How did you start your Domain / Website?

MrAudio815 · 08-28-2008, 09:41 AM

Hello Everyone,

I've been on the site for a few months now and have been to many of your personnal sites with all your wonderful woodworking's and items for sale, Love them. And just wondered how you did it? They look so professional, the website that is, not to mention your woodworking capabilities.

Q.1 How'd you do it?

Q.2 Do you make a lot of sales from your online site?

Q.3 Where did you get your Domain from? (I have been looking at GoDaddy.com $9.99 for a year?)

Q.4 How much is your Domain per year?

Q.6 Is it hard to make your site look the way you want?

Q.7 And any questions I should have asked?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

-------Matthew-------
Custom Home Audio

WoodWrangler · 08-28-2008, 10:07 AM

My career in the early years was built around web development ... so hopefully the advice will help ...

Q.1 How'd you do it? It's magic.

Lots of methods. Online site builders (usually cheesy though), template-based sites (look professional with little other knowledge), and custom development (write it yourself). I prefer the latter two ... and usually land in the middle of them. Personally, I'm not into "programming" these days and avoid it when I can (simply for the aspect of time that it takes, if nothing else)

Q.2 Do you make a lot of sales from your online site? Not rich yet, so no. Don't expect a miracle. It will take time, a good site, good marketing, and some luck.

Q.3 Where did you get your Domain from? (I have been looking at GoDaddy.com $9.99 for a year?) GoDaddy is okay, 1and1.com is cheaper, and MyDomain.com is good ... but there are a million places to buy one.

Q.4 How much is your Domain per year? $6.99 (Signup at 1and1.com and it's included with your package!)

Q.6 Is it hard to make your site look the way you want? Good looking sites take a couple of things in my opinion: Good graphics, solid design skills, and a lot (a LOT) of trial and error. My recommendation, pick a site you like and use it to learn from. Try to mimic it.

Q.7 And any questions I should have asked? Do it yourself or hire it out? Depends on how important it is to you and how much you know about web development, marketing, and design. Far too many people take the super cheap route and do it themself when they know nothing. For a personal site, cool. But for a business it just makes you look foolish, IMHO. If I visit a site that is cheesy, I think that must reflect the company. Just like a good tool, sometimes you get what you pay for.

Couple of suggestion:

Stay away from free hosting (especially those with their ads popping up everywhere). You can get flexible, good hosting for about $2/mo at 1and1.com and that includes a domain name. This is very basic though, but it's a good starting place. You can always upgrade later if you find it worth your nickel. You can also always changes hosts if you don't like something about the host you have. I've used 1and1.com for about 5 years and have never once had a problem (couldn't say the same for post hosts I've used, like XO Communications and some that are now out of business). I also use MediaTemple.net more recently for some business stuff and so far so good.
Keep a "test" and "production" version of your website ... no matter how simple. This means two versions of your website on your server. Don't mess with what's "live" and working until you test it.
Talk to Steve Coles about hosting with North Carolina Woodworker.

WoodWrangler · 08-28-2008, 10:09 AM

One more thing ... if you want to "test the water" give WordPress.com a try. It's free, it's blog like, but you can add shopping carts. It's easy to use. Might be a good place to start.

Here's the site I'm hosting with their application (now on my own server):
http://www.newtoolreviews.com

Note: Nothing is sold directly there, but gives you an idea of what you can do with ZERO coding.

toolferone · 08-28-2008, 11:32 AM

USE STEVE'S SERVER. GREAT SERVICE, BETTER PRICE, VERY STABLE, AND YOU ARE HELPING THE FORUM AT THE SAME TIME!!

SteveColes · 08-28-2008, 11:37 AM

Well, I don't want to disagree with Jeremy, but

First, godaddy is about the cheapest place to get a domain that is not a part of hosting bundle.

A word about hosting. All inexpensive hosting is based on the same operating/market premise. The average personal website uses very few real resources. You could have hundreds of static Html pages, and you actual storage is very small. CPU resources are really minimal. So the Hosting Company depends on it. There is a Hosting marketing war that has been going on for several years. So the hosters generally put 2 - 4 hundred of these inexpensive accounts on one machine. They make extravagent claims about your total storage, bandwidth, mailboxes, DBs,etc. I can promise you that in almost all cases, the total that has been promised to all the accounts on that machine far exceeds the capability of that machine. So when an account begins to exceeds the real resources that the hoster has planned on, you will usually find yourself up the creek.

The better ones will move your account to another less loaded machine. But they won't do that too often. Usually, they will begin to throttle your resources and when you complain abou response time, you well be told that you have to upgrade your account.

In general it is a bait and switch type of business. Does that mean you can't good shared hosting. No, you can decent hosting, as long as your needs are usually far beloow what they say that you will get. Also, ask yourself, how many $2/month accounts would have to be on a single server to just pay for the server, the cost of operations, support, etc. A lot and it couldn't be a very powerful machine.

So be carefull, be realistic, and check the reviews of the hosting service. If you decide to use something like WordPress, than look at the various WrodPress forums see what services, people are having success with

WoodWrangler · 08-28-2008, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by SteveColes

First, godaddy is about the cheapest place to get a domain that is not a part of hosting bundle.

