How to set up a website?

[tjaybrown]

I want to simply set up a website-independent of yahoo stores or anything like that-which is basically the same thing as pxmethod.com. Something very simple and straight forward. One page and one method to take a credit card payment. I know one should buy the domain from godaddy.com. After that, I really don't know what to do. I am a complete novice, but I know it cannot be that hard!

I want to learn to do this on my own. I don't want to outsource it. Though it may be more efficient to outsource it to elan, I want to know how to slap up a simple website with a paypall cart on my own.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could learn to do this? Should I buy dreamweaver and a Dummies guide, read and then figure it out? Is there a website out there which sells these things stock and makes it easy for the owner to customize? That would work for me.

Thank you all for your responses..

[searstower]

Don't bother with Dreamweaver, it so overkill for a one page site. Instead look for a web host who has a Site Builder tool, basically a 'point and click' to edit type of thing. I use Profitmatic and it's good, but you can find others cheaper (a quick google search shows that bluehost.com should do what you want and they've got a pretty good reputation).

As for the Paypal cart, that is super easy. If you haven't already, set up an account with Paypal. When you log in, there is a Merchant section. Go there and they will walk you through setting up buttons or carts. All you need to do is select your options and then copy and paste the code they create for you into your page.

Oh, don't buy your domain from GoDaddy yet. Look for the host you want to use first, as they usually include the price of the domain in the hosting.

Good luck!
Rebecca

[tjaybrown]

Great advice! Thanks so much!

When I have time, I definitely want to learn more advanced methods of web design. However, for my immediate needs, the advice you gave will help me greatly..thanks!

[ScottL]

Try these excellent services that let novices set up high-quality websites:

www.SquareSpace.com
www.atomicshops.com/

With these services, you don't need to know Dreamweaver anymore. You can get a website going in about an hour.

I wouldn't try the "site builder" services that come with your ISP like GoDaddy or 1and1. They tend to be low-quality, difficult to understand, and insufficient.

[GK Training Systems]

Try these excellent services that let novices set up high-quality websites:

www.SquareSpace.com
www.atomicshops.com/

With these services, you don't need to know Dreamweaver anymore. You can get a website going in about an hour.

I wouldn't try the "site builder" services that come with your ISP like GoDaddy or 1and1. They tend to be low-quality, difficult to understand, and insufficient.

Are these services really superior to something like bluehost? I've checked them all out, and bluehost seems just as good for about a third of the price...

[tjaybrown]

Bluehost is really cheap! would also like to know what those websites have to offer that Bluehost doesn't substatially cover.

[agolden]

Great question, with some great answers.

You may also look to other solutions such as WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org) where you can leverage a content management system such as this for use in developing a website. WordPress is actually free bloggin software, but it's incredibly flexible and provides a plethora of plugins for specifc addons as you needs change/grow. Once WordPress is installed and running, if you can use MS Word, you can post/edit content in your website.

WordPress is free and there are a number of hosts including, Bluehost as mentioned previously that offer a system called Fantastico that provides for a 1-click install of the system so you don't have to do it manually. This translates to one less thing to learn.

The nice thing about WordPress is that it's database driven, so you can easily update the look of your website anytime. Take a look at this link for some of the free themes (http://themes.wordpress.net/)that people have created.

You can litterally download as many as you need, or be more selective and download one then, utilize a freelancer from elance to customize your theme to meet your needs.

Payment solutions, include Paypal as you're likely familiar with. Other options include shoppingcarts such as 1shoppingcart.com (http://www.1shoppingcart.com). I've used them since 2002 and I've watched their growth and development. They offer the opportunity for such things as digital delivery of products (such as ebooks) or even membership website management. All good sources of residual income.

Hope that helps show you some other options. I've used these both very successfully. The nice thing is that the learning curve can be flattened by getting outside assistance via elance and looking at some good opensource (free) software.

Good luck in your ventures.
Drew

[GatsbyGirl]

I suggest XSitePro. It's a site builder with built in SEO. I have had awesome natural search engine results with it.

[glamrgrl]

Hi All-

I spent the greater part of yesterday trying to locate a simple build-a-website place for the complete novice (me) ..although I did have my own site built by elance with great results for $250..

www.citymax.com

The templates are free and the hosting is $20 per month and you can add a shopping cart/paypal/other payment options..

Hope this helps!

