I 'need' to create a website! Please Help.

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raymondes

Weaksauce
Joined
May 3, 2008
Messages
91
Okay my employer (small business owner in a rural town) came up to me asking if I could create a savvy looking website for him. And of course my overconfidence in myself forced me to say yes even though I have no experience creating said website.

So now I stand with the predicament of needing to create a website and not knowing exactly how.

First of all I am almost certian that our ISP can set us up with a domain name and can host the site also. They will be the first people I call.

So my question to you guy's is what steps do I need to take in creating a website and what methhods should I use to create it(ie hard code it in HTML or find some fancy program).

Any and ALL input and advice is greatly appreciated. THANKS!

P.S. My grammar would be better but this thing doesnt have spell check.
 
The best option for you would be to hire somebody who knows what they are doing. If you're trying to create an online presence for the business, a website thrown together by someone with no experience is not going to be good. You need a website which will work for your business rather than hindering it.

If you don't have the option of hiring a professional (and have little to no budget, I would suggest installing a premade CMS (Content Management System). My favorite is Drupal, but Joomla is another popular one. Both are free. You can download pre-made themes then modify them to satisfy your demands.
 
A CMS might be a bit overkill for a basic web presence. I'd grab a copy of Dreamweaver or some similar WYSIWYG editor and a $30 pre-fab site template from one of the myriad template sites out there. Insert text, have coffee, job well done.

When you know what you actually want to do with the site (aside from using it as a fancy business card) then you can make more educated decisions on how to grow it out.
 
First off, do you know ANY HTML at all? Not to mention CSS, Javascript and all the other stuff that goes into making a website nowadays. If the answer is no, then save yourself a lot of headache and hire a professional. If that's not possible, then like others mentioned, get a copy of a decent WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver, and a pre-made template and have at it. The really nice thing about DW is that you can have templates that only allow you to add content to specific areas of a page, which vastly reduces the possibility of someone with little or no coding experience accidentally "breaking" the code and structure.
 
get your employer to spec out the website

what are the must haves , must nots, nice to haves

does it only need to be a one page frontend, or does it need to be an all encompassing beast that logs enquiires has a forum and a nice flash frontend.

what is the budget

does he want to be top of google (can you outsource the seo side of things

is the maintainace a permanent role can you get a pay rise out of it??

do you have a server ready to host this or is the hosting off site?

lots of questions here you would be best in asking for a requirements spec for the site then you can appraise whether you can fullfill them or not


edit: can you work photoshop/gimp??
 
for a small business in a rural place, your best bet is to just pay a company to make you something. Lots of web hosts have services that can makea site for you or even have those pretty cheesy build it online type things that will at least get the job done. It wont be amazing, but it will be a website you got setup in a day and will probably look more professional that trying to do it yourself if you have no idea what you are doing.

The template idea is also good, templates are pretty cheap to purchase.

You might not want to deal with the ISP though for a domain, they will probably rape you on the costs and if for some reason you switch ISPs you might be screwed even more. There are plenty of low cost and reliable webhosts out there.

Dont get into grand scale here...Keep it simple and easy.

Oh, and whatever you end up doing, Dont use a Network Solutions Product, you'll be sorry and be out a lot more money.
 
So you want to create a good web presence for a BUSINESS when you have no clue about websites? Good luck with that.

First I'd recommend you read a handful of books about web design, after that some books about usability and after that you need to learn about search engine optimization, which isn't exactly easy either. Once you've done that, you should create 2 or 3 websites just for fun, so that you have some experience with it before you create a website for a BUSINESS.

How long will that take? A few months. So get cracking!
 
If you need the website NOW, then go with either the templates in a WYSIWYG editor or a CMS with a nice theme. If you can though, hiring a professional would be a good idea. The other people here seem to be over-exaggerating. For a small business in a rural town, you don't need an enterprise-class website. Try to make it look nice.

Also, some info about the business might help us make better suggestions as to how important it is that your website be nice. If it's like a little gift shop down the street, you don't need quite so much...
 
I depends on what he needs. If all the business is looking for amounts to a "This is who we are. Here's our contact info" the site doesnt need to be complicated. A fairly simple straight up HTML with WYSIWYG is plenty.
 
Okay first of all i dont know all the information you guys are asking because i havent direcly recieved the assignment, but it was mentioned to me by my boss so im trying to get a head start on things.

For those wondering what the business is, it is a Land Surveying & GPS Data Collecting company.

As for the budget..... Im going to guess none.

As for hosting and domain name..... Our ISP can take care of that for free since he gets DSL through them.

Thanks for ALL the input and advice.
 
