Having YOUR OWN WEBSITE, "Dot.com", etc. Starting out - any thoughts, or advice?

[SolitaireOne]

Hey there fellow Corraler's #cowboy#,

Ok, a couple of recent threads got me thinking about WEBSITES... specifically having your own.

Lots of folks out there in "The Internets" seem to have 'em, even just simple ones. You know, for a blog, a sales post, sharing photos w/ friends, etc, right?

Not anything as elaborate as our beloved Comics Corral mind you, but something for fun, perhaps to help push my own oddball Bronze-Age collecting agendas? ;)

So, sound-off folks! Those of you who do, or have had "Websites", how did you get 'em rollin'? Is the maintence/ upkeep/ monetary drain a pain? Do you need to be a technical wizard to even get by, or what? :?

I've spent a few hrs. peeking around GoDaddy.com -- just register a "Dot.com" and pay the yearly fee and it's yours? It is that easy? Where else can you investigate such options?

... any thoughts and/or general commentary would be most appreciated here, Thank You!



:cool:




* Chime in here anytime: Hoss, C.G., STL, anyone... Bueller?

[marvelguy]

I don't know how these things work but Hoss may seem to have some answers since he must have dealt with these stuff.

[Quato]

I don't do anything complicated that requires scripts and I'm not trying to generate a super high traffic flow, so I just post everything on free web hosts. Some even allow you to use your domain name I believe. I don't even pay for a domain name so I don't deal with 99.9% of the hassles.

I create a web page in Mozilla Composer. I might tweak it with a simple script or two, then I upload it. Layout and composition outweighs all the bells and whistles. If you get too much into flash and things like that, you are crippling a search engine's ability to index your page anyway.

Q

[StlComics]

My website originally started as place to host ebay pics like 8 years ago. At the time I was going to school for web design (which btw is now all woefully outdated) and started it just for the hell of it. It has since slowly built into a fairly large site about comics that includes message boards, galleries, blogs, a chatroom, and a section for info about all the local St. Louis comic shows (which has incidentally made me somewhat famous (or infamous, I'm not sure) on the local scene). I have never regretted doing the site, but it has taken a lot of time and hard work to have all the stuff that is there.

That being said, just getting a domain and some host space is not too tough. I would though make sure you have a good editor (I use Dreamweaver) to do your pages with. You should also plan on not writing any software. That work has already been done for most everything you could want, and all you have to do is load it on.

I'll bb later. Have to go to work now...

[DKB]

I build web applications for a living. The last thing I want is my own website. Ew.

[disneyteddies]

Hey Solitaire,

A lot of folks here have been listening to us going on and on about building a website for the last few years. We DON'T have one but are finally closing in on it after what seems to be an eternity.

Our problems have been not being computer illiterate enough to figure it out (and believe me we have TRIED). Many good friends here have tried to help but we can't figure it out on our own. This led to me going to school for it and after struggling with the course for almost a week I found out I was put in the wrong class and barely got out in time to save us 14.000 dollars. The real course does not exist (of course) in this toilet of a city much like every other step we've taken.

The other reason was paying some one else to do it who knows what they're doing.

This interview process took a few years from lots of people claiming to be able to do what we want. We found that single guys weren't for us as we depended more on a team of people (mainly because we didn't want them disappearing after the job was done) because we would still need their support.

In order to do this we have had to save a lot of cash and we have always had big pitfalls jump in the way every few months...now I realise everyone has their share of grief in life moneywise but I swear we have at least double a normal person's bad luck.

Where was I going with this...oh yeah, my point basically is that this has been a very long and hard road getting to where we are right now but we are still so excited about this website becoming my full time career. I look back and realise that if we had just jumped in years ago we probably would not have been ready to make it what we have built it up to be now. So maybe patience is a virtue.

We've now got years of research and understanding under our utility belts which will make a ton of difference once we put it into effect. I would suggest a website to anyone willing to put the hard work into it because it will work much better if you work on it like you would a normal job.

If you don't know anything about computers (like us) I would suggest paying someone else (a professional) to do everything for you, if you are comfortable with computers maybe just have some guys that know what they're doing around as a help line...maybe you can trade them some comics for tips?! We just know an online store would be much more cost effective (after the website is built) than buying a brick and mortar store..Much more overhead.

