hi

Am in the process of setting myself up as self employment HR / H & S person.

I have a web address I have registered and before I spend money is there a quick and easy way of putting up a really basic web site using an online template builder

any advice welcome

cheers dave

You can design anything single page in Powerpoint or Publisher or something and save as a webpage – the back end and code ends up awful but that’s not a concern if its a simple advert or something!

That or try wix.com – they produce good results – little knowledge needed but does most of it for you.

As a developer myself I’d recommend Squarespace, lots of other people will tell you to use WordPress, but it will require you to mess with it more to get a similar end result and I’d imagine you’ve got better things to do with your time than try and become a web developer.

cheers for replies will have a scan

I’ve been thinking about using Serif WebPlus, it looks simple enough, but that might just be the marketing blurb . . .

@manoirdelourde their website certainly has a bit of a whiff about it, “WebPlus X7 supports 64-bit computers” is complete and utter BS for example.

Seconded for Squarespace.

Content is king. So spend all your time on that before you turn to technical stuff.

seosamh77 – Member
Content is king. So spend all your time on that before you turn to technical stuff.

This.

And if considering buying anything from Serif, be aware they will try to push a mountain of additional rubbish at point of sale and then bug you every few months with their latest marvel forever more unless things have changed. They also had a nasty habit of incompatible proprietary formats that cause total redesign with professional tools later. Possibly ok for something that will only ever be a club news sheet but a future cost to be aware of if planning a business.

I tend towards regarding specialism as something that’s very cost effective. In other words and in your frame of reference, you are an expert in your field of HR & H/S, so use your skills and experience and time devoted to this, rather than spending your time on something that a relevant expert can do for you. The overall cost may well be cheaper for you to outsource the techy web stuff while you earn doing what you do best?

Unless of course you have spare time on your hands and want to do a bit of learning, in which case that’s a good investment.

If you can understand what I’m getting at?! Do what you do best and employ others to do what they do best, in simplistic terms!

You can get a reasonable site set up and hosted for a year for a few hundred quid.

Advantage of using a wordpress theme as the basis is that you can manage the content as your business develops and you want to change the site.

I’d go for getting a pro to show you some wordpress themes and setting it all up for you so you can then change the content as time goes on.

*Disclaimer* – I’m a web designer, however…

Free / DIY sites (way more often than not) LOOK like free/DIY sites. Is that really how you want your business/company to be perceived?

Depending on what you do/need, you could get a really good 1-3 pager made up by someone who does it for a living for not an awful lot of cost and it’d a) look a heck of a lot better than most home brewed jobs, and b) be more expandable / futureproof in the long run.

That said, there’s some really good pointers above and, in the right hands, there’s a LOT you can do with something like WordPress.

I was in a similar boat, and used Weebly to make a site for my wife.

I’m no graphics person, but the end result was pretty impressive.
I signed up for the £30/yr package as the free one had ‘free one’ plastered over the footer, and just wanted rid of that!

DrP