Advice on setting up a web site please

[Mazz]

Hi guys, I need some help! Basically Tina needs a website for her custom made horse wear etc where people can view pics/prices/size and then order, so it needs to have like a checkout type order system and be easily updatable. I haven't messed with site design since the days of 56k and freeserve isp so I'm a little out of touch to say the least!

I've seen 1and1 advertising site hosting etc, but it's £10pm. Is that good/bad?

Are there any programs I can download to make/design one?

Any help would be greatfully received..thanks

[paul james]

You probably have free webspace with your internet provider, I get 50meg of space with Virgin, which is enough for a load of decent size pictures and things. You can buy a domain name and link it to whatever webspace you want, so you don't need to spend a load of profit eating money monthly, at least not untill you feel the need.

Since most people use paypal, I'd suggest using that as the main payment option on the site. You can put paypal buttons on web pages that create an invoice and let someone purchase something easily enough.

I still use basic HTML to knock together the occassion website, and use Microsoft Frontpage to do it. Personally I don't think you need to get too preocuppied with having a flashy website with animation all over the place. Concentrate on the basics, give plently of information on the products, multiple well taken photos of everything, and clear pricing of items and postage (with international post prices, insurance options etc). Its amazing how many people fail at the simple stuff, theres almost no point in having a website if people can't see what they are getting.

You could just use the site to give more information and photos to compliment an ebay account, so the site links to ebay pages where you buy the items. The downside to that is having to pay ebay listing and ending fees.

[Mazz]

Thanks for that lot, some good ideas there!

I've been playing with miiduu.com which is free to a degree - but tbh thats all it needs really - only real problem is its got miiduu in the domain name!

[paul james]

You can buy a domain name from a site like this: http://www.freeparking.co.uk/ (theres probably other ones too but I've used this in the past)
You can set it to link to whatever webspace you want. So you can have a professional sounding web address for an otherwise long named free web space. People type in your web address and never see the 'myfreewebspace.virgin.com' address or whatever it may be.

[Mazz]

Oh right! That sounds good...is it easy enough to forward onto?

[paul james]

Yep its very easy, if you buy your chosen domain name from that site, you can log in there and set the forwarding to go to what ever webspace you want.

[Jack]

Bear in mind your ISP hosted webspace may have restrictions on it. Some get funny if you try and run shopping carts and things, but there are plenty of ad-free, no cost, web hosting places out there, many of which do allow a whole range of services.

[Jon_nova1]

i used to run my own server but i only really needed that for SQL etc, i use google for free webspace with no ads and i got a cheap domain from http://tealeafhosting.com/

I've not figured out how to get the address masked yet because i've not been bothered but google sites appears to allow it

http://www.jonsjobs.info

With google sites you can use thier own simple designer but it also offers HTML editing, i basically used thier editer along with HTML editing they don't have. A good program if you can get it for "free" is Adobe dreamweaver