Can anyone recommend an on-line website builder? My wife is setting up a small business from home selling chocolates and chocolate desserts. She wants to get a website up and running but we dont currently have much funds to spend on it but would like to get something professional looking up and running.

I did make a couple of websites about 12 years ago using Microsoft Frontpage but we dont have a large budget and dont have a license anymore we will pay to register a proper website address etc rather than a blog site.

Frontpage’s replacement Expression Web is excellent and now free. Reasonably simple to use with some good templates.

I host with fasthosts.co.uk and they have a reasonable online site builder also.

How many pages do you want? Do you want a shop window or do you want to sell on-line? If the former, simple, but if the latter you probably need to find your way around the PayPal interface, which I think is fairly straightforward.

I use Visual Studio Express, which is free and will be fairly intuitive for you if you could find your way around FrontPage (and it writes much cleaner code!). No templates, but if you know any CSS that wouldn’t be a problem.

I use GoDaddy (who do have a website builder, but which I haven’t used) for hosting and they are very good. Based in the US, but with a London number for support calls (so free to call if you have a suitable contract).

I’d be happy to help out with a bit of CSS and HTML (or some ASP.NET if you want to go down that route) if you want – it will cost you a box of chocolates for MrsJulianA though!

Based in the US…

They are US based but have a European hosting centre for folks across here.

I wasn’t aware of that, leffeboy (if you mean GoDaddy). Does it make a difference if my website is hosted in the US v Europe if I get free calls to their support line? I’m interested… and how do I change to the European hosting if I need to or will get some benefit from so doing?

You can build good, non-blog based wordpress sites with very little effort.

Setting up wordpress with paid for hosting is very straight forward, and a lot of domain registration/hosting companies have a built in wordpress installer in their control panel.

I’ve used ipage, and 123 hosting without problems. ipage were considerably cheaper.

Does it make a difference if my website is hosted in the US v Europe if I get free calls to their support line?

Theoretically if most of your visitors are from Europe then your website will be more responsive if it is based in Europe. I don’t think it makes much difference to the support – I seem to end up in the US most of the time

and how do I change to the European hosting if I need to or will get some benefit from so doing?

If you want to change then you need to call their support. If you want to see which data centre you are currently in then fire up the control panel for your hosted site, expand the ‘server details’ drop down and it should then tell you if you are in the European data centre. As far as I remember you are automatically in it if you sign up from Europe unless you do something to change it

we dont currently have much funds to spend on it but would like to get something professional looking up and running

you and the rest of the world :(. Unfortunately if you don’t know what you are doing and don’t have the time to work on it then you may end up with poor results. The easiest solution may be either to pay for a good wordpress template or to go with something like squarespace instead

It is only going to be a page or 2 – idea is to have a web prescence to show the products and contact details etc. Dont want to sell over the web as it will be more bespoke orders for wedding etc.I think I should be able to achieve something using templates and accept that I might have to pay for that but dont want to spend hundreds on someone else designing a custom website

If you don’t have the funds to get it built by a pro, use SquareSpace or Shopify/BigCommerce if you want to sell online.

You won’t need to get it to anything to technical if you use one of those and the standard templates are pretty good.

Wouldn’t bother starting from scratch if you haven’t built a site for 12 years and need a site quickly. You’ll get something OK looking and correctly built (and responsive) using a template from one of the above – the monthly fee will also cover all the hosting so thats something else you don’t have to set up. You’ll have plenty of time to get back in to it once you have a live site and you can then spend endless hours tweaking that for better results 🙂

Why such a price difference between squarespace and shopify?

I’d really recommend Vidahost for UK hosting. Ridiculously cheap, excellent (and free) customer/technical service and a full site management suite that makes it trivially easy to spin up a WordPress site (and loads of other stuff).

I built a simple site for Katie’s business in WordPress – roseberryhouse.co.uk. Hard to beat for a simple, easy to maintain site that does well in search engine rankings. I think good images are the way to make a simple site look good – worth thinking about getting some really good shots taken of her products.