So let me see if I have this straight...you need to create a website. You don't know where it will be hosted, how much room is available, what the budget is (probably nothing), or where the domain name will be hosted (and nobody is going to do it for free). Plus you don't know anything about web design, what programs to use, what your employer expects from it, or what scripting language (if any) is available. Given the complete lack of information you're supplying, plus your totally unrealistic view of the situation, here's the best help anyone can offer you:

Good luck.
 
^ Agreed.
Just because you get dsl from your isp doesn't mean you get free hosting or a domain name. I'd go through someone like 1and1 for something like that.

I would definitely hire someone to do it. Making a website isn't "copy this paste that wham bam done" until you've been doing it for a few years...
 
Take it from me, who just started learning maybe two months ago... if you truly do not want to put in 40-80 hrs in learning how to make decent looking website, tell your boss you looked into it and that the company would be better off hiring a professional.

If you are never going to use the skills again, hire a professional. I've never looked into pricing, but I would imagine it would be fairly reasonable for a basic site design.
 
O[H]-Zone;1032528818 said:
So let me see if I have this straight...you need to create a website. You don't know where it will be hosted, how much room is available, what the budget is (probably nothing), or where the domain name will be hosted (and nobody is going to do it for free). Plus you don't know anything about web design, what programs to use, what your employer expects from it, or what scripting language (if any) is available. Given the complete lack of information you're supplying, plus your totally unrealistic view of the situation, here's the best help anyone can offer you:

Good luck.
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heh.. that pretty much describes my first foray into web development :).
 
From what I've read in the thread, your best bet to have a professional website where the owner has everything he wants in it is to hire a pro. Some techs just can't say now, and end up in a bigger hole than which they started or should have never gotten into. You said you can, now you have to figure it out. We can only help so much.... :rolleyes:

First find out all the details, and fine print. Get a budget and then start looking. A budget of ~$500 should be a good start, but then again.. thats just a rough guess depending on your hosting plan, domain costs, web development costs etc.

good luck :)
 
O[H]-Zone;1032528818 said:
So let me see if I have this straight...you need to create a website. You don't know where it will be hosted, how much room is available, what the budget is (probably nothing), or where the domain name will be hosted (and nobody is going to do it for free). Plus you don't know anything about web design, what programs to use, what your employer expects from it, or what scripting language (if any) is available. Given the complete lack of information you're supplying, plus your totally unrealistic view of the situation, here's the best help anyone can offer you:

Good luck.
Click to expand...

Okay to start, yes I need to create a website. It will be hosted by UTMA (our Local ISP), and the domain name will be hosted by the same company (I just called). I am assuming the budget is zero so I can find the cheapest and easiest way to go about creating a website. I just thought I’d get a head start on the game like a decent human being but apparently some people are so self indulged that they can hardly offer advice and resort to blatant criticism. I appreciate your input but go stick a pointy piece of produce where the sun doesn’t shine.

Thanks!
 
raymondes said:
I appreciate your input but go stick a pointy piece of produce where the sun doesn’t shine.
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Now, now, there's no reason to be nasty about it. People are trying to give you good advice here, so please listen to them.

For a land surveying company, I'm going to guess there's no real dynamic or complicated stuff you'll need, like a catalog or a shopping cart or SSL. So it will basically be a static "brochure" site advertising your services and that the site won't need a lot of updating or maintenance. Perhaps a form page for inquiring about a potential client's needs, but that shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

As far as hosting thru your ISP, I'd advise against that. Yes, it's possible to have a domain name used in conjunction with ISP space (or even a freebie host), but generally this involves locking your site into a frame to conceal its actual origin. This will absolutely kill you as far as SEO goes because the frame will show zero actual content and there will be nothing that can be indexed by search engines. You do want someone to be able to find the site via search engines, right? You can get "real" hosting cheap these days.

SEO (search engine optimization) is probably even more important than having a "savvy looking" design. You will need to take some time to research and learn about it. Page titles, meta tags, alts, keyword density, etc. These things all contribute to how a search engine ranks your site. Most people don't go beyond the first page or two of results for a search. Doesn't mean diddly to be in google's results if you show up on page 50 for a search term.
 
raymondes said:
I just thought I’d get a head start on the game like a decent human being but apparently some people are so self indulged that they can hardly offer advice and resort to blatant criticism. I appreciate your input but go stick a pointy piece of produce where the sun doesn’t shine.
Click to expand...

Sorry to tell you this, but we ARE giving you advice, and O[H]Zone is right. With little or no experience in web development, you're biting off a really big piece of pie, that's what everyone is trying to tell you. A lot of us have been in this business for a long time.