Jennifer

[joshsterm]

For a temporary and cheap solution, what I have done before is buy a domain from GoDaddy.com and set up the free domain forwarding that comes with GoDaddy to automatically redirect visitors to a site I made free with Google Pages (pages.google.com). The forwarding site hides the ugly google address (yourname.googlepages.com) so it appears they're just on a normal site.

[Feumet]

Cheap Websites on Steroids

I was going to wait until we had the rest of this done, but after seeing all of the recommendations, and that some of the recommendations are very good by the way, I want to help everyone here save a bunch of money, and time on the website search. I would not have posted this other than I hate to see people blow $200 on inferior products when they do not have to. I have been there and done that and have a drawer full of T shirts to prove it...LOL

I have been involved with online commerce since 1988 Arghhh….and have seen and used practically all of the Website services out there, from Microsoft, (Worked on the early small business development team) Yahoo, Geo Cities, 1and1, BlueHost, Earthlink, CityMax, and probably a dozen others and I still learn something new everyday.

I have been working on a deal for our regular client base and have decided that if anyone here is interested, I will offer it to you guys and gals as well. I am NOT, doing a hard sell, here, but I put together a whopper of a deal, and it can save everyone a lot of time, effort, frustration, and money. If there is a consensus that I should remove this post, I will.

Anyway, I just cut this deal. (Yes, I am way over 4 hours this week but this one was worth working Saturday for) with what I consider the best hosting service out there to give our clients a 300 GB website, with the easiest to use Editor that I have ever seen or used, easy to use website templates, a Free Domain Name, some really good submission software (we used it to keep a client website #1 on Yahoo search for 2 years running). 2,500 email accounts, a great Meta Tag Generator, $6.50 web domains, Free Ad Word Advertising on Yahoo and Google, a bulletin board, a blogger, easy to ad forms, several shopping carts, and a whole boatload of other features along with really good 24/7 customer support.

In addition, this is what I consider the best part,we are even throwing in 4 hours of Virtual Assistant work on any of the following to help get you rolling.

Data Processing

1. Data Entry

2. File Conversion

3. OCR Conversion

4. Word Processing

5. Presentation Formatting

6. Mailing List Development

7. Internet Research

8. Offline to online Posting.

9. Product Entry to shopping cart


Web Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization.

2. PPC Marketing

3. Forum advertisements

4. Bulk Mailing

Customer Service

1. General Customer Service.

2. Technical Customer Service.

3. IT Helpdesk Services.

4. Live Chat.

5. Voice and Non Voice Customer services


CityMax charges $20 bucks a month or $240 per year and nothing against their services, but we are going to be able to offer the World Class Website and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant time to jump-start you for….. $59.88...Period. That works out to $4.98 a month. I am not kidding!

Therefore, for ¼ of the price of CityMax or most of the other services, you can have your site up running and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant help.

The deal is inked but we will not have the details or the sign up sheet available until Tuesday.

There are actually even more benefits to boot but if anyone is interested in this, drop me an email and I will let you know how to sign up. I do have a limited amount of these available and I am sure you can understand why…LOL Truly, I have never even heard of a deal this good.

Regardless of who you end up using, just go do it!

Have a great weekend!!! I am off to go have fun!
:)

[darrin365]

Holy Cow! That sounds incredible! Will think about it. The pain of moving everything (mySQL dbs, files, domains, etc) lock, stock and barrel to a new host is painful to consider. :)

[Feumet]

That is what I though too. You are right about the other part being a pain... Perhaps maybe just a redirect on the domains? We have a couple of hundred domains and just redirecting for now. The rest of it..well...LOL

[fmichlick]

I have been involved with online commerce since 1988 Arghhh….and have seen and used practically all of the Website services out there, from Microsoft, (Worked on the early small business development team) Yahoo, Geo Cities, 1and1, BlueHost, Earthlink, CityMax, and probably a dozen others and I still learn something new everyday.


The whole deal sounds amazing, especially since that might be something I'd be looking for to place my hosting customers on, if possible.

I do have a question though since the paragraph quoted above really intrigued me. What type of online commerce were you participating on before 1993, AOL/prodigy? Would love to hear some stories from the time before the web (the first web browser was released in 1993), sounds like you should be writing a book about it.

/Frank

[Feumet]

The whole deal sounds amazing, especially since that might be something I'd be looking for to place my hosting customers on, if possible.

I do have a question though since the paragraph quoted above really intrigued me. What type of online commerce were you participating on before 1993, AOL/prodigy? Would love to hear some stories from the time before the web (the first web browser was released in 1993), sounds like you should be writing a book about it.

