Viewing 19 posts - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)
  • Building my own website
  • jim25
    Full Member

    Enquiring about building a website, I’m a carpenter and would like to get abit of webspace to show off some of my work and obviously make it easier for customers to check my out.

    Have had quotes of £5-600 for a 4 page site.
    Wandering as I’ve got a bit of spare time how hard it would be to make it myself? Using a proper webaddress not one of the long winded free address’ you get for signing up with some of the build your own site places.

    Any pointers? I’m pretty noncomputerised!

    somouk
    Free Member

    Simple enough really, grab some space and a domain name from 1 and 1.

    Then use their web site builder to give you the basics or do some research into HTML online and start giving it a bash.

    allthegear
    Free Member

    First things first – spend a bit of time working out how much EXTRA PROFIT you will make from having a website. Your budget is LESS than that. Otherwise, you are not benefitting from it.

    People seem to forget the website is an advertising tool for your type of business, nothing more. What other advertising do you do and how effective is it?

    Spend as much time as you can working out how and if a website will actually work for you. Then decide whether to still do it.

    And that’s coming from a freelance website developer…

    Rachel

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    whitestone
    Free Member

    Ultimately a website is just a text document containing basic instructions to the browser on how to display it. Making sure that such a document appears acceptable on the wide variety of devices now used to view the web isn’t so easy. The quoted cost seems about right.

    You can look at the “source” of any web page to see how things are done. There are also the usual tutorials and books available but if you go this route be aware that things change quickly so make sure that the tutorial/book is recent. If you don’t want fancy effects then you just need to know how to write the instructions in amongst your content – HTML, and how to make it look good – CSS

    jim25
    Full Member

    Cheers guys.

    Samouk, think i’ve just replied to your email!

    jim25
    Full Member

    Allthegear, thanks thats great advise actually, I’ve never had a website, obviously! and have managed fine without it so far. I do very little advertising as it is. Most stuff is all word of mouth. Was just thinking a proper website would make me look much more professional. Will have a think

    DaRC_L
    Full Member

    Set up a Blog – use Wordpress or Blogger; they ease you through the set up, can have plenty of static pages and there are loads of design templates out there for you – everything from a shop to various specific types of sites (photography, etc…)

    plyphon
    Free Member

    Squarespace is your best tool for a WYSIWYG website editor. I have built a few for friends through that as it was all they needed and I wasn’t going to charge them for an actual development. It even has ecommerce built in.

    http://www.squarespace.com/

    Squarespace offers some sort of free account, but the subscription isn’t much a month either way. You can build it yourself for free with zero knowledge of HTML/CSS/Java/etc.

    You will have to buy your domain separately and link Squarespace to it, not hard to do. They provide a walkthrough.

    WordPress isn’t really the best platform anymore. Don’t forget WordPress was built as a blogging tool. Yes, many people have bastardised it into a website editor, but that is only due to lack of alternatives. Really, it’s not the correct tool for the job *anymore*.

    Spend as much time as you can working out how and if a website will actually work for you.

    C’mon man, this is 2015. Get with the digital age. A website should be as foundational as getting your accounts in order when owning a business. Even if it’s just a static site with your address and phone number. A website is 100% essential for businesses in the year 2015. “A website” could be as simple as a Facebook page, however.

    azrael71
    Free Member

    I would take a different tact.
    Webpages are cool and can be done by yourself, like bike/car repairs, electrics ans plumbing.
    But some people are uncomfortable with all that and employ an expert.

    If all you are wanting to do is showcase your skills then set up twitter and facebook accounts and post your pics up there with appropriate tags.
    Get your friends/customers to follow, repost/tweet your posts and get a good following.
    Easy as and cheap as well.

    philwarren11
    Free Member

    I have a Squarespace website, super easy to use with everything I could ask for me. I have a lot of hidden features too, client galleries, hidden galleries, booking forms, contact forms etc..

    Their support is 24 hour and incredibly good. The templates are great looking and adjust to whatever platform it is viewed from. Uploading content is easy and so too are the blog entries, they also have apps for it too.