I don't want to disagree with Steve either ...

but GoDaddy.com is not the cheapest by any measure. Good, but not the cheapest.

Both 1and1.com ($6.99/yr) and MyDomain.com ($8.75/yr) are cheaper and neither require a hosting package.

Now you don't get the GoDaddy girl in your face all the time ... so maybe it does lack that "feature"...

farmerbw · 08-28-2008, 12:05 PM

1> What Jeremy said and then some!

I've got a bro that's been helping me out/designing the site for me and I just push the new content when we're happy with it. Now that the outline is such that we like it I can and do make some of the content changes myself via dreamweaver. I'd like to be more hands on with it but just haven't really had the time or patience to do it.

2> My hosting package includes the tools needed for this, shopping carts....etc, but we're currently not using but plan to in the future.

3> We're using Inmotion Hosting and have been very happy with them to date, they're tech support is very good, helpful, and US based (VA I believe).

4> We're signed up for the "Power" package , http://inmotionhosting.com/hostingplans.html, and with a referral code paid $67.65 for a year.

6> I'll again agree with Jeremy, it just depends on what you're looking for and are happy with. There can definitely be a steep learning curve based upon what you want to do.

Brian.

Sandy Rose · 08-28-2008, 12:37 PM

Matthew...I used Microsoft's Office Live service for my business website. It's a complete service (webiste hosting, storage and email accounts) that is free and after the first year, I think the domain renewal fee is $15 a year. I don't use it for online sales, but it does have an eCommerce feature. It may not be as customizable as some providers, but there is no maintenance to it and it'sreally simple to design your site.

zapdafish · 08-28-2008, 01:23 PM

I use discountasp.net as a host because I am familiar with the .NET framework, i let them handle my domain registration as well but wish i went through godaddy as my registration info is now available for everyone to see. Just something to keep in mind.

christopheralan · 08-28-2008, 01:42 PM

Originally Posted by farmerbw

1> What Jeremy said and then some! I've got a bro that's been helping me out/designing the site for me and I just push the new content when we're happy with it. Now that the outline is such that we like it I can and do make some of the content changes myself via dreamweaver. I'd like to be more hands on with it but just haven't really had the time or patience to do it.

2> My hosting package includes the tools needed for this, shopping carts....etc, but we're currently not using but plan to in the future.

3> We're using Inmotion Hosting and have been very happy with them to date, they're tech support is very good, helpful, and US based (VA I believe).

4> We're signed up for the "Power" package , http://inmotionhosting.com/hostingplans.html, and with a referral code paid $67.65 for a year.

6> I'll again agree with Jeremy, it just depends on what you're looking for and are happy with. There can definitely be a steep learning curve based upon what you want to do.

Brian.

I'm with Brian. I use inmotionhosting for my site. It comes with ALOT of stuff and the customer service is great.

Feel free to check it out.

WoodWrangler · 08-28-2008, 02:25 PM

While at lunch I got thinking about this more and wanted to toss out this ... there are Windows-hosted and Linux-hosted (or Unix-hosted) solutions out there. You'll need to decide which one you want based on your needs. For instance, if your pages will be Microsoft technologies (ASP, ASP.NET), you'll need a Microsoft server. However, if you go with other options (PHP, for example), you'll want Linux-based hosting.

As you are starting to see hosting has become so common over the years there are thousands of hosts available. Take a recommendation and run with it.

SteveColes · 08-28-2008, 03:05 PM

Originally Posted by WoodWrangler

I don't want to disagree with Steve either ... but GoDaddy.com is not the cheapest by any measure. Good, but not the cheapest.

Both 1and1.com ($6.99/yr) and MyDomain.com ($8.75/yr) are cheaper and neither require a hosting package.

Now you don't get the GoDaddy girl in your face all the time ... so maybe it does lack that "feature"...

Oops

, I guess I haven't looked in a long time. My bad.

As far hosting here at North Carolina Woodworker. Not quite ready yet. Can't quite bill. But soon. My basic price will be $5.00/month and the specs won't look as good on paper, but I'll guarantee that they will be met and you won't be competing with 400 websites on the same machine for CPU cycles

rhett · 08-28-2008, 03:32 PM

I went through godaddy for my domain name and designed my site through their template based website tonight program. It has suited my needs as a place to have an online portfolio. Some may say that these sort of sites look "cheesy". Unless you really know what your looking at, 9 out of 10 people will think it looks great, kind of like nice furniture. Customers just need to be able to easily navigate the site and get the information they came for. Domain name, hosting and website template all for under $80 a year.

MrAudio815 · 08-29-2008, 10:10 AM

Hey Christopher,

Everytime I click on your site it ask's me for a user name and password to see things in your site. So I can't see them and close the browser, maybe not exactly what you are going for?

Matthew

MrAudio815 · 08-29-2008, 10:17 AM

Thank you all for the great information, I have learned a lot already, especially that I have no clue what some of you are talking about, PHP, asp.net. I do know just like anything that I need to research it, learn more about it, then jump into it. At least now I have a starting point with the Domain's out there, prices, options, good service, good tech support, ETC

So again I thank you all!
If you don't mind can you all send me your Website, I want to make sure I have looked at all of them.

-----Matthew-----
Custom Home Audio

Residency requirements