would recommend against going swapsies on services too. If you are going to do it, do it right.
I’ve been in this business for over 5 years and companies rise and fall dependant on the success and usability of their website.
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quote the061:I would recommend against going swapsies on services too. If you are going to do it, do it right.
Can’t see the problem with that myself…. providing the end result is giving you what you want. Obviously, not a lot of point having a bit of a trade and getting a mechanic to sort your site, but if you are lucky enough to find a ‘professional’ …… like we did ………. who you can offer a service, then may well save yourself a bob or two!
(:)
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ttj, with respect, I do not think you will find a pro designer who will trade work for the value of a banner.
Web design is a profession and as with anything in life, you generally get what you pay for.
You will find that the people who are used to building big business sites will provide you with sites that will work on any computer, run from reliable servers, be compliant with the latest browser standards, sit with the governments bobbi compliance (which all business need to follow, or risk being fined), be fast to load and still look good.
You will only get a professional result from a professional.
——–Paul, go with a low hosting package from 1and1.co.uk, that will let you expand when you need to.
Search engine submission is a much more complicated animal than some people think so this is a whole new can of worms.
For what you are asking I would expect to pay no more than £500 and if you are paying less than £250 you may end up with something like this
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quote ttj designs:…providing the end result is giving you what you want….
Almost forgot. This is a critical mistake that many business owners make when deciding on a website. At the end of the day, your own personal tastes shouldn’t dictate the sites functionality or design. It should always come down to what suits your market and the general public as a whole.
For instance, if a customer came to you and asked you to make a safety sign, but they really liked the design of a light yellow text on a white background. Would you still make the sign? Or would you advise a better choice of colour, as after all, not everyone will be able to read it, regardless of your customers personal tastes?
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Wow great response! Thank you all for sharing your views.
Obviously some conflict of opinion here…i must admit learning more new software such as dream weaver or frontpage (is it easy to master) doesn’t excite me in the least and having had a peep at the 1to1 starter package this definitely needs further investigation.
Thanks again … and if anyone has anything further to add i would be extremely grateful -
It does take a fair bit of playing about with to learn Dreamweaver and i went on a course which helped alot, if as you say the thought of learning new programmes doesnt excite you its probably best to hire someone else to do it. As its initially unrewarding, financially speaking, and if you arent enthusiastic about building it yourself, you would soon find yourself getting fed up with the various hurdles along the way! as for frontpage i havent used it so cant comment on how easy it is to master, although these are only the tools of the trade its the design and content that really matters.
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Paul
Give it a go yourself.
As you will need web space as ZS123 said give 1&1 a thought, as a bonus Netobject Fusion is included with the packages, and you can make a serious site with no knowledge of building a web page (it is that easy). If you can not get on with that (which I doubt very much) well you got your web space sorted for a very little sum of money.Regards
Kev -
Frontpage is real easy , there is a proviso , your host has to support frontpage extensions. there are tons of freeware site authoring tools out there , http://www.tucows.com has plenty.
Regardless of who does you website , you have minimal chance of being near the top of a google search unless you spending advertising $ with em , so your website has to be integrated into a marketing campaign. Just having one , no matter how good , is useless.
Bear in mind your reputation and what others percieve you are is partly dependant on that website if you make it a marketing tool. The worst IMHO is a site with no content , like we do xxx and yyy, without any amplification. -
Rodney said:
quote :there is a proviso , your host has to support frontpage extensionsThis is not strictly true as you can up-load your site once built using ftp.
There are some components within FrontPage that do require the extensions mentioned, but you can still build an effective site with out the bolt ons.
Dan
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1. Dont pay more then $8 a month
2. Be sure to have CPannel on the host
3. Be sure to have PHP for dynamic paging
4. Be sure to have mySQL for database
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There are planty of tamplates which are semi-professional for free. I know some guy who can design nice pages, PM if you interested.free templates: http://www.freetemplatedesigns.com/temp … s&start=18
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quote the 061:the governments bobbi compliance (which all business need to follow, or risk being fined)
I’ve just looked on all the government website relating to the DTI, UKonline and various others and I can’t find a reference to this 😕 Could you post a little more info on this as I’d like to see how the government are intending on regulating the internet or the at the least the way businesses present themselves online.