Sorry to prattle on but until the site is up and running (next fall) we don't have a lot of the answers or experience to give you better answers, we just know that from working on the store EVERY day so far for the last few years we are going to give it everything we've got until it is a fully operational Death Star LoL!

[SolitaireOne]

Hmmm, great info and commentary, folks. Certainly, lots to digest when considering such cyber-endeavors. It truly makes me appreciate what goes on behind-the-scenes in order to keep/maintain a quality web-address! :rolleyes:

Does anyone have experience w/ GoDaddy.com? Their services (and others, of course) seem to be template-based towards being novice-friendly. Are these any good?

I confess, that I'm a noobie when it comes to "design" and anything beyond basic HTML usage and/or picture usage via Photobucket, or similar... :confused:

Everyone, thanks for sharing -- but, I'm interested to hear more, I say... MORE!

[disneyteddies]

We have Agelesscomicbooks.com, .net, .info, .biz, and .org registered with Godaddy.com and we are happy with them so far (the last three years). We haven't tried their other services yet so I don't know about them. Our computer team is going to link all these .blah blahs together so if someone types in any one of these it will always take them straight to agelesscomicbooks.com

We also have .ca but godaddy didn't have that one so we got it through another one but we found out godaddy now has .ca so we're going to switch it to them when it comes up for renewal.

It's a daunting task if you're not computer literate like us but if you have the $$ you can be up and running fairly soon. I would suggest doing a bunch of research through other sites that are similar to the site you have in mind...a little research goes a long way in being prepared.

There are lot's of free/cheaper sites available that lots of people here are on. Just check through the older threads and you'll find some names for them, I can't remember them right now but I'm sure if you ask people will bring them up again. I think Bluejay and Atomic Avenue were a couple of them. Depends if you're doing this as a hobby or as a job too.

Good luck, ask if you have questions and I'll try to answer them.

[fastballspecial]

Does anyone have experience w/ GoDaddy.com? Their services (and others, of course) seem to be template-based towards being novice-friendly. Are these any good?

Go Daddy is horrible and will even screw up the most basic web sites. They prey on 1st users or companies that use basic HTML and such. There templates cant be adjusted well at all so if you use them dont plan on expanding and updating your site without a nightmare. If you want a basic website only then I guess they would be fine, just dont use them if you want to expand or upgrade. I have had experience with them as an IT/IS person fixing other company websites that have used them.

As James suggested before finding something like Dreamweaver, First Page?, Arachophilia and learn it yourself. Once you have mastered it then you can upload it using your own FTP site or pay to have one host it. Learning HTML is very easy its gets harder when you have to add Javascript, VB, or any other type of slick programming language in addition to basic HTML code.

[fastballspecial]

Had I the time or didnt have young children I would build one myself and just add to it just like James did. He started small learn something new and then kept adding to it just like they do here at the Coral. I cant imagine all the work Hoss and James have put into their sites. Just all the different sites that are linked and then built seperately and tied together can be a nightmare to keep straight.

James, just out of curiousity do you even host with a local FTP anymore or are you paying now for hosting?

[StlComics]

Had I the time or didnt have young children I would build one myself and just add to it just like James did.

I also now have younguns, and get very little done these days. Look at this, though...

YouTube - Natalie Plays the Banjo

How can you resist that face?




I cant imagine all the work Hoss and James have put into their sites.

Me either. I don't even want to think about it. :D




James, just out of curiousity do you even host with a local FTP anymore or are you paying now for hosting?

Yahoo is my host. When I started the whole thing years ago, I had my internet account (DIAL-UP!) through SW-Bell which then merged with Yahoo. When I first wanted to purchase hosting, I was able to bundle it all together on one bill. That lasted all the way through my DSL years, too. I have since gone to cable (now running 10M service), but kept my hosting at Yahoo. It has always been very good service with any and all tech support with them, and the rates for bandwidth, domains and everything else has always been competitive. I've never had a reason to leave.

[eobcards]

I would first recommend calling your ISP and find out if they provide space for a personal website. Many don't allow you to use the space for commercial use, but it will give you the chance to see how it works, and get the feel of things.

Your first website doesn't have to be fancy. A simple list would be good enough to get you started.