/Frank

Prodigy, Compuserve, and a couple of other private networks. :)

[TLHinteractive]

It's way easier than you might think. We even provide the free software to do it!

Go to www.tlhinteractive.com and check it out. If you have any questions, let me know!

[AdamTeece]

You don't have to actually transfer everything away from your prvious host. It will take a bit of work to copy everything, but it would be worth it. Do what the book says and have both. It is cheap enough. Then use a service like No-IP or I think DynDNS does the same thing to where if one goes down, the other will pick it right back up.

[RichB]

Did I miss it but where do I go for the offer Feumet spoke of?

[MiniBlueDragon]

[URL Removed as requested by the site author. I'm sure it will be posted when it's ready] :)

[owen5819@comcast.net]

Feumet, could you elaborate on that bit about free AdWords advertising? It sounds interesting. How does that work? Are there limitations? The price is certainly right!

And, I guess it has to be asked, is there anything about this deal that we are likely to think of later as "gotchas" if we don't know of them in advance? Must sign a contract for the next 27 years or something?

Thanks.

[Feumet]

Feumet, could you elaborate on that bit about free AdWords advertising? It sounds interesting. How does that work? Are there limitations? The price is certainly right!

And, I guess it has to be asked, is there anything about this deal that we are likely to think of later as "gotchas" if we don't know of them in advance? Must sign a contract for the next 27 years or something?

Thanks.

Sites just came out of Alpha and is in beta and most of it is not live. Need to have all of my Alpha Testers run through it once I let them know it is ready. This thing has turning into a nice friendly monster.

Shooting for Tuesday on going live. Will reveal all then. Have some more great deals too been beating up vendors left and right for discounts and freebies. This one is exciting...LOL Will give you some twists on the Testing that should help you with finding out which Muse will fly.

Will let you know.

Cheers!

[Feumet]

Cheap Websites on Steroids

I was going to wait until we had the rest of this done, but after seeing all of the recommendations, and that some of the recommendations are very good by the way, I want to help everyone here save a bunch of money, and time on the website search. I would not have posted this other than I hate to see people blow $200 on inferior products when they do not have to. I have been there and done that and have a drawer full of T shirts to prove it...LOL

I have been involved with online commerce since 1988 Arghhh….and have seen and used practically all of the Website services out there, from Microsoft, (Worked on the early small business development team) Yahoo, Geo Cities, 1and1, BlueHost, Earthlink, CityMax, and probably a dozen others and I still learn something new everyday.

I have been working on a deal for our regular client base and have decided that if anyone here is interested, I will offer it to you guys and gals as well. I am NOT, doing a hard sell, here, but I put together a whopper of a deal, and it can save everyone a lot of time, effort, frustration, and money. If there is a consensus that I should remove this post, I will.

Anyway, I just cut this deal. (Yes, I am way over 4 hours this week but this one was worth working Saturday for) with what I consider the best hosting service out there to give our clients a 300 GB website, with the easiest to use Editor that I have ever seen or used, easy to use website templates, a Free Domain Name, some really good submission software (we used it to keep a client website #1 on Yahoo search for 2 years running). 2,500 email accounts, a great Meta Tag Generator, $6.50 web domains, Free Ad Word Advertising on Yahoo and Google, a bulletin board, a blogger, easy to ad forms, several shopping carts, and a whole boatload of other features along with really good 24/7 customer support.

In addition, this is what I consider the best part,we are even throwing in 4 hours of Virtual Assistant work on any of the following to help get you rolling.

Data Processing

1. Data Entry

2. File Conversion

3. OCR Conversion

4. Word Processing

5. Presentation Formatting

6. Mailing List Development

7. Internet Research

8. Offline to online Posting.

9. Product Entry to shopping cart


Web Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization.

2. PPC Marketing

3. Forum advertisements

4. Bulk Mailing

Customer Service

1. General Customer Service.

2. Technical Customer Service.

3. IT Helpdesk Services.

4. Live Chat.

5. Voice and Non Voice Customer services


CityMax charges $20 bucks a month or $240 per year and nothing against their services, but we are going to be able to offer the World Class Website and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant time to jump-start you for….. $59.88...Period. That works out to $4.98 a month. I am not kidding!

Therefore, for ¼ of the price of CityMax or most of the other services, you can have your site up running and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant help.

The deal is inked but we will not have the details or the sign up sheet available until Tuesday.

There are actually even more benefits to boot but if anyone is interested in this, drop me an email and I will let you know how to sign up. I do have a limited amount of these available and I am sure you can understand why…LOL Truly, I have never even heard of a deal this good.

