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OT: Good way to start a website?

Spud

Diamond
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Location
Brookfield, Wisconsin
I been wanting to start my own website for awhile now.

I am not sure I can afford having a IT firm build one for me. The other issue with using professionals design and maintain a website is that whenever I want to add stuff and make changes I will have to contact them and have them implement the changes.

So last year I took an Intro class on HTML and CSS programming. I can build a website with Notepad++, but only a very simple one. I don't know how to actually get the Notepad++ files onto the actual web, because I haven't looked into that aspect yet.

I was wondering, aren't there templates or programs or online platforms that allow you to create a website, without actually knowing HTML and Javascript?

@Milacron
How did you start off this website? I am not interested in starting a forum, just a website where I can sell soe T-shirts with my designs, some art-work, talk about hobbies and various interests etc..

I would like to create something like below website. What specific programming language/s do I need to know? What would such a website cost, if I had a Professional build it?
Gear Archives - Megadeluxe


Thanks
 
Look at Bluehost They are a provider of services that include Web tools and email, I don't know much about them beyond that but we use them to handle our email and plan to build our first Website using the tools they provide to build and host. If others use similar services I would like to hear about it.

Make Chips Boys !

Ron
 
Thee are many "systems" that make setting up a web site somewhat easier. One such system that I have used is WordPress. In addition to the basic functionality of the WordPress system, there are many templates that you can use as a starting point for your site. Some of these are free and others are for sale. WordPress itself is free.

I am sure that there are other such systems.
 
If you want to sell stuff? Shopify is the answer. We do a substantial amount of business through our Shopify website and it's easy to set up, highly customizable with templates, there is a huge infrastructure of niche apps for doing things exactly how you want them, as well as developers who can (very inexpensively) ninja the system to to whatever you need. It scales beautifully from you just plugging in some products into the default templates, to allowing a full team of IT/Web developers to develop a tuned site capable of doing $100M+ of business a year.

If it's just a marketing/front end website (blog, posts, images), the answer there is Squarespace. WordPress is old tech- while there are companies who act like Squarespace and do all the hosting and nerdery for you, Squarespace is built from the ground up as a fully integrated/supported solution. My (rarely updated) persona website once got linked by The Economist and New York Times leading to over a million hits in 24 hours... and Squarespace just plugged along. They even auto detected the traffic and nicely geographically cached my site so it would start loading faster for people, even as the hits kept coming. In the middle of the big viral hit, I got an email from Squarespace that I was dreadfully waiting for - one of those notorious "You've exceeded your bandwidth, here is a bill for $28,928." Opened it up and it was a short personal note from the Squarespace CEO saying congratulations on all the traffic and saying he really enjoyed the thing I wrote. All for $9 a month!
 
I tried, but never could get any site that I created to generate sales close to what I was doing on Ebay or Amazon.

Then I bought one of my customer's business and it came with a nice website.

That site makes way more than I ever did selling anywhere else. The person that made the site built it for about $3000 and it costs me a bit under $500/yr to have them on call to fix it the second it screws up. I have never needed them to make any changes for me. The backside is pretty simple to add and change things.

My advice is get recommendations for good IT people that can make a site like you want and support it. Focus your energy on your products.

EDIT:

I wanted to add that whatever you end up doing for a site be sure to use Stripe for your merchant services. They are 100% rock solid awesome for merchant services. Don't use Paypal!!! Horrible, Horrible company to give control of your finances. Paypal crippled my business for awhile.

Buy with Paypal all you want, but never, ever integrate their slimy bullshit into your livelihood!!
 
I second Shopify - I use it for one of my businesses and I'm very happy with it. It does way, way more than I use it for, but that's on me for not putting the time or effort into it.

I also use ShipStation to manage my big three sales platforms: my shopify website, ebay, and amazon. It tracks orders across all three and handles all my shipping, inventory, etc.
 
I second Shopify - I use it for one of my businesses and I'm very happy with it. It does way, way more than I use it for, but that's on me for not putting the time or effort into it.

I also use ShipStation to manage my big three sales platforms: my shopify website, ebay, and amazon. It tracks orders across all three and handles all my shipping, inventory, etc.

Agreed on Shipstation. It's such an integral part of making Shopify sing, I'm surprised Shopify hasn't used their huge stock sale to buy them out and fully integrate the two together. The pair makes the back-end of online sales painless.

Now marketing? Honestly, that is where all the damn money gets made. You can be the best machinist in the world, or the best designer, but it doesn't matter if people don't know you exist.
 
I registered the .com website addresses with Go Daddy then used their tools to setup email. Tried Wordpress and found it to be counter-intuitive and a one program sabotage crew. On a simple template it might work but it could not keep track of things which meant that it always starts off with an old version then asks if I wish to call a more recent saved version. Last night it was un-installed in favour of Joomla. Let's see how that goes. Sure it is faster to have a consultant set up the website but past experience tells me that there was less waiting for maintenance. It is better than watching TV, except when using Wordpress.
 
I use one.com for running the danish equivalent of practical machinist. :)
They also offer a very simple website builder, that look like the one being asked for in the OP.
 
Agreed on Shipstation. It's such an integral part of making Shopify sing, I'm surprised Shopify hasn't used their huge stock sale to buy them out and fully integrate the two together. The pair makes the back-end of online sales painless.

Now marketing? Honestly, that is where all the damn money gets made. You can be the best machinist in the world, or the best designer, but it doesn't matter if people don't know you exist.

