Help: Setting up a website for a new business, complete novice here

c montgomery

Hi everyone,

I recently started my own business and I’m now thinking about setting up a website to promote it, trouble is I have no idea how to do this.

A quick google search showed that this can be done for free using a number of sites.

I’m just wondering if anyone could recommend which site is the best to do this. I would like to have my own .com domain with 5 email addresses. I would like the email address format to be xyz@example.com

The site will not be used for sales or any transactions just for displaying contact details, services provided & location

Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Im happy to use a pay site also if there were good.

Thanks

D

yoyo

Moved from Comp & Tech.

I would strongly advise avoiding these "free" websites like Wix etc., they are highly unprofessional and there are much better alternatives out there, look into self hosting Wordpress, buy a premium theme that suits and your good to go. Obviously that is speaking in simplistic terms, but there will be a bit of a learning curve getting used to Wordpress and tweaking the site, but Youtube has plenty of free video tutorials that will get you started. You should get the domain and email hosting from a web service provider, recommendations can't be talked about on boards.

Nick

KonFusion

yoyo wrote: »

Moved from Comp & Tech.

I would strongly advise avoiding these "free" websites like Wix etc., they are highly unprofessional and there are much better alternatives out there, look into self hosting Wordpress, buy a premium theme that suits and your good to go. Obviously that is speaking in simplistic terms, but there will be a bit of a learning curve getting used to Wordpress and tweaking the site, but Youtube has plenty of free video tutorials that will get you started.

This.

Though if you have the budget, seek professional help*


*By this I mean a company/person/entity that makes websites professionally, rather than a psychiatrist or some such :pac:

Trojan

+1 on WordPress/Drupal/Joomla (I recommend WP because of it's user-friendliness and the amount of documentation available)

Whatever path you take, register your domain first, separately. Do not get locked in to one of the sitebuilder services where they own your domain.

mneylon

Trojan wrote: »

Whatever path you take, register your domain first, separately.

If you register your domain name with an ICANN accredited registrar you won't have issues

Whether you use them for other services or not isn't relevant

But the "register your domain name separately" argument is bad advice without context

Trojan

Blacknight wrote: »

But the "register your domain name separately" argument is bad advice without context

I (still) disagree with you.

One will almost never have problems when following the rule of thumb to purchase them separate. It is much more likely, if there were to be problems, that they occur in a case where a domain is bought bundled with other services.

Therefore, no, that is most certainly not bad advice.

HelpWithIT

c montgomery wrote: »

Hi everyone,

I recently started my own business and I’m now thinking about setting up a website to promote it, trouble is I have no idea how to do this.

A quick google search showed that this can be done for free using a number of sites.

I’m just wondering if anyone could recommend which site is the best to do this. I would like to have my own .com domain with 5 email addresses. I would like the email address format to be xyz@example.com

The site will not be used for sales or any transactions just for displaying contact details, services provided & location

Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Im happy to use a pay site also if there were good.

Thanks

D

For a couple of hundred Euro you will get a decent looking website up and running..I'd advise you get someone to do it...it's like everything that people try themselves to save money..because you are not familiar with it...it will take you at least 5X longer to do it and still you will go back to it, you need a good basic level knowledge of keywords etc and submitting your site to Google etc...Save yourself a lot of pain and get your site done and concentrate on growing your business (-;

flynnlives

i echo everyone elses advice.

Dont use wix, the quality of the sites is total **** and the SEO value is all but worthless.

Im just after finishing a clients site redsign from a wix piece of **** to a wordpress responsive theme.
Much better looking and most importantly it looks professional.

Im starting another redesign of yet another wix disaster next week.

Get yourself wordpress, a good theme and someone to tweak the design into your existing logo.

Or else find a good local web agency and pay them.

Its no good having just a website now man, it needs to look the part and most importantly be found!
Wix will do none of these for ya.

pm me if you want to discuss further.

HelpWithIT

flynnlives wrote: »

i echo everyone elses advice.

Dont use wix, the quality of the sites is total **** and the SEO value is all but worthless.

Im just after finishing a clients site redsign from a wix piece of **** to a wordpress responsive theme.
Much better looking and most importantly it looks professional.

Im starting another redesign of yet another wix disaster next week.

Get yourself wordpress, a good theme and someone to tweak the design into your existing logo.

Or else find a good local web agency and pay them.

Its no good having just a website now man, it needs to look the part and most importantly be found!
Wix will do none of these for ya.

pm me if you want to discuss further.

I hear ya....man (-;

devildriver

Blacknight wrote: »

If you register your domain name with an ICANN accredited registrar you won't have issues

Whether you use them for other services or not isn't relevant

But the "register your domain name separately" argument is bad advice without context

I have to disagree here too. GoDaddy are ICANN registered and a huge company but are the absolute pits in terms of customer support.

uck51js9zml2yt

flynnlives wrote: »

i echo everyone elses advice.

Dont use wix, the quality of the sites is total **** and the SEO value is all but worthless.

Im just after finishing a clients site redsign from a wix piece of **** to a wordpress responsive theme.
Much better looking and most importantly it looks professional.

Im starting another redesign of yet another wix disaster next week.

Get yourself wordpress, a good theme and someone to tweak the design into your existing logo.

Or else find a good local web agency and pay them.

Its no good having just a website now man, it needs to look the part and most importantly be found!
Wix will do none of these for ya.

pm me if you want to discuss further.

in doing a redesign of a six as well but am coding it up to be responsive.

mneylon

Trojan wrote: »

I (still) disagree with you.

One will almost never have problems when following the rule of thumb to purchase them separate. It is much more likely, if there were to be problems, that they occur in a case where a domain is bought bundled with other services.

Therefore, no, that is most certainly not bad advice.

It's only an issue if you're dealing with resellers who register the domains with their details or try to hold the domain to ransom

I know you're not going to change your mind, but I'm not going to change my position either

If you can show me one example of a domain + hosting bought via an ICANN accredited registrar that caused issues then I *might* consider changing my mind.

Based on our experiences splitting the two is more likely to cause issues as a lot of people get confused and assume they've paid for both services when they've often only paid for one.

mneylon

devildriver wrote: »

I have to disagree here too. GoDaddy are ICANN registered and a huge company but are the absolute pits in terms of customer support.

Well I never said that every single registrar on the planet had stellar customer service. I was addressing Trojan's "advice" (which we've been arguing about on and off for about 5 years now )

HelpWithIT

I'd say c montgomery is on his second site at this stage!!

Jurga78

Hi all, I have a similar question. What do you think of the web hosting / designing companies? Like register365 , LetsHost and similar. I thought of buying a bundle - domain , hosting, web site builder, emails, etc. with an option to add online shop in the future.
What do you think of the idea as such ? would you have any recommendations regarding providers?

I've tried register365 site builder trial version it was too complicated for me...

Thank's for your time

HelpWithIT

I have all mine with Blacknight, mostly because the sites are .ie domains but if you are looking at at .com 1&1 uk do very good deals. As echoed in my earlier post, trying to do it yourself with no knowledge is daunting even when using Wordpress and the like, the amount of time you will spend on it is bettter off put to building your business, a simple site should cost you anything from €300-€500 to get done inc hosting. If you want shop then that's going to be expensive and you should only use reputable web designers with a good CV of shop sites.