Regardless of who you end up using, just go do it!

Have a great weekend!!! I am off to go have fun!
:)


Dang, I put all of that in there? LOL I said Tuesday, not which one. LOL Should be up by this Tuesday. Cheers.

[billnad]

I am not sure if this thread has really spun out of control but I was just reading through the book and noticed that one of Tim's recommendations is 1 and 1 for webhosting (http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=8417832). I have been using 1 and 1 for three years now and even buy my domains through them as they only cost 5.99 and the simplicity of having everything together seems worth it. Also the web hosting package that I use is only 9.99 per month not the hundread or two that people pay for a dedicated server (which more often than not people do not need anyway.

Another tip that I have is that if you d not know much HTML or if you are design challenged as I am then you can go to http://www.oswd.org and you can download free web page templates that you can add text to and upload so that you are in business in just a few minutes.

So what am I saying here? That you can get started and have a web business for a very small amount of money and once you are in the sky is the limit. Do not worry about the technical aspects, of course we can out source for that if it is any trouble at all.

Find your muse!

[Webzu]

NVU (http://www.nvu.com)is a free web design software you can use to get started. You can easily edit templates from OSWD with NVU.

[TLHinteractive]

I used 1and1 once...and that was all it took. They have the worst customer support on the planet! I moved my accounts.

As for software, try www.coffeecup.com. Low cost, easy to use software.

Go to my hosting site and download the free book on putting up a web site for more ideas.

www.TLHInteractive.com

[billnad]

Sorry to hear about your hosting problems with 1 and 1 THL, I have not encountered any problems myself.

One other thing of note is that quite often hosting companies will have some kind of online point and click software that will allow you to build a site without any HTML knowledge and we must all remember that this kind of work can be long and drawn out so it may be better to outsource it. I know that there are many popular and successful internet marketers that know no html and have always had a developer do it for them

[Vagabond]

Sorry to hear about your hosting problems with 1 and 1 THL, I have not encountered any problems myself.

One other thing of note is that quite often hosting companies will have some kind of online point and click software that will allow you to build a site without any HTML knowledge and we must all remember that this kind of work can be long and drawn out so it may be better to outsource it. I know that there are many popular and successful internet marketers that know no html and have always had a developer do it for them

yeah from my experience, albeit quite limited, i havent been able to get a decent looking page from a free designer. Things are typically edited and formatted in silos so it can look a bit choppy. Prob good for a personal page but I plan on outsourcing my web design.

[crowsnatcher]

What are 'silos'?

[crowsnatcher]

Here's another newbie question... If I want to set up several different unconnected web-sites (a couple drop shipped items, an e-book, some affiliate marketing, etc) and each site is rather small, can I do it on one membership? Or do I need to re-sign up every time I conjure up a new muse?

[PhilnCedarPark]

Been doing this for years - its called "virtual hosting" - for example, BlueHost advertises: Host UNLIMITED Domains!!!

Thats what you look for. The trick - the key trick here - is to make sure each domain (ie website) is connected to a different database (you will probably be offered many along with the account). Trust me - if you need to move or sell your web site you want to easily disentangle it from your other ones.

PS - just using bluehost as an example - no affiliation.

[kindwomanxx]

to tjay and all the neophy web designers......

Our muse is a tool that will resolve your issue of easy web production. We will post more information on where to get the demo on Monday. Watch the forum for more details.

Joann

[crowsnatcher]

Okay, I've been looking at about a billion hosting providers and my head is starting to spin. I'm a big fan of 'top 10' lists when making a purchase, but there's hardly any overlap on the lists (cnet, 100best, etc). I like friendly simple presentations (see Simple Host), and I hate busy hard-selling supersites (see Blue Host). Anyway, I was thinking of going with Crucial Web Hosting, because they have all the features and they just look cool. But then I noticed their set up fee, and was suddenly faced with choosing "128 bit GeoTrust SSL Certificate", "Static IP Address", "Crucial Name Shield", and "Crucial Sitemap Service", all at an extra price. What is that stuff? Do I need it?

[Feumet]

Cheap Websites on Steroids

I was going to wait until we had the rest of this done, but after seeing all of the recommendations, and that some of the recommendations are very good by the way, I want to help everyone here save a bunch of money, and time on the website search. I would not have posted this other than I hate to see people blow $200 on inferior products when they do not have to. I have been there and done that and have a drawer full of T shirts to prove it...LOL

I have been involved with online commerce since 1988 Arghhh….and have seen and used practically all of the Website services out there, from Microsoft, (Worked on the early small business development team) Yahoo, Geo Cities, 1and1, BlueHost, Earthlink, CityMax, and probably a dozen others and I still learn something new everyday.