I suck at marketing, and I'm actually not doing any currently because of the above about my website and other sales channels being in pretty poor condition. My sales are steady due to the fact that the company has been around for so long, but I really, really néed to get my technical stuff together, and then figure out and implement a marketing strategy.
 
Wix is pretty easy (If you can do CAD/CAM, you can use Wix) and you can buy the back end for e-commerce (which is natively integrated with Shopify). There is a pretty big step up in complexity when adding web commerce (informational websites are easy); my brother who does programming for a major, major web/cloud based database system used the world over told me to use Wix/Shopify.

Keep in mind you buy the domain (domains.google, godaddy, etc.) then buy hosting (Wix, etc.), then integrate email (Google G-suite, Microsoft Exchange Online, etc.), and then you buy the commerce package (Shopify, etc.). All this stuff is only a few bucks a month but adds up pretty fast! Much more time/money efficient than trying to program anything yourself if this is for a business. Oh, and make sure you don't let your domain registration lapse - SOMEONE IS CAMPING ON IT THE SECOND YOU BUY IT TO SNATCH IT AND RANSOM IT BACK TO YOU. I use the auto-renewal with Google Domains.

Uugh this reminds me I need to get engaged and set up more than my "coming early 2018" website.
 
I suck at marketing, and I'm actually not doing any currently because of the above about my website and other sales channels being in pretty poor condition. My sales are steady due to the fact that the company has been around for so long, but I really, really néed to get my technical stuff together, and then figure out and implement a marketing strategy.

If you're running Shopify? Avoid the tech stuff! It's a rabbit hole that makes machining look like a shallow puddle in a summer rainstorm.

Spend your time learning product photography, copywriting, video making, and storytelling. Doesn't matter what you're selling - EDC knicknacks on Instagram or industrial machine tools - being able to tell people what your product does and why it's the best solution for their needs is an absolute key to success these days. Outsourcing this kind of work to professionals gets shockingly expensive very quickly, and a modern company selling stuff needs a LOT of this kind of work (the guys who are great at marketing have constantly updating social media feeds, put out product videos on the regular, and have on-point websites with a shitload of media). There is HUGE vale to have a competent grasp of these skills so you can do the bulk of this kind of work DIY and be decent at it. No need to be Anne Leibovitz, but the attainable 85% competency is an investment in your time that will pay for itself 10x.

Let Shopify deal with the tech stuff, and if you need to bend Shopify or a template to make your website look the way you want? Hire one of the thousands of Shopify developers to do that for very little money. At most, learn enough to tweak things here and there, but I promise you that there is very little value add on the person designing/making stuff to be doing basic website work these days when there are specialists out there who do so very inexpensively.
 
I been wanting to start my own website for awhile now.

I am not sure I can afford having a IT firm build one for me. The other issue with using professionals design and maintain a website is that whenever I want to add stuff and make changes I will have to contact them and have them implement the changes.

So last year I took an Intro class on HTML and CSS programming. I can build a website with Notepad++, but only a very simple one. I don't know how to actually get the Notepad++ files onto the actual web, because I haven't looked into that aspect yet.

I was wondering, aren't there templates or programs or online platforms that allow you to create a website, without actually knowing HTML and Javascript?

@Milacron
How did you start off this website? I am not interested in starting a forum, just a website where I can sell soe T-shirts with my designs, some art-work, talk about hobbies and various interests etc..

I would like to create something like below website. What specific programming language/s do I need to know? What would such a website cost, if I had a Professional build it?
Gear Archives - Megadeluxe

Thanks

You forgot to mention what price range you're thinking.

For years I had a website I made myself. Worked OK but didn't look "professional"

I tried a couple of webdesigners and not only expensive but they weren't technical and it took forever and countless emails trying to explain that it wasn't about hits but about customers.

3 months ago I found a professional webdesigner 10 minutes drive from where I live and by visiting and talking to him several times I got what I wanted. Design and layout were his strong points and I got the technical information I wanted. I supplied all texts, pictures and videos.

He's given me what I need to know to update myself so it's up to me if I use him or do it myself with updates.

Pity I can't show how my website looked before but, again, I like what I've got now.

Home and just in case, also Home 2 almost identical names to avoid "misuse". His suggestion.

My old website was f-m-s.dk Home but those still using that get the new one.
 
If you don't want to fork over the $ you just need a simple website just find a template you like and tweak it until you like it. There are countless templates on the internet.

So last year I took an Intro class on HTML and CSS programming. I can build a website with Notepad++, but only a very simple one. I don't know how to actually get the Notepad++ files onto the actual web, because I haven't looked into that aspect yet.

You pay a web hosting company for a domain name and hosting services that include DNS managment etc. Your main page will be a text file called index.html regardless of your web page url. Take the web page you made with notepad ++ then save the file as index.html and upload it via your web hosting company. The web hosting company will give you login credentials to some type of control panel for your page. On mine I navigate to 'file manager' and then a "www" folder where index.html file and any supporting css files and image files etc get uploaded and voila!

Say your website is www(dot)spud(dot)com then your homepage file will be index.html. Say you have a sub page spud(dot)com(slash)about then your html code for the "about" sub page would be in a file called about.html and it would be uploaded to the same www folder as index.html.

I use hostbudget and its only $24 a year for the webpage and email. I sometimes have issues with emails bouncing back when I email some people. My guess is its probably because its a cheap service that a lot of spammers use. I haven't had any issue with my website itself. You get what you pay for.

I don't know what more is involved if you are wanting to setup a web store and collect payments. You might be better of with a hosting company that offers more than basic hosting support or hire someone.
 








 
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