Cheers, Dewi
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As Rodney sugests
quote :Frontpage is real easy , there is a proviso , your host has to support frontpage extensionsFrontpage is all that i use now,(and is a great PHP editor) you can make it as easy or difficult as you like, from a simple design to designing your template in photoshop, slice it all up and place into a pretty complex table. If you go along the lines of frontpage drop me an email and I will be more than happy to send you a template to get started or if you fancy trying Netobjects I can dig you out something like version 6 for you to try 😀
If you go the 1&1 route you will have to get at least the business package for the frontpage extensions on the otherhand you can still use frontpage and just FTP your site, Ok a few things will not work like Form Submit etc. but there as still many ways around that 😀 (but thats another story)quote :so your website has to be integrated into a marketing campaign. Just having one , no matter how good , is useless.And again as rodney put it getting you site noticed is more than visual
content.You must spend time getting your Meta Tags, content etc. right.
This day and age it is quite difficult to get a good rank with a good search engine.
There are many people out there that offer a service to register your site with say 200 search engines – Stay far away from them they are the plague, you are more likley to not get listed using them as many search engines refuse to take automated submitions (spamming they call it), IMHO the best way to do this is manually visit search engines and subit your site that way. The first place you would visit is http://www.dmoz.org (open directory) web page and submit to their directory, you would not believe how many search engines spider that.Like others here I am only giving my opinion on what you should do, the final decision should be what you think…. is right for you 😀
Kev
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quote Dewi:quote the 061:the governments bobbi compliance (which all business need to follow, or risk being fined)I’ve just looked on all the government website relating to the DTI, UKonline and various others and I can’t find a reference to this 😕 Could you post a little more info on this as I’d like to see how the government are intending on regulating the internet or the at the least the way businesses present themselves online.
Cheers, Dewi
I too would like to hear more about this, would you care to elaborate more please “the061” 😀
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Can I recommend a cheap way to buy and host your website.
I have designed many websites using Frontpage which is like a desk top publishing program you insert text and pictures and then preview – one or two quirks but most could manage. Remember to add keywords in the background which are not visible in your website – these are what search engines look for -Think what Joe Public would put in a search engine to look for your product and these should be your keywords. Plus you need to register your web site with search engines which you can do manually or buy a programme to download and do multi submits automatically. I use SumitWolf. Unless you register your website with search engines no body will know your are there.
Anyway more importantly I also recommend buy you domain name through http://www.getdotted.com – a .co.uk name will cost you £17 plus VAT for 2 years and the same every two years to renew after that. Plus they host web sites free and have frontpage extensions. So it will only cost £19 every two years to keep you website on line 24 hours per day
If anyway needs any advice please contact me although I class my self as an novice I have managed to do several websites some containing more than 20 pages. I am not after work just to answer questions if poss.
Mike
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Remember that there are many regional search engine sites (portals) where you can register your business and do not need to have a website So for instance here is a portal for milton keynes http://www.touchmiltonkeynes.com/ there is bound to be a touch site for your town. In google search say for ‘search engines Milton Keynes’ and you may get several local search engine sites which you can register on for free covering Milton Keynes. Most free listings consist of entering your name address and telephone number in one catergory only but that is enough – you have to pay to have a link to your website and e-mail and name in say 5 catagories. If you pay the extra usually around £100 pa. they sometimes do a page for you in that price.
Also might be worth contacting business link to say if there are any grants to do a professional site (usually 50%)
Mike
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quote :Remember to add keywords in the background which are not visible in your website – these are what search engines look for
I hate to pick faults but hidden keywords is a bad way to go:
Some webmasters will place hidden keywords on a page and make the font color the same as the background color (for example white text on a white background). This renders the text invisible to the human eye but the search engine spiders can still see it. This results in a higher Page Rank and search engine listing for those keywords. Hidden text is often used on a doorway/cloaking (also a bad idea) page. Using hidden text is a sure way to get banned from Google fast!.
