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OT - Website design for potential new business ?
Wheels244 - 27/11/12 at 10:04 PM

Hello All

Myself and a couple of colleagues are thinking of setting up a business - Health and Fire Safety related.

As everything is on the internet these days, we will need a website.

How easy it to set one up or how much does it cost to have someone do it ?

The business idea is conceptual at the moment - we're doing the background work at the momenet to see if it's viable.

Cheers

Rob

Barkalarr - 27/11/12 at 10:51 PM

Is the website a transactional one or is it just informative?
Will you be selling products online?

RK - 27/11/12 at 11:12 PM

excellent question! I ended up hiring someone to do my business website, and it ended in disaster. It wasn't wht I wanted, and the guy won't let me make changes to it, unless I ASK him. He takes about a week to do anything, and owns my domain name. Nice, eh? So be careful!

Wheels244 - 27/11/12 at 11:16 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Barkalarr
Is the website a transactional one or is it just informative?
Will you be selling products online?


Just informative - no selling of products.

Wheels244 - 27/11/12 at 11:16 PM

quote:
Originally posted by RK
excellent question! I ended up hiring someone to do my business website, and it ended in disaster. It wasn't wht I wanted, and the guy won't let me make changes to it, unless I ASK him. He takes about a week to do anything, and owns my domain name. Nice, eh? So be careful!


I don't like the sound of that !!
Thanks - I'll keep an eye on that.

designer - 27/11/12 at 11:24 PM

I use Orchard hosting to get a site name and hosting and I use WYSIWYG to write the site and upload it.

WYSIWYG (http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/) is cheap, but works brilliant for a computer numpty like me. There is also free, limited, download to give it a go.

ReMan - 27/11/12 at 11:26 PM

Complete amateur, a few hours work a bit of help from another LCB'r and £50 got me this including the domain name, email etc etc
http://www.plusnine.co.uk with Orchard hosting, who I would recommend

Will do a bit more with it now it's winter, this was just to get a start on it

[Edited on 27/11/12 by ReMan]

mads - 28/11/12 at 06:54 AM

quote:
Originally posted by RK
excellent question! I ended up hiring someone to do my business website, and it ended in disaster. It wasn't wht I wanted, and the guy won't let me make changes to it, unless I ASK him. He takes about a week to do anything, and owns my domain name. Nice, eh? So be careful!


couldn't agree more. any good website designer should put the domain name in your name or get you to buy it and then do necessary work on it. had similar problem with a friend of mine but thankfully it got sorted in the end but with some delays and money being spent.

Would recommend Orchard Hosting for domain name and hosting, and in fact recommended them to both designer and ReMan!


Col - good to see you are still working at your site. Looking good, have still got it saved in my favourites.

Proby - 28/11/12 at 08:02 AM

Good question. I've already got my domain and currently working on a site myself. I build one years ago for a small business I worked for, but a bit rusty on skills. I will be selling products online, so it's fun getting it right, trying to amalgamate some shopping cart code in a simple template I started with.

There are many ways to do it, from online website builder tools (which is probably easiest) to building from scratch.
WordPress is an easy excellent way of getting online, although you have to be careful as a lot of free stuff states no commercial use.

cerbera - 28/11/12 at 08:22 AM

I used google sites which is free to create this.
There is a range of templates to choose from to give a professional ish finish and was very easy overall.

gmoto - 28/11/12 at 11:03 AM

I've seen this stuff from both sides.

A friend did a small business website including everything for them - the understanding was that he'd be paid for ongoing work.

Someone convinced the 'client' that they should be doing the work instead of my friend. So the client asked for details.
My friend very reasonably did not want someone messing up the website he worked on, so agreed to 'hand over the keys' on the understanding that it was no longer associated with him, including not hosted on his space, which he was paying for.
When I checked a couple of months down the line, the home page plain didn't work - most of it didn't actually load because someone had changed the directory structure. My friend was glad he'd taken his name off the website and was no longer associated with it.

He did hand over details for free, but when it had been made clear that he would be paid for ongoing work, which his initial quote could have been based upon, it doesn't seem unreasonable for him to have charged a 'release fee'.

There are a lot of free tools for creating websites out there for the non-pro.
Some are pretty good, some are absolutely dire.

Be-careful of wordpress sites on non-managed systems (ie where a pro isn't keeping it all sorted) as wordpress is a regular target for hackers, so you do really need to keep the software up to date.

Alfa145 - 28/11/12 at 11:12 AM

http://www.frontisweb.com/

Run by a mate of mine who is a petrol head as well.

designer - 28/11/12 at 11:47 AM

WYSIWYG incorporates all the shopping cart facilities.

bi22le - 28/11/12 at 12:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by gmoto
I've seen this stuff from both sides.

A friend did a small business website including everything for them - the understanding was that he'd be paid for ongoing work.

Someone convinced the 'client' that they should be doing the work instead of my friend. So the client asked for details.
My friend very reasonably did not want someone messing up the website he worked on, so agreed to 'hand over the keys' on the understanding that it was no longer associated with him, including not hosted on his space, which he was paying for.
When I checked a couple of months down the line, the home page plain didn't work - most of it didn't actually load because someone had changed the directory structure. My friend was glad he'd taken his name off the website and was no longer associated with it.

He did hand over details for free, but when it had been made clear that he would be paid for ongoing work, which his initial quote could have been based upon, it doesn't seem unreasonable for him to have charged a 'release fee'.

There are a lot of free tools for creating websites out there for the non-pro.
Some are pretty good, some are absolutely dire.

Be-careful of wordpress sites on non-managed systems (ie where a pro isn't keeping it all sorted) as wordpress is a regular target for hackers, so you do really need to keep the software up to date.


Hacking is a very good point. SKCC web site has been hacked twice now by random middleeast religious terrarist people. NOT kidding either. Ask Mark Greenwood (greenwood on here).

Kwik - 29/11/12 at 06:54 PM

I recomend hosting on falcoda, i do for my portfolio on the cheapest plan, very helpful, and very cheap...

https://www.falcoda.co.uk/

software i used for my site was dreamweaver 30 day free trial, if you can use photoshop and other adobe stuff, and are generally good with computers its not too hard to use, but if you want to update it reguarly dont use a free trial, as you cant update it.

portfolio: www.chrisbattydesign.co.uk

lsdweb - 29/11/12 at 08:34 PM

If your ISP allows it, you could consider using a content management system such as Joomla - I started using it (with Orchard as recommended above) and find it really easy - my very basic, rough site is here - http://trident-sprint.com/joomla16/

I'm interested in your fire safety products too.....

Barkalarr - 1/12/12 at 11:38 PM

I was going to recommend Wordpress because once its up and running you have complete control, but as already mentioned, watch for hackers. Because its free its a real target.