Website for wife's biz?

300UGUY · Mar 29, 2012

I am looking for info on a website for a small biz. We currently have one thru AT&T, but I am not impressed with it, and it is pretty expensive. A few things I'm looking for:

1) something I can maintain or change myself? If possible.

2) reasonable cost. The AT&T "package" is supposed to go to $187. For what it does, that's a lot.

3) Need to include a map feature, showing location.

4) like to include a email to a Yahoo account?

One thing about the AT&T package was that change was only availble once per year, and you had to pay for it. I'd like to be able to change whenever I want, to include seasonal specials and customer photos and experiences.

I am looking at the Intuit sites. Any experience with them?

Tomtint · Mar 29, 2012

Check out one on one.com

phiferpharm · Mar 29, 2012

Are you having them design your site or are they just your hosting site? I have and maintain multiple sites through GoDaddy, as well as two other hosting sites. They all base their prices on how robust your site is and traffic. Some (GoDaddy) provide limited design yourself options, but you may want to get web design software to maintain your own site the way you want it to look and work. I use Adobe Creative Suite, but it ain't cheap and the learning curve is pretty steep. There are a number of inexpensive -some free- web design applications available on the web as well.

Most sites, if not all, offer e-mail addresses linked to your business (i.e.. ImtheBomb@300UGUY.com or whatever). As far as the map, Google offers free software that lets you plug whatever you need directly into your website. I have one site that had to have all 450 schools and 100+ Charter schools in the district mapped in multiple ways (by grade, area, school region,etc) and used Google Map to do it.

aczlan · Mar 29, 2012

My sister has one through Google Sites for her costumes and Irish Dance dresses. She likes it and it looks pretty good.

Aaron Z

KennyG · Mar 29, 2012

Separate parts of the issue:

Site name registration is through a registration service like GoDaddy. Right now you probably have a subdomain through the provider. You really want your own site name like "mysite.com" and you pay the annual registration for that. They also offer hosting services, but you may be better off going somewhere else for that.

I've had good luck with LiveHost.net - Professional Web Hosting. Their $30/yr package or their $60/yr package will probably be fine for you. That includes all sorts of add ons and features.

You will have to "author" your pages. Most people use a software package. There are some usable free ones. Try something like PageBreeze.

Wnc3 · Mar 29, 2012

Not AT&T . It is just too hard to deal with them...on anything.
I used them early on and it drove my IT guy nuts....

Johndeere3720 · Mar 29, 2012

I built my website through Weebly - Create a free website and a free blog and I am very happy with the results. The yearly domain price is very reasonable too. :thumbsup:

Here's my website to give you an idea: Jake's Implements - Home

Artisan · Mar 30, 2012

IMO a guy has to jump into this stuff head first and start clicking! When you
get stuck, ask q's. I would suggest you go to godaddy.com and select a URL / the name you want people to type in. Stay away from hyphens, keep it short and intuitive / EASY to remember.

Get 1 or more email address associated with and ask the godaddy person to guide you into setting it up on your box.

Get a hosting package from Godaddy.

Godaddy will help a lot on the phone.

Now you need to get into your files, it is called FTP ( File transfer Protocall) it is very easy, no different really then digging thru you directories on your current box. I would suggest ipswitch.com and get the cheapest version of WS_FTP pro they have. Do this or find another free one and have it loaded when you call godaddy and ask them how to set up your FTP Software.

Then find a simple website you like, if only it were changed to suite your needs. Copy it and save it to disk, now open it in something like Microsoft Front Page and start editing it.

You need to deal w/ SOURCE files. If your running a windows machine at the top click on VIEW, then within the drop down box select SOURCE and you will see what a webpage look like in code / HTML
(hyper text markup language )

I think you can buy easy web page making software but if you want just a generic page it is not hard.

What is the business?

What name are you thinking about getting (pm me)

KTurner · Mar 30, 2012

300UGUY said:
I am looking at the Intuit sites. Any experience with them?

This is like going to the bank to get the oil changed in your car because your car loan is with the bank. There are plenty of companies that specialize in the web. Godaddy is one I've used and is very popular. Many of them have pre-built templates and wizards that allow you to 'create' a website just by clicking next and answering a few questions.

