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Creating a Website

cycloneworld

cycloneworld

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Mar 20, 2006
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Urbandale, IA
I'm exploring a business idea and would definitely want a website...nothing fancy, just something to layout the service, faqs, contact me, etc.

I'm not a computer guy and have very minimal programming experience. Is creating a basic website something I could do myself? If not, what would something like that cost?
 
GoDaddy.com and other online services like that have really basic pagemaking services for the novice (I think GoDaddy's is called "Website Tonight" or something). You may pay a bit more per month, but it's pretty easy.
 
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Many of the "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" editors provided by hosting companies are very easy to use and can create decent looking simple websites. I have use Yahoo's site builder and achieved decent results, and I am not very knowledgeable about website building. I tried joomla and found it to be exceedingly complicated, but had no problem with Yahoo's site builder. Godaddy has something similar I would assume.
 
a register.com or Godaddy website would work unless you plan to do some aggressive Search Engine Marketing in which case you might talk to a professional.
 
Our IT guys set up a skeleton website ran with Wordpress. I filled in what I wanted, and now I administer it, even though I am in much the same boat as you are. It's easy enough that my experience posting here is actually very similar, as far as changing pages and uploading things, adding links, etc.
 
I think you should hire me to do it for you. ;). I'm not a big fan of godaddy, but there are a ton of hosting services out there with tools that aren't complex for basic info. Google has a pretty easy interface as well.
 
I wouldn't recommend using a sub domain fir a business.
 
I'd check on prices of adobe dreamweaver ir similar editors. Play around with it and you'll quickly see the ease of use. Wouldn't be too hard to create a useful and quality design
 
To me it all depends on what you want. My advice is you get what you pay for.
If you want something basic. I think you can probably find some place online where you can do it yourself for free plus your hosting costs. Though generally most people can tell a do it yourself site from one done by an IT professional (Web design and layout can be a ***** sometimes)
You can also generally find someone to pay to do the job for you. Again this is all what you have in mind for the site and how complex you want it to be. I work for a non for profit here in illinois and do web development. Couple of us do side jobs to supplement our incomes. Prices range from something like 50 dollars an hour for simple jobs (most of the true programmers I work with are entry level ie less then 2 years professional experience) to my boss who charges 250 a hour for more complex things.
A cheap alternative you might look at (if your around ames/des moines) is contacting a Student to do it on the cheap (for beer/WOW money). If you want to do this if Gloria Cain is still there as an academic advisor you could shoot her an email and she'll forward it on to all the comp sci undergrads and odds are someone will contact you.
 
You can get a company to do it for you for a few hundred probably, just a matter of how much you'd want to make updates, etc. Graphics and a nice design are the key components to having a professional look IMO.
 
simply1 said:
You can get a company to do it for you for a few hundred probably, just a matter of how much you'd want to make updates, etc. Graphics and a nice design are the key components to having a professional look IMO.
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I can foresee the need to expand beyond the capabilities of a free WYSWYG program at some point in the future, but I also very much like having the capability of easily editing my site on my own. I worry that if I have something done professionally then I will lose that capability. Any advice as far as good options here?
 
This is what I'd do -

1. Go to GoDaddy.com and buy your url and web hosting.

2. Go to WordPress.org and download it. From there you can choose a theme you like and go to town.

This method is fast, cheap (WordPress is free), will have a low learning curve AND you can update your own content.

Best of luck to you, the web is a lot of fun to get into and learn how to do stuff.
 
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Kyle said:
I can foresee the need to expand beyond the capabilities of a free WYSWYG program at some point in the future, but I also very much like having the capability of easily editing my site on my own. I worry that if I have something done professionally then I will lose that capability. Any advice as far as good options here?
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Its relatively inexpensive to try a hosting service and see what you think as far as capabilities, wordpress as others have said can be okay. If you do go pro route, just lay out your concerns on being able to update on your own in the future and they should address that. You might look at joomla as well for content management system
 
simply1 said:
Its relatively inexpensive to try a hosting service and see what you think as far as capabilities, wordpress as others have said can be okay. If you do go pro route, just lay out your concerns on being able to update on your own in the future and they should address that. You might look at joomla as well for content management system
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How does wordpress compare to joomla? I tried to play with joomla a little and found it to be prohibitively complicated.
 
Kyle said:
How does wordpress compare to joomla? I tried to play with joomla a little and found it to be prohibitively complicated.
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I don't know about joomla, but wordpress, as I said, is kind of like posting on here- uploading files, posting links, etc. Very easy. I have to go to my IT guys every once in a while to figure out exactly how to do certain, more complex things, but those are things that I could probably figure out on my own if I screwed around enough.
 
Joomla is more difficult to do on your own, but it would lend itself to adding features which wordpress wouldn't be able to handle.
 
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