Need a website for my home industry

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Zah1

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Hi guys, I'm a newbie when it comes to web hosting and don't understand much of the terminology :o

Started a home industry selling cakes, biscuits etc and have been using a blog to load my pictures. But now I'm thinking of getting a website as it just seems more professional, and potential customers would be able to browse through the pictures more easily.

How do I go about this? Please bear in mind I don't want anything expensive, this is more of a trial.

Looking forward to your advice!
 
Personally, I could recommend yola (https://www.yola.com/) - I helped a friend put his presence on there and you can hook it up to google analytics etc for all the fancy stuff on page visits etc.

It has lots of templates and design "widgets" which makes getting your website up and running quite easy and painless. If you have someone who knows a few things about websites or design, then they can help you through the process.

The best part is that its free, but additional content and services are available for a marginal fee.
 
Rather pay and get your own domain and something professional, it is not expensive to register a domain. Al these freebies are very un-proferssional. And if you are a local business with a local target marker, keep your hosting local.
 
hsmnel said:
Rather pay and get your own domain and something professional, it is not expensive to register a domain. Al these freebies are very un-proferssional. And if you are a local business with a local target marker, keep your hosting local.
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+1. I land on a yola site, I'm gone.
 
If you want to get a website constructed contact me, I might be able to do something for you.

If you are using a blog like wordpress, we might be able to re-skin it for you to something that reflects your business better.

You can visit my website for more details from the link in my signature.
 
Joomla is a great content management system for this sort of thing, especially with the free Phocagallery plugin for your photogallery. If you have limited technical knowledge, you may need a bit of time or assistance to get you head around what a CMS is and how it works but once the site is set up, you can publish articles and photos without technical knowledge via Joomla's administrator interface.

Wordpress is another popular and very good CMS system and it really boils down to which suites you best. Some hosting providers off a facility with their hosting packages which allow you to install applications such as Joomla, Wordpress and others more easily (Hetzner is one I think.) You can get such packages for less than R30-R40 per month so your costs for 1 year hosting and the domain registration will only be about R400-R500 for 1 year.

One thing about CMS like Wordpress and Joomla is that it is a bit technical to create original templates/themes for the look and feel of the site. There are plenty of freely available themes and templates but they may not have the exact look and feel that you want. I have used a program called Artisteer in the past which lets you create templates for Joomla, Wordpress and other software using a graphical interface. It is very good and easy to use but it does cost money (about $50 for the basic and $125 for the pro version last time I looked.) You could use a free template for your site to start with and then look at hiring a pro or using Artisteer later if you need something a bit more personalized.

Finally, however you build your site, make sure you know how to back it up and restore it and that you do keep a backup of the latest version. Cheap shared hosting packages are more susceptible to being hacked and a good backup is your only foolproof protection from losing your data or having to re-do your entire site.
 
Based on the OP's original post where he says he's a newbie, I'd suggest against anything like Joomla and definitely not hard-coding. That's just setting the poor guy up for failure.

Your two best options are either to use a service like Squarespace or Wix (less control, higher monthly fee, but generally quite easy), or to sign up for a basic hosting package and install Wordpress on it. Wordpress is generally quite easy to use and very customizable. There's a ton of great Wordpress themes out there which are easy to install and customize and look outstanding. You'd also save yourself quite a bit in the long run. And if they're a decent host (...see below...), they'll install the blog for you, point you in the direction of some nice themes for the site and happily install that for you as well. Plus, using a local web host means you get local support as well.

Good luck with whichever route you decide to go with!
 
For a small business likes your I would suggest a cms site. The hosting should cost about between R50 to R100 and the site could be about R1500 to R3000 to create. I would not go with the likes of yola etc as it does not look very professional. The other options like Mweb or Afrihost self build is limited but it can work and it very cheap. Just remember when you register with them it is difficult to move afterwards and you wont be able to move easily afterwards , at least that is my experience.

Good luck , I know there are many options , sometimes way too much available. Personally I would register the domain in my own name , have someone design the site for me and then find host it locally as the local hosting cost's are not that bad.

Hope this helps , shout if you need more info.

PS - If I need to decide between mweb vs Afrihost then I will go Afrihost , had much better experience with them.
 
sparticus said:
Just remember when you register with them it is difficult to move afterwards and you wont be able to move easily afterwards , at least that is my experience.
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I'm not too familiar with Mweb's hosting service, but Afrihost uses cPanel. Very easy to transfer away from. We do them all the time.
 
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