Web Site Help Needed

Doug M Jones

Member
Messages
23
Location
Central Iowa
I made my first sale of pens prior to Christmas. My sister bought 20 assorted acrylic slimlines and 6 wooden cigar pens for her department as Christmas Presents. I used the profit to buy an extension for the Jet mini and purchase the kits to do another 20 my daughter used as favors for the wedding party and others that helped at her recent wedding and still have a bunch of kits left. Now several of her employees have asked for my website to purchase additional pens and I don't have one.

How difficult is it to set up and what does it cost?

I am currently on Hughesnet satellite internet and they have a site option but it costs about $25 a month but includes the software for setting up a storefront. What is a good deal and do you sell enough to pay for the site?

I'm reasonably proficient at the computer but not an expert by any means. What kind of skills are necessary?

Any help you can give will be appreciated.

Doug
 
$25/month is too high for a small-business website. You shouldn't have to pay more than $8 or $10.

Check out Bluehost at http://www.bluehost.com/ . They offer everything you need to get started (unlimited domains/subdomains, MySQL, PHP, C-Panel, Fantastico, etc). You even get a free registered domain name as part of the package. Their service is great and they have a very good downtime record (I haven't had any yet). Check ratings and reviews on them and you'll see they are well thought of.

I installed a free product called Drupal to get my site (see sig) up and running. It's a "CMS" (Content Management System) that does most of the work for you. Once installed you just set up your configuration and provide content (although I've done quite a bit of customization). There's a slight learning curve but you'll catch on pretty quick.

Let me know if I can help with any questions you might have.
 
Neal is right. The $25 price from Hughes is WAY too much money for web hosting. Here's another vote for Bluehost. This forum is running on Bluehost servers, and I recently moved my websites to Bluehost, too.

Previously, I was using 1&1 Internet for my own sites, but I got tired my sites going down daily, and dealing with script-reading tech support monkeys. I have now become a walking, talking advertisement against 1&1 Internet.

BTW, congrats on the nice sale! :thumb:
 
I made my first sale of pens prior to Christmas. My sister bought 20 assorted acrylic slimlines and 6 wooden cigar pens for her department as Christmas Presents. I used the profit to buy an extension for the Jet mini and purchase the kits to do another 20 my daughter used as favors for the wedding party and others that helped at her recent wedding and still have a bunch of kits left. Now several of her employees have asked for my website to purchase additional pens and I don't have one.

How difficult is it to set up and what does it cost?

I am currently on Hughesnet satellite internet and they have a site option but it costs about $25 a month but includes the software for setting up a storefront. What is a good deal and do you sell enough to pay for the site?

I'm reasonably proficient at the computer but not an expert by any means. What kind of skills are necessary?

Any help you can give will be appreciated.

Doug

Doug, you can get free hosting from Lycos Tripod. For building your website you can use Microsoft Publisher or Frontpage.
I just renewed my website, using Microsoft publisher.
 
I am with Neal and use Blue Host and have been happy. It cost about $85 a year for the account and one domain registration. Their is a lot of good freeware out their that is easy to install that can help you create you site. Bluehost uses Fantastico to do very easy instalation of certain selected freeware site building management tools. Most of it is a bit of work to get setup but makes it very easy to add manage and maintain your site(s). Each freeware software has its own way of doing things and have a learning curve but once you get the hang of them they are pretty easy to use.

I run several sites on my account.
I have a site for pen sales that uses freeware software called Zencart. It is a bit of a pain to setup but once you are setup it is a breeze to use and maintain, it even automatically takes things off the site once sold.
http://www.distinctiveturnings.com
I run a wood identification wiki use TikiWiki (also freeware) on the same site just in a subfolder
http://www.distinctiveturnings.com/wiki/tiki-index.php
I splurged and got a vanity URL (about $10 a year) and just forward it to a subfolder on the same site. That uses Joomla (freeware) which is CMS software much like what Neal uses
www.michaelvickery.com
 
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Just have a moment but one thing that has not be said, is making web site is pretty easy with the right tools. Making a GOOD web is another matter. I do a few sites myself.

I see a lot that ought to be ashamed of their sites. I would never make one public that looked like that. You might want to work with someone that has some experience. Even if you have to pay them. To me a bad web site is not better than no web site. It's your advertisement and you want and need it to make a good impression.
 
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