I have been working on a deal for our regular client base and have decided that if anyone here is interested, I will offer it to you guys and gals as well. I am NOT, doing a hard sell, here, but I put together a whopper of a deal, and it can save everyone a lot of time, effort, frustration, and money. If there is a consensus that I should remove this post, I will.

Anyway, I just cut this deal. (Yes, I am way over 4 hours this week but this one was worth working Saturday for) with what I consider the best hosting service out there to give our clients a 300 GB website, with the easiest to use Editor that I have ever seen or used, easy to use website templates, a Free Domain Name, some really good submission software (we used it to keep a client website #1 on Yahoo search for 2 years running). 2,500 email accounts, a great Meta Tag Generator, $6.50 web domains, Free Ad Word Advertising on Yahoo and Google, a bulletin board, a blogger, easy to ad forms, several shopping carts, and a whole boatload of other features along with really good 24/7 customer support.

In addition, this is what I consider the best part,we are even throwing in 4 hours of Virtual Assistant work on any of the following to help get you rolling.

Data Processing

1. Data Entry

2. File Conversion

3. OCR Conversion

4. Word Processing

5. Presentation Formatting

6. Mailing List Development

7. Internet Research

8. Offline to online Posting.

9. Product Entry to shopping cart


Web Marketing

1. Search Engine Optimization.

2. PPC Marketing

3. Forum advertisements

4. Bulk Mailing

Customer Service

1. General Customer Service.

2. Technical Customer Service.

3. IT Helpdesk Services.

4. Live Chat.

5. Voice and Non Voice Customer services


CityMax charges $20 bucks a month or $240 per year and nothing against their services, but we are going to be able to offer the World Class Website and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant time to jump-start you for….. $59.88...Period. That works out to $4.98 a month. I am not kidding!

Therefore, for ¼ of the price of CityMax or most of the other services, you can have your site up running and 4 hours of Virtual Assistant help.

The deal is inked but we will not have the details or the sign up sheet available until Tuesday.

There are actually even more benefits to boot but if anyone is interested in this, drop me an email and I will let you know how to sign up. I do have a limited amount of these available and I am sure you can understand why…LOL Truly, I have never even heard of a deal this good.

Regardless of who you end up using, just go do it!

Have a great weekend!!! I am off to go have fun!
:)

Ok, well it is finally READY .... I think... :) I got the first version of the PUPPY Ready, and actually I beat the pricing!!!! PLUS You get 8 Hours of VA time and a Free Host site for a year all for $49.88!

http://www.the4hourmuse.com/muse_mid.jpg

Thanks!

[Marcie]

Okay, I've been looking at about a billion hosting providers and my head is starting to spin. I'm a big fan of 'top 10' lists when making a purchase, but there's hardly any overlap on the lists (cnet, 100best, etc). I like friendly simple presentations (see Simple Host), and I hate busy hard-selling supersites (see Blue Host). Anyway, I was thinking of going with Crucial Web Hosting, because they have all the features and they just look cool. But then I noticed their set up fee, and was suddenly faced with choosing "128 bit GeoTrust SSL Certificate", "Static IP Address", "Crucial Name Shield", and "Crucial Sitemap Service", all at an extra price. What is that stuff? Do I need it?

I'm not positive about all of it but I would say no for now, you can add "stuff" on later if needed...none of it is critical to getting up and running...

[Webzu]

Blue Host is good. So it Host Gator. I use Dream Host and Surpass Hosting and I like them both but Dream Host doesn't have cpanel so if your new to hosting stick with cpanel. Don't get overwhelmed with the terms most starter plans will have more then you'll need for around $7-10 per month. Also make sure you can host multiple domains on your account.

[SwingDancer]

I really like Doteasy.com. They have a web hosting option that costs $0 U.S. (even less Canadian!) ;)

You can register your domain name for less than $20. And they have free templates you can use to set up a site in a few minutes. Here's a site I threw together to market a rental property (please be kind--both the house and the website are under construction!)

www.capitalcitygroup.org

You can get set up with a pretty heavy-duty e-commerce site for $9.95 a month.

If you like it, and decide to sign up, please use the affiliate ID "hanover." I just signed up for their affiliate program as one of my automatic income streams and I'll be interested to see how it works.

Cheers,
Kathleen