Building own website
 

anyone with experience?
what site builder to use?
godaddy experience?

thanks!

If you have no experience in building websites, I would suggest www.moonfruit.com . Easy sitebuilder that looks decent.

moonfruit appears to be flash based, which is not very mobile friendly :(

What is the goal for the website?
Knowing this can help us see if you may need dedicated hosting that provides some kind of database service , etc vs a more simple website.

I have GoDaddy experience as my capstone client is using them for dedicating hosting for our project.. It's been real interesting going from running my own LAMP servers that I have control of vs a dedicating linux hosting server managed with cPanel

mainly to sell products.
eventually, MAYBE have others post their products on the site as well.

look into some kind of dedicated hosting that provides a MySQL server or really any kind of database server that your it department or contractor feels comfortable using.

well this is more of a side business that i'm planning to do. So IT department is non-existent :S

do you have an experience writing html,css,php, etc??/

If not I would pay someone to setup a purchased e-commerce site template and have them set you all up.


http://www.bigcommerce.com/ something like this may be what you are looking for

i do not. i haven't touched any kind of coding for years.

how much does it usually cost to hire? (ball park range)

No clue on cost , I'm still in school ! I do know you can find people online to do contractor work , I doubt it but maybe dice.com?

I have been doing web based development (and others) for a good 10 or so years now. It really depends on what you are looking for... The fact you were mentioning a site "builder" for a dynamic site shows you might not fully understand what you are looking for. Based on this information if you were my client I would quote $1,000-$100,000.

It isn't just a five minute job throwing a site together that accepts credit cards, there is a lot of testing to do, and a lot of planning involved to meet a clients desires.

I would recommend calling a local web agency/firm and getting a quote. Don't go cheap you'll regret it later.

3 roads to small scale e-commerce:

a. If you can code, lease server space and build it with an open source e-commerce platform.

b. Lease a prefab e-commerce solution. I don't know that market in the US, no recommendations.

c. Set it up with eBay as the transaction engine, and link to your products from a static website built with WordPress or something like that. This also makes your products show in eBay search results.

The last one will probably be the fastest and cheapest route, if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

Suggestion that hasn't really been made, but steer clear of GoDaddy. They aren't all too good, and are targeted often for attacks. I manage a site that is run on GoDaddy, and it's less than stellar.

Personally, I use Namecheap for my domain hosting and Quickpacket (originally ZenSix, which was later bought out), but they're not high-volume. I plan on eventually getting a Linode VPS, but that's much more technical than just throwing up a site.

Do some shopping. Find out what your needs are. See if you can do something yourself, or if you need to pay somebody. Site builder services are pretty terrible for anything beyond a personal website. You really need something you control, especially if you want to eventually sell stuff.

http://www.reddit.com/r/webhosting might be a good place to find out what host might fit you best.

What all are you trying to get out of this site, something that I've personally used when creating a website from scratch was dreamweaver, it's much easier than sitting there and using html scripts and you can create multiple pages and link it to your main page. All you would have to do in the end is to copy your script and upload it to the web host.

interesting. good to know. stupid TV ads!

i was actually looking into Dreamweaver. how do you like it?

uh... I use notepad :D

It's been forever since I built a site, lol. Web design was my major but after one year I axed that and went with Cisco networking instead.

GoDaddy.. meh.

I had the same request from a family member not too long ago. "I want to start my own site to sell things!" She was selling self-made things... I told her sign up and sell through Etsy instead. A web site is fine and all, but there's a lot more to it than building a site and getting a checkout in place so people can buy stuff.

and how did that go for her?

No bueno. As somebody else mentioned, I use [insert flatfile editor here] (personally, vim on a linux box). It's the best way to get exactly what you want without fluff... but it's also very technical. Borderline programming. But not really.

I love using dreamweaver; I used it all the time back when I was in college and when I was home but now I rarely use it in the Army so my skills might be a little rusty

Honestly couldn't tell you. She hasn't brought it up again and I think the idea was abandoned. I do know two personal friends of mine that sell through Etsy though. Never heard any complaints about it, but never pried for information either.