Hosting and Website Advice

[Portto]

I am currently using Net Firms (http://www.netfirms.com) for my web hosting. For $179 a year I am getting 300GB diskspace, 5 free domains, $50 in Adwords and Facebook ad coupons and 1000 email accounts. The full description can be found here: www.netfirms.com/web-hosting/ (http://www.netfirms.com/web-hosting/). I am using the Business hosting (third column). Is this a good deal? My websites are mostly informational and I have found the 24/7 service to be quite helpful. The only reason I am asking is because I didn't really shop around when I signed up and my 1 year subscription is up for renewal.

Secondly, I have been using the Sitebuilder CMS to make my current websites, but I am unhappy how the sites look. They just don't look very professional. The following is an example site I created for a football team I coach: www.nswolverines.ca (http://www.nswolverines.ca)

I am ready to switch to a new CMS and I have narrowed it down to Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal, which should I go with? Like I said my websites are generally content driven, for example an average site might have a sales letter page, a supplementary info page, a photo album, a blog, and a contact page.

Thanks for your help,
-Chris

[Smiley]

Hey Chris,
Having looked at what features you currently employ on a site, I would recommend Weebly, which can be accessed here: http://www.weebly.com

Cheers :)

[Portto]

So you think I shouldn't bother with Net Firms and instead do it all through Weebly? Is the website and hosting 100% free?

[Portto]

Here is an interesting article that comes to the following recommendation (it discusses Weebly earlier in the article but doesn't recommend it in the end):

I would recommend you use Wordpress if you are creating a blog. I have used and researched many blogging platforms and Wordpress is the best. If you are creating a website, I recommend you use a Content Management System and learn a little HTML and CSS to give yourself more flexibility over how your website looks and functions... Some knowledge of HTML and CSS will make creating your website easier over the long run but it is not essential to know either.

A final option that I did not discuss is if you want someone to create your website for you. The main purpose of this website is to teach you how to create a website or blog from scratch so you can make money online by creating a website about something you are passionate about; however, it is sometimes a good idea to outsource some of the work on your website. This is a good idea if you just want to focus on creating the content for your site so you don’t have to worry about actual web design. Also, it is a good option if you have very little time to learn how to build a website or blog and you need your website up quickly. *note—you could have a website or blog up and running in a couple minutes with Wordpress or other easy Content Management Systems without much (or any) technical knowledge.

If you get your website built by someone else, make sure you learn from your web designer how to administer your website so you have complete control over your site after the web designer is done building it. The last thing you want is to have to go back to your web designer every time you want to update or add something new to your website. Just be detailed with what you want your site to be like and make sure the web designer knows you want to have complete control over your website or blog once they are done.

Once you start seeing success with your site and you want to focus more on creating content rather than on administrative work it is a good idea to hire a virtual assistant (part time or full time) to help with certain parts of creating your website instead of paying a local web designer...

youcreatewebsite.com (http://youcreatewebsite.com/how-create-website-or-blog)

Sounds like a Tim disciple with the VA recommendation...

[wfernley]

I suggest WordPress as well. As for hosting, you can pay as little as $3 for a decent hosting company. I charge my clients $120yr and put them on my dedicated server so it is faster than normal "shared" hosting.

Make sure your hosting company offers a wide range of supported features if you are running WordPress. I specialize in WordPress customization (themes and plugins) and find some hosts don't fully support features required by WordPress plugins.

[Portto]

Can someone recommend a simple and professional looking Joomla template for a one product website (along the lines of PX Method)?

Thanks!

[Feumet]

Can someone recommend a simple and professional looking Joomla template for a one product website (along the lines of PX Method)?

Thanks!

I used to work with both Joomla and Drupal and built a number of Websites for clients with them. Now I can only recommend WordPress. It is so far ahead of everything else it is not even funny. Especially with SEO. If you have a chance to not use Joomla, I would do so.
Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

[Portto]

How would I go about learning Wordpress quickly?

So much of the info out there seems to be targeted at starting blogs. I'm finding it very difficult to learn how to design a non-blog website on Wordpress.

I don't want a bog, I want websites to sell my product/services.

[Feumet]

How would I go about learning Wordpress quickly?

So much of the info out there seems to be targeted at starting blogs. I'm finding it very difficult to learn how to design a non-blog website on Wordpress.

I don't want a bog, I want websites to sell my product/services.

Well, you are right but that is changing. As I said, I switched a couple of years ago because I saw what was coming. I had the same problems you did with finding a way to do it right.

Here are a couple of examples of whole sites built on WordPress

www.21to21.com

This is in beta mode
www.launchboxpro.com

And as far as selling products go you can do it all in one shot on WordPress with software like Launchbox Pro or if you get a customized them.

If you are looking just for a Landing page for product, the guy who has the best software out there for Landing pages and squeeze pages and who has been copied by a ton of people is Ryan Grabenstein. Sharp dude who I work with because his stuff is that good. He is one of the few people that Adobe recommends people to for help from their website.


http://www.flexibilitytheme.com/flexsqueeze/

http://www.justdreamweaver.com/

Hope this helps some and if you want some specific questions answered I will try and help.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Portto]

Yeah but are there any good ebooks or online tutorials out there specifically for making non-blog websites using Wordpress?

I want to learn for myself rather than hire someone to do it all.

[Feumet]

Yeah but are there any good ebooks or online tutorials out there specifically for making non-blog websites using Wordpress?

I want to learn for myself rather than hire someone to do it all.

Well if there is, I have not found any really good ones which is why I have dumped a bunch of time working on the software to do it.

But I will ask the people I hang with and see if they have any resources and will post them here.

What are your programing skill levels? I do have some tutorials laying somewhere that might help. Let me look around for them tomorrow and see what I can come up with and your are welcome to them.

As far as a landing page hack. You can take any theme and just give it a single page and make it home and you have a landing page. There might some good freebies out there but I really have not see any good ones lately that do what you want. It takes some work to do them right.

Short codes make it a lot easier though. You can do a Google search of but there is just so much bad info out there. I will definitely get some recommendations for you. You can teach yourself for sure. PHP and CSS is a good place to start.

Have you messed with themes or PHP before?