I want to build a website for myself and potentially for a business venture. Where do I start?
A few things to keep in mind:
#1. Like all things, I have a very limited budget. I’ll be paying out of pocket and would probably just do it myself…. Or maybe I want to pay someone?
#2. I don’t need anything fancy with crazy graphics or anything super high end. Here are a few sites that I like that seem to be the feel I am looking for…
These seem simple enough but look good enough to not make people balk. While I love www.letsrun.com the format is not what I’m looking for. I think Wes’s and Running Center looks the best of those to me for what I am looking for.
#3. I know little to nothing about this, so I am going to need something that is kinda easy to use.
Any help for those of us who want a site but don’t want to pay 5 grand to have it built? Any good programs out there that are really user friendly?
Having a Web page (the HTML, at a minimum) is only the beginning. It has to reside somewhere (on a server), and be registered so that anyone can find it. You have to pay someone for that server, or it can be located on a server on which your ISP (like Comcast) provides free space. If you want it to do much of anything (like access data stored in a database or in files), you’ll need to have a server that will allow such functionality, or do stuff in Javascript (relatively simple programming, but it gets hairy if you don’t have the background). If you want an interesting web page (i.e., www.LaWoof.com instead of http://mywebpages.comcast.net/lawoof/index.html), you have to pay to register such a name along with the location of the server that is hosting the file(s).
Aren’t you making $14k/month or something you said awhile back?
Anyhoo…you have tons of options for DIY websites.
Lovato’s site is a template from http://www.triathletesonline.com/public/. So, if it’s some sort of person site, that might be the easiest route for you. Probably a set-up fee and monthly charge. It’s kinda like having a MySpace or Blog www.blogger.com or something simliar.
Another option is to use a domain hosting service/web page creation company. www.godaddy.com has become quite popular, although yahoo.com intro pricing is quite nice.
Just for the sake of this…you can do the entire thing with www.godaddy.com . Simply figure out a url, buy it, host it and then start adding content (html pages).
If you wanna get complex, you can pull content from other sources. For example…that annoying banner at the top of Dan’s page isn’t coming from him, it’s coming from his ad service (which is a way to make money to pay for your site).
TONS of resources out there.
If you wanna get more specific about your website, go ahead and post or send me a PM. Happy to help…
But, there’s no reason to re-create the wheel as there are TONS of templates/service which will do the work for you. Writing HTML or code is silly these days unless you want something specific.
The biggest challenge will be creating the longer term vision (if there is one) and make sure you build a scaleable site.
I think this is key. I know nothing about Godaddy’s stuff, but plenty of places that can host you from a small personal site on up. I use http://www.jumpline.com/vds_hosting.php and figure you can go with a small personal site for 10$ a month and upgrade as necessary.
Another thing to keep in mind is even if you don’t know alot about develping a site, ther seem’s to be a plethora of people out that that know enough to get a small site going. Setting up a small personal site with a few pics is not to hard and can be done without a whole lot of computer knowledge in a rather short period of time. Setting up a site with E-commerce, forums, security etc. is a different story.