Does anyone know how I can go about building a website?
I was wondering If there are programs or easy ways to go about it.
I have read that dreamweaver can help build a website but I am not sure if it can help build a website for business ie. excepting credit cards and paypal.
Setting up a website for a business can be tricky, especially if you want to be able to accept credit card payments and so on and have no prior experience.
One idea is to use Dreamweaver(my preference - it’s great for ANY website), and then using a company such as Worldpay for online payments - they will provide you with the code to paste into your site and your credit card payments can be accepted through them.
I imagine you could find easier programs to build websites, or even find some tools to build them online or buy templates, but my advice is to find someone who can do it for you - someone with no experience in design will usually make a mess of things.
Thanks, now I have no knowledge of how Iwould go about this and would have no problem letting someone set it up for me but, would they then have access to it? how will I know they aren’t screwing me over. Thats why I was thinking it would be better to do it myself.
There are basically two kind of independent aspects to a commercial website. There’s the front end, which is the interface, text pics, layout, etc. Then there’s the back end, which is the databases and scripting that powers the website. The front end would be where dreamweaver would work fine, the back end is where you’ll want to do something resembling one of the following:
a) talk to a pro web designer about installing inventory control and shopping cart functionality on your website (could be a lot of hassle depending what kind of company you get mixed up with)
b) buy a canned estore system such as service from http://estore.com/ or similar (probably the easiest, but you’ll likely pay a bit more per month)
c) look for/steal/buy canned scripts and try to get them working on your site (not advisable)
The short of it: you won’t be doing it yourself unless you gain a fair bit of web design skills. I personally worked on an estore at a previous job, and my boss had chosen a canned estore setup through Canada Post; it worked rather well in my opinion.
I built my website using Microsoft Publisher.
I hosted it using godaddy.com
I also use SMARTFTP client to download the files to the host server
I tried to keep it as simple as possible without having to buy too much SW
Say I hire someone to do it for me, how would I then take the orders and everything that has to do with maintenance? Would all the be easy once the site itself is set-up?
Is that estore.com thing legit the website looks a little fake.
OK. Are you a backyard small business? Yes? Read on. No? go pay a web design company for a professional job.
You can get a website up and running with shopping cart, paypal and even credit card payment functionality for very cheap.
First things first though…
-
You need to register a domain name. Roughly $100 to $250 (for 2 to 5 years registration).
-
Hosting - you’ll want to have your website running on someone’s server. There are many low cost hosting providers. I use WebCity. They are VERY cheap and they host and have wizards to setup many FREE website solutions (see step 3). $100 to $1,000 each year. I paid $120 bucks myself.
-
Just need some sort of shopping cart website QUICKLY? CubeCart, Zen Cart, OS Commerce are all freely available… (WebCity host these and have wizards to set them up.
Perhaps you’ll want a little more like being able to add content (news stories, a blog, have discussions forums - just like T-Nation). Go and get a CMS (content management system). These allow people with no tech skills to create and run websites rather easily. WebCity again host a shitload of these - Joomla is something I am currently looking at right now. Seems pretty good.
It all depends on WHAT YOU WANT TO DO…
Really hard for me to explain everything in a short amount of words but the synopsis is:
- Register Domain Name.
- Get hosting from WebCity (you get email hosting with this too).
- Install a freeware CMS.
- Play with CMS.
OR
- Pay a web design company ~$10K.
I am a software engineer. I do computer crap for a living. If I needed a web site for my business, I would pay someone else to do it, because it’s a pain in the ass.
Get someone to design a site for you for like $500, and get a hosting company that offers pre-built e-commerce solutions.
[quote]Spry wrote:
3. Install a freeware CMS.
4. Play with CMS.
[/quote]
I work for a tech agency, currently I’m developing a website for a property company using a CMS tool called Umbraco ( http://www.umbraco.org/ ), it’s easy once you get used to it and they’ve got a great online community (although none of them get my lifting jokes or references). There are other free CMS tools out there, but most of them are fairly complicated.
Another thing you need to think about is if you’re selling things, stock management. If you’re going to be selling the same items over and over again, then all you have to do is set up the pages and let the orders flood in. If you’re going to be constantly changing your stock (one of our clients owns a clothes shop that sells fairly unique stock, he orders 1 or 2 of each t-shirt then once they sell, orders something different), then you’ll need to manage the pages very frequently (so something that’s user friendly would be better).