Googles and many other spiders are programmed to find the mismatched html for background colour and same colour text used on that background 😕 IE. <body bgcolor=”#000080″><p><font color=”#000080″>Bad Idea Is This</font></p> resulting in the spider just passing you on to somebody elses and never visting that url again. High rankings are what people want and people will try all sorts of tricks to fool the spiders but unfortunatley they are always one step ahead of us
Kev
Wow this is going right off topic now :lol1:
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OK before anybody picks it up #000080 is Navy not white 🙄
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Kev when I said keywords I meant Meta Tags and only used the expression keywords as I though not many would not understand ‘meta tags’. Perhaps I should have made reference to meta tags for clarification
Meta tags also include other information copyright, description, publisher, author. language, how often the spider should revisit
Meta TagsMany engines rely on meta tags to index and categorize your web pages.
You should make sure that all important entry pages to your web site have at least the KEYWORDS and a DESCRIPTION META tags included in the Header section of the HTML code. This should be done BEFORE a submission.
Without META tags, some engines may not index your web site correctly, or downgrade your ranking.
Note: SubmitWolf comes with a META Tags editor, which can help you insert and optimize your META tags. Click META Tags Editor from the Windows menu.
Meta tag hints:
The following are some simple rules to help improve your page ranking using META tags. This is a general guideline only, as all engines have their own specific rules for determining page relevancy.
1. Always include the most relevant keywords first. The relative position of keywords can influence ranking on some engines.
2. Do not repeat keywords in your meta tags eg: software,software,software,software
3. Do not try to include every keyword in the dictionary. The more keywords you have, the more you can diluted the perceived relevancy, which may result in downgrading your engine ranking on some engines.
4. Some engines do not use META tags, so try and have the important keywords also appear elsewhere in the visible text portion of your page.
The above is pasted for info only
Hope this explains a little but this bit is the most important as even if you have a brilliant website if search engines do not list it in the first two to three pages forget it as most people searching only look at the first 2-3 pages. A search on Google for ‘signmakers’ revealed 13400 entries – pointless if you are the 13000 one. Pay per click or priority listing on a good search engine must be considered.
Hope this clarifies things a little more
Mike
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Can I also suggest if you buy a domain name buy it from the company who you wish to host your site because apart from the cost of transferring to another hosting company the procedure for doing it can be very complex and time consuming
Mike
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I would recommend looking at my web site then contacting Afterware(the designers, well I designed it they put it together) if you like it. Spend your time making signs not stressing over your web site.
Cheers
Dave
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quote Nike Mike:Kev when I said keywords I meant Meta Tags and only used the expression keywords as I though not many would not understand ‘meta tags’. Perhaps I should have made reference to meta tags for clarification
Mike
You won’t even need tags, your index site text ( if done with thought) will provide enough info to search engines like google, we have painstakingly adjusted the index page of our site to be the first (in many cases) to be at the top of list should any customers type certain requirements or keywords.
Google updates the listings every few days or so, so if we miss a few phrases where we do not appear to have exposure, we update the site, and search on the keywords which are only contained within our index text, 3 days later, we are there at the top(ish) again. -
quote Nike Mike:Can I also suggest if you buy a domain name buy it from the company who you wish to host your site because apart from the cost of transferring to another hosting company the procedure for doing it can be very complex and time consuming
Mike
Then after 2 years nominet uk want £94 renewal or you lose it, it’s yet all just another con.
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outline
quote :Then after 2 years nominet uk want £94 renewal or you lose it, it’s yet all just another con.We just renewed our name with nominet uk, cost us £19.00 for another two years, only reason they charge £94.00 is if you go beyond the initial renewal date….. i think anyway! 😕 might be wrong… i normally am!! 🙁
(:)
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