It takes months to become a half-decent designer/developer and much longer to be able churn out a professional looking site suitable for a business that wants to advertise themselves. Combine that with no plans and no budget and you're setting yourself up for a fall.

Unless you have one of those bosses who thinks slapping a bunch of free clip art images, some crappy photos taken with a cell phone camera, and badly written content done in big colorful fonts makes for a nice website, then feel free to ignore our advise.
 
maw said:
Sorry to tell you this, but we ARE giving you advice, and O[H]Zone is right. With little or no experience in web development, you're biting off a really big piece of pie, that's what everyone is trying to tell you. A lot of us have been in this business for a long time.

It takes months to become a half-decent designer/developer and much longer to be able churn out a professional looking site suitable for a business that wants to advertise themselves. Combine that with no plans and no budget and you're setting yourself up for a fall.

Unless you have one of those bosses who thinks slapping a bunch of free clip art images, some crappy photos taken with a cell phone camera, and badly written content done in big colorful fonts makes for a nice website, then feel free to ignore our advise.
Click to expand...

Okay, actually I am appreciating all the input you guys have given me so far, but having someone come in and say I can't do it and essentially insulting me is a little much. I came here to get a little advice and direction, but apparently I came to the wrong place.

I know I have little experience in this subject, but you have to learn some how right? I thank you all who haven given me some information on this subject. Any more input is greatly appreciated, but if you want to sit there and say I can't do it....... you can do whatever makes your e-nuts feel bigger.
 
If you want to learn, go find a good book or some tutorials online. I started off building websites in Frontpage 2000 (back when wysiwyg was hot stuff) and while that's good to help you understand the basic structure of HTML, it's not good for making decent websites.

Seriously, I would consider picking up an HTML for dummies book and cranking through it.

There's some advice on how to get into the web programming field. However, I too would agree that you're not going to make a website your boss will be proud of any time soon.
 
raymondes said:
Okay, actually I am appreciating all the input you guys have given me so far, but having someone come in and say I can't do it and essentially insulting me is a little much. I came here to get a little advice and direction, but apparently I came to the wrong place.

I know I have little experience in this subject, but you have to learn some how right? I thank you all who haven given me some information on this subject. Any more input is greatly appreciated, but if you want to sit there and say I can't do it....... you can do whatever makes your e-nuts feel bigger.
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wow... what did you expect?

You didnt tell us what you what the website is for, what your business does, what programming experience you have, etc. etc......

your whole post can be condensed into the subject line.
 
raymondes said:
I know I have little experience in this subject, but you have to learn some how right? I thank you all who haven given me some information on this subject. Any more input is greatly appreciated, but if you want to sit there and say I can't do it....... you can do whatever makes your e-nuts feel bigger.
Click to expand...

Nobody is saying you "can't do it", heck, we all started out pretty much the same level of experience as you. What we're trying to say is that you can't do it WELL anytime soon. The implication in your first post is that this is something you need to get up a running fairly quickly. I guess the best advise would be to get a pro to do it initially, then as your skills get better, you can gradually wean yourself from depending on someone else.

Anyway, here's my advice as to how you should begin

- pick up a beginner's book on HTML and/or visit http://www.w3schools.com. Learning the very basics shouldn't take more than a weekend. You just want to get familiar with the syntax at this stage.
- then take a look at CSS and what it can do..However, don't try to absorb it all at once, instead, concentrate on how to set things like fonts, sizes, background colors, borders, margins/padding. Learn the different ways to link your pages to style sheets. Again, concentrate on just the syntax for now.
- start off with a BASIC HTML page. Just some formatted text with a few links to other pages, that way you can continue getting familiar with the code while getting something done that's not overwhelming.
- then try adding a few styles in your style sheet, and apply it to the pages you made. Maybe change your link colors, or add a box around a paragraph, etc...(pay attention to the difference between classes and an IDs in CSS.)

- then practice, practice, practice. When you can do the basic stuff without referring back to the books, you're ready to move on and learn some of the more complex stuff..but that's for another time.
 
raymondes said:
I appreciate your input but go stick a pointy piece of produce where the sun doesn’t shine.
Click to expand...

Wow, if you read my post I never said you couldn't do it but hey, if my wishing you good luck is such a major problem, sorry about that. Anyway, have fun with the project; I guess now that everyone on this forum has witnessed your demeanor they're probably just lining up to offer you help. Normally I'd wish you good luck at this point, but I guess that's some sort of a problem, so I'll just say have at it, and keep us informed!
 
So, how's the website going? Any questions? Any way we can help? I figure you're probably done with it already, but I just thought I'd ask.
 
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