You need to sit down and think exactly what you want the website to do, then if you’re ok doing it, post it on here so we can give you more details.
Things to think about:
- Members area (login, personal details, previous orders, etc)
- Product pages (for selling stock)
- Forum (you can get free packages to do this)
- Blog page (hosted on the site or a link to blogspot?)
- News page (easy to update)
- If you’re selling, are you going to hold customer data (either personal or financial, financial isn’t an issue if you use a 3rd party payment gateway, such as WorldPay mentioned above (DON’T use WorldPay, they’re the most useless bunch of cunts I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with, use Protx instead))
- Delivery and return of products (I believe a returns policy is a legal requirement, in the UK at least)
Ok, so that’s a lot to think about, some of it may not apply to you (I’m taking it from a UK / European standpoint), but you do need to sit down and put something on paper.
Whatever you do, good luck with it, if you need any techy help, just post, I’m sure someone on here will be able to help (if I can’t 
OP - I guess from your questions that you are not web site savvy as far as creaton goes. There’s been plenty of good advice so far but I’ll add a bit more.
First off, online transactions - Easy enough with the likes of WorldPay - there are several options out there with varying tarrifs. They do everything from providing the secure site access for the user to enter their details to clearing the funds and putting them into your account. Shop around for the best deals.
Speaking of which you will need a “merchant account”.
So, next up - what are you selling? If it’s items out of stock or anything that you could put in an online ‘shopping cart’ then check out Actinic - It’s a highly customizable web shopping cart that interfaces with Worldpay extremely well.
There are plenty of other shopping cart systems out there too - some of them are even free. Using this method you’ve almost got your site pre built.
If the transaction isn’t quite that complex then ignore the Actinic route.
Your site itself, yes you can write your own, yes you can have someone design it for you. There’s a third option too which may be of use to you. Have a google for web templates. These are pre designed professional looking sites that you can purchase (quite cheaply) and build on.
You’ll need to decide what package you are going to use so you can get a template that is compatible.
This way you can do much of the work yourself even if your design skills aren’t up to much. Then hire a pro to do any of the techy stuff that you will struggle with.
You need to be aware of the systems you host your site on too - if you use Frontpage you need to make sure your hosting package supports it. Likewise with ASP.Net or whatever other technologies you may use.
If you give a bit more description of the sort of site you want to put together I may be able to suggest some specific tools that you could use.
I guess I should say why I need the website. I have this business where I rent out furniture to college students in dorms. They rent the furniture by the fall and I pick it up in the summer, longer if they wish.
I want the website because up until now I have done it by word of mouth & flyers. This unables me to get business from more then a couple colleges. With a site I can offer this to more then a couple and I can take orders online instead of in person or phone.
So I need the site to allow student to,
- join
- pick the college they attend.
- pick furniture
I mean business is good but it can be better.
what are you trying to sell?
You could use a Yahoo merchant account as an easy option for selling products. Costs $99 a month I think.
I have a friend who is pulling 6 figures with a few yahoo stores that he sells through as a drop shipper.
So, you need a members area (login, etc) and furniture items (could be viewed as products).
Do you need online payment of some kind or do you collect the money when you deliver the furniture?
Like Renton said, the server that the site’s hosted on can be a limiting factor.
The site sounds simple enough, do you have much experience with computers or any programming experience? (I’d guess not, but never hurts to ask).
[quote]Roual wrote:
So, you need a members area (login, etc) and furniture items (could be viewed as products).
Do you need online payment of some kind or do you collect the money when you deliver the furniture?
Like Renton said, the server that the site’s hosted on can be a limiting factor.
The site sounds simple enough, do you have much experience with computers or any programming experience? (I’d guess not, but never hurts to ask).[/quote]
Yes, I need them to join so that they can have an account with the site.
They will be paying online with a credit card or paypal.
anyone?
[quote]Razorslim wrote:
I built my website using Microsoft Publisher.
