HiyaI've had an idea for a website and bought the domain name. I have now totally ground to a halt and am stuck. Have never done anything like this before so could do with some advice. It will be a business style website, although not selling anything. It will have fixed information pages on the subject (not a blog) and a forum where people can log in, post and message each other. So where do I start?? Do I use free software eg Komposer to build the website and then find someone to host it? Or do I find a hosting comany that has templates and use those? Particularly as I have no idea what I'm doing really. Which hosting companies would you recommend? What do I need to look for in the package? Are the templates all much of a muchness? Again, have googled but there is so much jargon and so much choice that I'm struggling to compare the different packages and link them to my need. Also, would want the website to make money somehow. I'm not advertising my services eg plumber, it would be more of an information and match making style website. Does having ad choices raise any / much money?? Or would I be ploughing my efforts into something that would have no return? Are there other ways of raising money linked to a website? I just don't know how these things work. Thanks for any replies!
Don't be panic. It would take you no time to be an expert. Find yourself a mentor. And you can see training.sessions.edu And you can also checkout make-a-web-site.com for making it your self.
You can check out my step by step video on youtube: [video=youtube;wLKui1x1JFk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLKui1x1JFk[/video] Or you can check out my free ebook http://www.conutant.com/book on how to create a website
Websites are not that hard to get going if you want you can get a designer to design the site for you check out elance.com for that, the hosting is very easy to get. I use host gator which is a great hosting provider, a baby gator account will due to get started, with great customer service. They can get you going with the hosting part of the process. You can design the site yourself if you don't want a blog type site I would not suggest wordpress.org, but this platform is really easy to use and you can take the blog features off. All you have to do to get going with wordpress is get a hostgator account and then transfer your nameservers to that hosting account real easy customer service can get you through this. After that is done you can use fantastico to get your wordpress site up and running. This is located inside your hosting cpanel towards the bottom. When you have wordpress installed you can then edit your site and get going for free. If you don't want to go the wordpress route, and don't have website design knowledge I would take a look at elance.com and get a designer to create your site. Make sure to get all the files for that site so you can edit it yourself, and get yourself a free HTML editor like pagebreeze so you can update content once the site is designed. To make money with your site you can incorporate Google adsence, and other affiliate networks like clickbank to make a bit of money, if you don't want to sell your own service. Those are my suggestions. Cheers -- Will Skinner
ok, im going to recommend that you look at joining a free webhost (for trial) x10hosting.com is free, and it will be a good place for you to muck around and learn on. Once you signup, you can install wordpress, its easy dont panic, the installer does everything for you. Once wordpress is installed, there are alot of things to learn, but dont worry, its easy. Anything you need to know you can google, (or ask here) and theres hundreds of tutorials around. with x10hosting you can build your site, everything totally for free, and then, if your site is nice, and if your confident that you can make money, then you can buy a domain name, and pay for hosting with someone like hostgator.com (ive used and still recommend them).