Basic email and maps are super simple with today's tools. You probably want your own domain name if you don't already have one. You can get an email address through your domain name also, like wifesname@businessname.com. It can even be setup to forward the messages to the yahoo account. It looks a lot better on a business card, plus you're not tied to yahoo if they decide to close email, go out of business, etc. If you do have one, it's probably controlled by AT&T and you'll have to work with them and the new company to get it transferred.

$187 may not be all that bad, depending on what you get and how often you pay. If that's annual, it's only about $15/month. Even free is not that much cheaper than $15/month. There are a number of things that impact price, such as availability, scale, complexity. For example, if you're getting 200+million users per day like facebook, $15/month is not going to come close. Change once a year sounds like a misunderstanding, otherwise that's a really stupid policy. Maybe you get one free update included in the $187/year charge? Or maybe it's tied to a yellow pages advertisement and they only print the phonebook once a year?

Websites can be super simple to do, but they can also be super simple to do WRONG. Because of things like cross browser issues, it may look right to you, but be broken for 25% of your customers. If it's too 'heavy' it may take too long for your customers to see it. If you have a shopping cart or anything like that, you'll need to factor in security. If the website has the potential to make a lot of money for the business, or really impact the brand, I'd be skeptical about you doing it yourself. Then again, anything may be better that what you have out there now.

There are multiple costs involved. There is a cost to have a domain name. It's normally something in the neighborhood of $10/year. There is a cost to build the website. This could be a one time fee, or you could set it up where they do updates at your request for a monthly/annual fee. This varies greatly as it could be 30 minutes of work, or thousands of hours of work. Then you have the hosting fee, where you're basically renting space to put your website. Again, this varies greatly depending on what you want/need. If you are going to sell things on the website, you'll probably have a fee for taking credit cards and you may need a certificate to keep things secure. These costs vary as well. There are others, but these are the most common.

Keith

300UGUY · Mar 30, 2012

KTurner said:
This is like going to the bank to get the oil changed in your car because your car loan is with the bank. There are plenty of companies that specialize in the web. Godaddy is one I've used and is very popular. Many of them have pre-built templates and wizards that allow you to 'create' a website just by clicking next and answering a few questions.

Basic email and maps are super simple with today's tools. You probably want your own domain name if you don't already have one. You can get an email address through your domain name also, like wifesname@businessname.com. It can even be setup to forward the messages to the yahoo account. It looks a lot better on a business card, plus you're not tied to yahoo if they decide to close email, go out of business, etc. If you do have one, it's probably controlled by AT&T and you'll have to work with them and the new company to get it transferred.

$187 may not be all that bad, depending on what you get and how often you pay. If that's annual, it's only about $15/month. Even free is not that much cheaper than $15/month. There are a number of things that impact price, such as availability, scale, complexity. For example, if you're getting 200+million users per day like facebook, $15/month is not going to come close. Change once a year sounds like a misunderstanding, otherwise that's a really stupid policy. Maybe you get one free update included in the $187/year charge? Or maybe it's tied to a yellow pages advertisement and they only print the phonebook once a year?

Websites can be super simple to do, but they can also be super simple to do WRONG. Because of things like cross browser issues, it may look right to you, but be broken for 25% of your customers. If it's too 'heavy' it may take too long for your customers to see it. If you have a shopping cart or anything like that, you'll need to factor in security. If the website has the potential to make a lot of money for the business, or really impact the brand, I'd be skeptical about you doing it yourself. Then again, anything may be better that what you have out there now.

There are multiple costs involved. There is a cost to have a domain name. It's normally something in the neighborhood of $10/year. There is a cost to build the website. This could be a one time fee, or you could set it up where they do updates at your request for a monthly/annual fee. This varies greatly as it could be 30 minutes of work, or thousands of hours of work. Then you have the hosting fee, where you're basically renting space to put your website. Again, this varies greatly depending on what you want/need. If you are going to sell things on the website, you'll probably have a fee for taking credit cards and you may need a certificate to keep things secure. These costs vary as well. There are others, but these are the most common.

Keith