I’d recommend spending a little money on location targeted Google AdWords over the first year or so until you start getting decent search engine responses

Impressed with Squarespace so far (not finished it yet 🙂 )

http://www.grahamwynnephoto.com

I am also looking at building a simple website for my start up coffee and tea business.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

I built a simple site for Katie’s business in WordPress – roseberryhouse.co.uk.

A simple web present is enough for me for now.

So anyone got an idea why Squarespace is $16 per month but Shopify seems more apart from the simple option but that doesnt say if it offers a free domain name which squarespace says it does.

I think it will be squarespace for us looking at them – the templates look good and should be able to get something up and running pretty quickly.

Squarespace is amazing looking, and has a good interface, but I have used wix.com for a few friends, and their builder and templates are pretty good.

but that doesnt say if it offers a free domain name which squarespace says it does

fwiw I usually try and keep my domain names separate from the hosting in case I want to move or change the hosting later. Shouldn’t really be necessary but I like it that way. It’s not as easy though but not so much more difficult

Think the domain name we want was only £7 on 123reg for 2 years anyway so might secure that. That will give us a .co.uk address and then the Squarespace will give us the same name but with .com and both can direct to the same website then. The .com adress will then be a bonus

Shopify is a full ecommerce platform – so theres the full backend to support that with various payment systems etc. If you don’t need that then its overkill for you.

Stick with SquareSpace. You can do it cheaper – TSO host are great (and cheap) for self hosting WordPress, but I suspect you’d get a better return for the time you spend on the site promoting/writing decent content/taking great pics thea learning how to set up the hosting account, installing wordpress, figuring out which plugins you need to improve the SEO etc.

Not saying thats not fun – its part of my job 🙂 – but as a start up I think you can spend your time better elsewhere. You can learn all the rest once you have a site set up and orders coming in! 🙂

Just had a quick look round Wix, as I’m thinking of building one for the shop and it looks really simple to do.

I used Wix for http://www.manx100.com

Was relatively straight forward (non IT).

I believe you can upgrade to full web shop as well.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

I built a simple site for Katie’s business in WordPress – roseberryhouse.co.uk.

Simon,

Do you just stick a domain name on WordPress site or do you have to buy it from WordPress?

I am planning to get a domain name from other places rather sticking everything in one basket just in case I am being held ransom. 🙂

I am just starting with say 5 pages without e-commence for now.

Vidahost for UK hosting

They look good but they have no template for me to use … hhmmm …

You buy a domain name. You can do this from pretty much anywhere.

Then you rent some server space. Again from wherever you like (I like site5.com)

Then change the DNS records for your domain name to match your new server space.

Then you install wordpress on your server space.

Then install your chosen wordpress theme.

Then add content/make any adjustments to the theme as required.

Bingo. You’ve got yourself a website.

muppetWrangler – Member

Thanks for the simplified explanation.

Damn! That’s easy … for you … 🙁

Time to learn … arrghhh … for me.

I will need to plan my webpages first.

Colour scheme – done.

Business/company logo – done.

I think I know the design template I want. Very basic with five pages.

The rest not yet.

😮

p/s: site 5.com is even cheaper … but no website template?

Wouldn’t worry too much about templates as there are hundreds of them available online from all sorts of places, cost vary from free up to around$50 for wordpress sites. WordPress also comes with a couple of free themes already installed.

Have a look at theme forest wordpress templates to get some idea of whats available. Basically if you’re going down the wordpress route you’ll be able to get hold of a template.

That list I added above, it’s mostly really quick. Apart from the last step that should all take around an hour of actual time spent at the computer although in real time it will take a day or so as you need to wait for things to take effect (confirmation of the domain name, modifying the fns records)

muppetWrangler – Member

Wouldn’t worry too much about templates as there are hundreds of them available online from all sorts of places, cost vary from free up to around$50 for wordpress sites. WordPress also comes with a couple of free themes already installed.

Where are the free templates from wordpress? Can’t seem to find them.

🙁

There’s some here

muppetWrangler – Member

There’s some here

Thanks. Did not see that earlier so will check tomorrow.

Checking site5.com now.