I hosted it using godaddy.com
I also use SMARTFTP client to download the files to the host server
I tried to keep it as simple as possible without having to buy too much SW[/quote]
Arachnophilia and Notepad also work and are free…
Smartftp is free…
Read here to learn xhtml…
http://www.miswebdesign.com/resources/articles/web-design-xhtml-1-3.html
[quote]Spry wrote:
OK. Are you a backyard small business? Yes? Read on. No? go pay a web design company for a professional job.
You can get a website up and running with shopping cart, paypal and even credit card payment functionality for very cheap.
First things first though…
-
You need to register a domain name. Roughly $100 to $250 (for 2 to 5 years registration).
-
Hosting - you’ll want to have your website running on someone’s server. There are many low cost hosting providers. I use WebCity. They are VERY cheap and they host and have wizards to setup many FREE website solutions (see step 3). $100 to $1,000 each year. I paid $120 bucks myself.
-
Just need some sort of shopping cart website QUICKLY? CubeCart, Zen Cart, OS Commerce are all freely available… (WebCity host these and have wizards to set them up.
Perhaps you’ll want a little more like being able to add content (news stories, a blog, have discussions forums - just like T-Nation). Go and get a CMS (content management system). These allow people with no tech skills to create and run websites rather easily. WebCity again host a shitload of these - Joomla is something I am currently looking at right now. Seems pretty good.
It all depends on WHAT YOU WANT TO DO…
Really hard for me to explain everything in a short amount of words but the synopsis is:
- Register Domain Name.
- Get hosting from WebCity (you get email hosting with this too).
- Install a freeware CMS.
- Play with CMS.
OR
- Pay a web design company ~$10K.[/quote]
You, are very ignorant about building a website. A .com/.net/.org domain names range from $6-$10 a year. How did you get $100-$250??
You get what you pay for with hosting. Do not go for the cheapest one, do not go for the one that gives you 10 terabytes of datatransfer(bandwidth) for only $4.99 a month. Do you really think you will need 10 Terabytes(10,000 gigabytes)? On starting a company, you will maybe use 1, yes 1 gigabyte a month. When you start having a decent traffic flow, upgrade.
You can buy a very nicely designed website, from very talented freelancers for around $2,000 fully coded. If you learn some basic html and css, you will be set. Do you really think that a common template that has been used by many other people, will be the same as a custom designed, one time use, full rights template?
OP send me a pm if you want more advice.
I was wondering if an e-commerce web design company like www.mountainmedia.com would be a good idea.
If you’re new at this and you just want a low priced, easy set up and use online store, here’s a Canadian company called Shopfiy that fits the bill:
Hope that helps!
[quote]Renton wrote:
OP - I guess from your questions that you are not web site savvy as far as creaton goes. There’s been plenty of good advice so far but I’ll add a bit more.
First off, online transactions - Easy enough with the likes of WorldPay - there are several options out there with varying tarrifs. They do everything from providing the secure site access for the user to enter their details to clearing the funds and putting them into your account. Shop around for the best deals.
Speaking of which you will need a “merchant account”.
So, next up - what are you selling? If it’s items out of stock or anything that you could put in an online ‘shopping cart’ then check out Actinic - It’s a highly customizable web shopping cart that interfaces with Worldpay extremely well.
There are plenty of other shopping cart systems out there too - some of them are even free. Using this method you’ve almost got your site pre built.
If the transaction isn’t quite that complex then ignore the Actinic route.
Your site itself, yes you can write your own, yes you can have someone design it for you. There’s a third option too which may be of use to you. Have a google for web templates. These are pre designed professional looking sites that you can purchase (quite cheaply) and build on.
You’ll need to decide what package you are going to use so you can get a template that is compatible.
This way you can do much of the work yourself even if your design skills aren’t up to much. Then hire a pro to do any of the techy stuff that you will struggle with.
You need to be aware of the systems you host your site on too - if you use Frontpage you need to make sure your hosting package supports it. Likewise with ASP.Net or whatever other technologies you may use.
If you give a bit more description of the sort of site you want to put together I may be able to suggest some specific tools that you could use.[/quote]
Would a merchant account be better than a third party merchant account?
Also what is the difference between a thirst party merchant account (clickbank) and a e-commerce webdesign company.(clientready)? does client ready ofer everythiong together?