    My website is (Shameless plug if you need a wedding photographer) http://www.Philip-Warren.com

    plyphon
    Free Member

    Yeah, that’s something I forgot. Their support networks and communities are great.

    The templates are great looking and adjust to whatever platform it is viewed from.

    This is called being responsive, and again is essential. 🙂

    qtip
    Full Member

    It’s pretty easy but will take up a fair chunk of your time to get it looking good. There’s a lot of different things to think about (especially the responsive design side of things) and unless you enjoy the process then it could be a major headache.

    Our Penbol Weddings website was my fist attempt at creating a website. I hand coded most of it and used WordPress for the blog with a custom theme to match the rest of the website. Getting the WordPress styling to match the rest of the site was probably the biggest headache. All in, it probably took me about a month of coding in my spare time.

    It all depends what your background is and what you want from the website. If you’re happy with available templates then the whole process is dead simple and you can get some content up in no time. Hand coding, or modifying templates, requires more effort. I loved creating our website, but I have a background in programming so picked it up pretty quickly.

    rollodes
    Free Member

    check out http://www.wix.com Dead simple and v.cheap. I did a few sites in my lunch breaks using it. eg http://www.gbg.org.gg

    Rollo

    Stranga
    Free Member

    We use freshsites and wordpress here.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    azrael71 – Member
    If all you are wanting to do is showcase your skills then set up twitter and facebook accounts and post your pics up there with appropriate tags.
    Get your friends/customers to follow, repost/tweet your posts and get a good following.
    Easy as and cheap as well.

    ^ This. I follow a number of people who are in the building trade and similar that constantly post on these with nice shots of work they’ve completed or are doing, and it’s great for building a reputation.

    I’m more likely to contact them based on that than call a mobile number from an anonymous looking generic web site.

    p.s. Also try Instagram. Seems the more popular option for the photos and you can link it to Twitter and FB to cross post the pictures, so you only have to post once. Easy to take the photos too. Don’t overdo it on the 70s faded polaroid filters though 😉

    qtip
    Full Member

    Missed the bit in the OP about being “non-computerised”. Forget doing the webpage yourself – a bad web page is worse than no web page when it comes to attracting customers. Either pay someone, or do as others have suggested and focus on social media instead.

    plyphon
    Free Member

    Missed the bit in the OP about being “non-computerised”. Forget doing the webpage yourself – a bad web page is worse than no web page when it comes to attracting customers. Either pay someone, or do as others have suggested and focus on social media instead.

    It’s pretty easy but will take up a fair chunk of your time to get it looking good. There’s a lot of different things to think about (especially the responsive design side of things) and unless you enjoy the process then it could be a major headache.

    Nope.

    This is the exact reason why places like SquareSpace exist. The OP is SquareSpace’s EXACT target market.

    Yes, you can dive into the CSS and get all custom with stuff if you want, but the whole point of SquareSpace is that the templates look amazing right off the bat. And they’re fully responsive without you doing a single thing.

    If all OP wants to do is upload a few photos and have his contact details on a template, he could achieve that within about 30 minutes.

    Honestly, Squarespace is so simple – I’ve taught similarly non-computer people how to manage their content using it.

    Whilst I agree, a Facebook page (probably) would suffice, I’m more dispelling myths. And saying YES YOU CAN have your very own site.

    allthegear
    Free Member

    A website is 100% essential for businesses in the year 2015.

    No – it really isn’t…

    I’ve never had a website, obviously! and have managed fine without it so far. I do very little advertising as it is. Most stuff is all word of mouth.

    If you business demand is driven by word of mouth and is keeping you busy – keep doing it and keep doing it well…

    Rachel

    robfury
    Free Member

    I built mine for work with xara web designer cost about 90 quid for software but after quotes from companies for 5 times that I thought it was a bargain. Was pretty easy to do. Watch a few of their videos on how to do bits and most of it was simple. Plus I can edit it at will and add the head codes to verify site with search engines. Without paying someone else again

Viewing 19 posts - 1 through 19 (of 19 total)

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