My husband and I are starting a website, we have never done this before, so we have NO idea what we are doing. We are narrowing down hosting services but as far as design, tagging, (SEO?), other normal things that we are clueless about, what suggestions might you have? What questions or considerations would you have liked to have known starting out? If you add a link into a response, please state what it is. Thank you for your help.
Tell us a little more about what the website is about as that will help people with giving you advice. Is it a blog? Is it a portfolio for your family photographs? Is it something else?
Here's my input. Most people including myself when starting out ran into this over analyzation problem. I was really meticulous and had to make sure everything was "perfect" before launching even know I had absolutely nobody coming to my site for awhile. It takes a little while to establish and get traffic. My advice to you starting out would be to use Wordpress. So you'll need a host with PHP and MySQL (Database) availability. I used to be a Host Gator fan for shared hosting before I got my VPS but they seemed to have gone down hill. I've since tried Stable Host and like them. I have not had any issues with them and their support is always available. I'm also not sure what your budget is. Do you plan on getting a custom design? Can you work from a template? Your easiest, most cost efficient option would be to hit the Envato market place. Just go to Google and search for "Theme Forest". You'll be able to grab a Wordpress theme for 40-55 bucks and it will look nice and be mobile optimized already. When your business starts to build up you can worry about all the customization later. This is of course up to you but just my opinion. I'd post links here but for some reason it is not letting me. Just search Google for "Wordpress starting out". You'll want to go over some of that stuff to get familiar with it. Wordpress is a CMS/Blogging platform that is already optimized for you. You'll be able to literally get it installed, install some plugins, get your theme installed and be on your way to establishing your website with nice content for the search engines. Using Wordpress you'll be able to constantly add in blog posts and new content daily without much effort. It has got a very easy to understand WYSIWYG editor just like a regular word processor you're already probably used to. Here is a list of Wordpress plugins to also get you started. Remember to signup for a Google Analytics account to track your visitor flow to your website! Wordpress Plugin List WP Google Analytics (Most themes from Theme Forest will usually have a section to copy in your Google Analytics Code) Google XML Sitemaps Yoast Social Share Buttons This should get you started. Also, get to learn Cpanel. You'll be in there a lot. Most hosts have script installers that typically offer a Wordpress install. So this will be even more helpful for somebody who doesn't really know what they're doing. You can literally click install and have your Wordpress site setup in less than 5 minutes. Let me know if you've got any questions!
Yes, so sorry, I should have given more info. Emergency preparedness and disaster relief has been a passion of mine and my husband for over 20 years. We do many classes, presentations and helping others for free. We would like to take these resources, add YouTubes, recipes, maybe getting into reviews. I would also like to be able to link PowerPoint presentations from seminars that I do. There will be some small selling involved with my Thrive freeze dried foods but the focus on that is saving money, not getting rich, mostly a labor of love. It will link to my Thrive site that I have through the vendor, they maintain it, it's just customized for me. I really foresee this as more of a resource and educational site for people than anything.
Oops, if I say best answer is that best answer so far? Im such an idiot at these things, lol! I would still like to get more info or does this kill the thread? Sorry, I'm sure there is lots of eye rolling going on right now. >.<
You are new so it's understandable if you are experiencing some confusion. And yes you awarded the *Best Answer* but if someone else were to come along and you find that you prefer that answer then you simply click on the Best Answer, and it would then change to that member instead of the one who you just awarded it to. Obviously there can only be one best answer per thread. And no, it doesn't kill the thread.
Marketing. You can have the greatest site in the world and if you don't have traffic coming to it, well you won't be swimming down success lane. Look into print, social marketing - including facebook advertising. Look to find magazines that deal with preparedness and see if you can get some ads infront of very targeted groups of people. For facebook you'll have to create a facebook page, get it up to 100 likes and then facebook lets you set your own budget to get your ads infront of very targeted people. People who are interested in the same topic that live in certain geographic locations, age range, you can set all that. Good luck in your future endeavors!
Definitely start with something that does all the hard work for you. If you can get to grips with a word processor you can use wordpress.If you use a decent host they will generally have a very easy install process and you can get straight to posting content ! The only thing pull have to think abut really to start with is your theme to make the site look how you want.