Personal website

[Charlie Woody]

Thanks morfa ... I had got one sorted before your reply. Following a recommendation from Dodge I purchased mine from Mr Site which was very cheap and easy for a non techie like me to use.

 

[Colesmeister]

Dreamweaver is nothing more than an editing suite. Whilst packages may be advertised as 'Dreamweaver Templates' they are nothing more than a html/css package which dreamweaver along with any plain text editor can edit.

I agree dreamweaver creates awful code from wysiwyg however it is a good editor in code mode imho.

I far prefer to write, host and own my own domains but for beginners try either wordpress or a simple static host.

If you are paying don't get sucked in by the many £299 sites - 5 pages for £300 is nothing but theft.

 

[Dangermouse]

As the webmaster for our vintage caravan club , I have found Hostgator.com to be great, £79 for three years, unlimited space, built in webpage builder, webmail that works fine, hundreds of templates, easy control panel, 100% recommend it. Click the PCCC link below and see what you think and have a look at their site for info, http://www.hostgator.com

 

[TJ79]

I'm a bit of a pleb when it comes to web design, well, the web in general. So most of this is double Dutch to me.

A friend sent me a link to this site as it might be of use to me http://www.1and1.co.uk/create-a-business-blog

Anyone here tried it?

 

[Spooky]

Avoid 1&1 if possible, there is a litany of horror stories about the lack of ability to change hosts or move domain names or cancel un-requested services.

Here is just a few

http://www.host-shopper.com/1and1-web-hosting-reviews.html

The old adage, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is, fits rather well

JustHost are very good, as are a number of others.

best wishes

Dave

 

[Graham Orm]

Yola. Couldn't be easier. From Google free for the first year and about £40 per year thereafter. Simply drag & drop blocks of text and photo's. Go back and add to it or edit any time you like. Really easy, can't believe more people don't use it.
https://www.yola.com/login?login-success_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsitebuilder.yola.com%2Fide%2Findex.jsp

 

[DonJohnson]

Since everyone seems to promoting their favourite method, may I add mine ?

Purchase WYSIWYG Web Builder WWB - version 9 has just been published priced at around £30 (see http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/purchase.html )

Go to compila.com and look at the Starter or Bargain hosting packages at around £14 and £22 per annum respectively (but they charge in TWO year lumps). These include free registration of a .co.uk domain name (extra for .com etc)

WWB really is a 'What You See Is What You Get' website generator - you plonk your text and pictures just where you want them with no tables to struggle with like in HTML - and you can do lots of clever things without knowing any coding.

There are free templates available to modify to your own taste.

These are all - fairly simple - sites made with WWB :
http://www.donjohnson24.co.uk/ http://www.chedzoyvillagehall.co.uk/ http://www.johnsmithbusker.co.uk/ and http://www.thetypewriterman.co.uk/

The typewriter one even use a CMS supplement for the Sales page (needs the Bargain package, but not many items on it at the moment)

I'm sure this will add to potential site-makers confusion :?

Oh! And you can try WWB for 30 days before buying it - a WWB 9 watermark appears on all pages until you register.

 

[DonJohnson]

I forgot one more - the most relevant! http://www.somersetwoodturners.org.uk/

 

[JustBen]

All these ideas seem really long winded and expensive.

I have a hosting account with unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk
They are based in Manchester and have fantastic customer support. (They reply even faster than Ian @ Tuffsaws which takes some beating)
I pay £3.30inc vat a month for an unlimited account. It also comes with a free domain for 2 years.
I've been with them for quite a while now, have several websites on my account and never had any downtime.

As with most hosting, it comes with a bundle of (mostly) free web apps to build any type of website you desire.
Most of them come with templates that you can just fill in the gaps or you can download your own off the web.
There are 1000s to choose from and 99% of them are easily modified.

I have got photoshop, dreamweaver, coffeecup, expression web, kompozer etc and find dreamweaver the best to use for web design(although I do use dietcoda on my ipad)

Building a website can be as easy or as hard as you like. With the increasing additions to html5 and css3, flash is becoming a thing of the past and is best to avoid.

One thing I would recommend is it make sure your site is accessible to everyone on all different devices.

Tablet/mobile shopping is ever increasing, don't exclude them by not checking compatability.

Hope this helps.

 

[powertools]

Yola. Couldn't be easier. From Google free for the first year and about £40 per year thereafter. Simply drag & drop blocks of text and photo's. Go back and add to it or edit any time you like. Really easy, can't believe more people don't use it.
https://www.yola.com/login?login-success_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsitebuilder.yola.com%2Fide%2Findex.jsp

For a small simple to produce website I think that Yola is a very good option.
If you need something fancy and have got time to learn or money to burn it could come across as being to simple but for a basic site that is easy to build yourself and gets good Google rankings I think that it is hard to beat.

I think that the Google free offer has finished but for less than £1 a week it is the the best thing I have done to promote my small business and it saved the day after Microsoft closed down their Office Small Business service in favor of their Office 365.

 

[Graham Orm]

Yola. Couldn't be easier. From Google free for the first year and about £40 per year thereafter. Simply drag & drop blocks of text and photo's. Go back and add to it or edit any time you like. Really easy, can't believe more people don't use it.
https://www.yola.com/login?login-success_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsitebuilder.yola.com%2Fide%2Findex.jsp

For a small simple to produce website I think that Yola is a very good option.
If you need something fancy and have got time to learn or money to burn it could come across as being to simple but for a basic site that is easy to build yourself and gets good Google rankings I think that it is hard to beat.

I think that the Google free offer has finished but for less than £1 a week it is the the best thing I have done to promote my small business and it saved the day after Microsoft closed down their Office Small Business service in favor of their Office 365.

Couldn't be happier with mine. I don't advertise it, I use it as a portfolio for customers to look at. It's so easy to alter and add to. Perfect for a one man band like me.

 

[longinthetooth]

I don't understand why people are going on about paying for hosting - most isp accounts (that you must already have if you're connected to the internet) come with default 'free' web-space ... just use that.