Website options

size5

Business up & running 4 weeks now, now looking at options of website. Start of want nothing too fancy on website as feel will probably do rebrand relaunch in 6 months time-if things go well.

Also want to be able to upload videos & blogs myself

My question

1. Has anyone used the Enterprise Boards "Getting Business online" which Is run by Black Knight? Could you get a website up & running after doing this half day course?

2. Wordpress how have people found that could you set up a site myself using it?

Note no buying and selling on site just information blogs videos etc. Have registered domain name

Thoughts appreciated

maddogcollins

I have been messing about with weebly.com and it is very user friendly as regards design. I have zero web design experience and managed to get this up and running in about an hour. It is still work in progress but getting there.

Graham

WordPress is a good option as you're free to move it anywhere should you need to. There's thousands of templates/themes which you can choose from if your budget won't stretch to a web designer and thousands of add-ons if you want to add things like online stores/appointment booking/discussion forums/helpdesk facilities etc etc etc.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the Getting Business Online site builder when I last checked it out, all of the designs looked very very dated (but I haven't checked for some time). At the end of the day though, any web presence (within reason) is better than none.

Stamply

Read in the budget a few weeks ago that the enterprise boards are offering grants in 2014 for digital marketing and website improvements.

From a quick Google:
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Knowledge+Society/NDS+Trading+Online+Voucher+Scheme.htm

http://www.enhance.ie/dceb-online-trading-vouchers/

It is trialling this year for 20 SMEs in Dublin City Centre and planned to be rolled out to the rest of the country after January.
http://www.dceb.ie/Financial-Assistance/Online-Trading-Voucher

The only thing you can't get done is a brochure site, so best advice is to get a good quality basic brochure site for €750-1000 and then build additional features and a strategy on top of it with the grant to get the most value out of it.

WordPress is good for tinkerers, but if you want to start adding plugins and messing around with it yourself it can be a pain in the ass for both novices and professional developers due to the fact that there is on average a security update every 90 days. Without the security updates your site is vulnerable to attack.

Graham

Stamply wrote: »

Read in the budget a few weeks ago that the enterprise boards are offering grants in 2014 for digital marketing and website improvements.

From a quick Google:
http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Knowledge+Society/NDS+Trading+Online+Voucher+Scheme.htm

http://www.enhance.ie/dceb-online-trading-vouchers/

It is trialling this year for 20 SMEs in Dublin City Centre and planned to be rolled out to the rest of the country after January.
http://www.dceb.ie/Financial-Assistance/Online-Trading-Voucher

The only thing you can't get done is a brochure site, so best advice is to get a good quality basic brochure site for €750-1000 and then build additional features and a strategy on top of it with the grant to get the most value out of it.

WordPress is good for tinkerers, but if you want to start adding plugins and messing around with it yourself it can be a pain in the ass for both novices and professional developers due to the fact that there is on average a security update every 90 days. Without the security updates your site is vulnerable to attack.

And while you're thinking about that, waiting for the scheme to restart, waiting for the forms to arrive and completing your application. Get a website up.

You can always use any future grant to improve/replace your initial site.

tricky D

GBO is a basic starter, very basic.

Weebly, iWebs and the like should be avoided. They are poor solutions.

WordPress is the best value out of the main popular solutions. Get something up for the short term with that, but in the longer term look for value, not cheapness and invest properly, don't skimp.

Axwell

Wordpress is the way to go for the type of site you are looking for. Hosted on your own domain, not on wordpress.com. Avoid weebly etc and security issues with wordpress are nowhere near as bad as suggested above.

The Corinthian

If you plan to do a relaunch, including a proper site, in six months, I wouldn't spend too much time on it. Reality is that all you need at this stage is a one pager, giving contact details and a synopsis of what you're about - you could almost do that in Word and save it as HTML, but I'd be lynched if I recommended that to you...

I'd agree with most here that a WordPress site is your best bet. Gives you better control over hosting and does force you to learn the (very) basics, which will be useful when you eventually farm out the development of the relaunched site to a third party.

Allow for up to about a day to do it, if you're not particularly technical.

tricky D

The Corinthian wrote: »

you could almost do that in Word and save it as HTML, but I'd be lynched if I recommended that to you...

Years of carefully built up credibility destroyed in a single line of one post...:pac:

Graham

The Corinthian wrote: »

do that in Word and save it as HTML

:eek:

The Corinthian

I said almost!!!!

nuttlys

wordpress.org +1

read instructions, buy shared hosting package (pick one with a LAMP stack, Wordpress plays nice with LAMP), install, add video/blog, website done.