Be very wary of hiring someone to create your website. Unless you know a little about it, you will need to depend on them to make every little change, such as add new items or delete sold ones.

[disneyteddies]

Hey Ed, How are things??

Ed is one of the people who tried to help us with Html...we just couldn't pick it up though. He's right about the add on's after though. Our company is going to charge us a one time fee to teach us how to do stuff like adding new stuff or putting sold on an item and other stuff like that. They are also going to teach us how to write a good newsletter and they are including search engine optimization as well as other good features. They've also won many recent awards for webdesign so we're very confident with them. Plus one of the crew's real name is Jackie Johnson, how can we miss with one of Easy Company's own working for us! LoL!

[kenmacny]

Whats the damage? (ie... how much they charging you to get started?). If you care to share.

[Quato]

Hey Ed, How are things??

Ed is one of the people who tried to help us with Html...we just couldn't pick it up though. He's right about the add on's after though. Our company is going to charge us a one time fee to teach us how to do stuff like adding new stuff or putting sold on an item and other stuff like that. They are also going to teach us how to write a good newsletter and they are including search engine optimization as well as other good features. They've also won many recent awards for webdesign so we're very confident with them. Plus one of the crew's real name is Jackie Johnson, how can we miss with one of Easy Company's own working for us! LoL!

I'm sort of drifting off topic, but I think most search engine optimization services are a waste of time. My messageboard was getting the #1 spot on Google using some of the most generic terms. Good search engine ranking is based upon a snapshot that Google or any other search engine has of your site. It looks at how many websites link to yours. It looks to make sure you aren't spamming their database. Too many instances of the same words will drop your ranking. It looks at how frequently your pages are updated. They know if it's family friendly. The main thing to know is that if your web page only lists Superman comics, it'll probably rank very low. You need to have both specific and generic words. Superman would be a generic word. "Curt Swan" would be more specific. By mixing the two up, you greatly increase the odds of traffic coming to your page. Search engines have to look at text and use that to find your page. They can't read plugins like Flash very well or if at all. Metatags are just a waste of time. If your page is about comics, I would never put "comics" in the metatags. The word appearing too often can actually hurt your search results or pigeon hole you out of stray traffic that Google might send to you. Give the page a good descriptive title and I advise people to give good descriptive words to their image names and folder paths. If Google's search tool sees and image file names like "SMMOK23.jpg" that's just gibberish to them. If the image is titled "23_Superman_Man_of_Krypton.jpg" their filters will be able to parse words out of that and get an idea of what your image is. As far as getting in their databases, submit your site to Google. Submit it to http://www.dmoz.org/. Post on the usenet with your site link in your sig file. Contribute constructive content on messageboards without hit and run spamming... that's not cool. Treat your link in your sig file like a business card on a counter, not a billboard. People will find your site if not pressured. They will repost links to friends and contacts. The more diverse the links to your page, The better ranking Google will end up giving it.

Q

[jordanscott]

I agree with the above post about checking with your ISP.

Most broadband providers give at least 20mb of space.

Not sure about dialup providers.

20mb doesn't sound like a lot but for a basic page just hosting images and information it will take a long time to fill up.

If your ISP is giving you space then you save money on hosting as then you can just register a domain and link it to your ISP space. ISP provided space rarely has an address that will roll off the tongue.

webpages.charter.net/jsteinhf/ (http://webpages.charter.net/jsteinhf/) is what I end up with Charter. Hardly something you want to put on a business card.

Also, check out a tool rather than learning html on its own.

I've used Dreamweaver, GoLive and a couple other tools and find that their template can be very user friendly.

Currently I'm using GoLive for stuff but noticed that Adobe switched to...Dreamweaver I think...as part of their CS so might move over to that now.

<--- adobe victim.

[kenmacny]

Adobe bought Macromedia a while back so they now own the Dreamweaver product.

[disneyteddies]

I tried Blue Voda website builder and Frontpage....couldn't get far at all...Dreamweaver is tough too but I suppose it's just us. We're the kind of people who pay other people to do it right the first time. LoL!

[kenmacny]

Whats the damage? (ie... how much they charging you to get started?). If you care to share.

Hank PMed me the totals for his new truly amazing website... its only going to cost him ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!... ahh just kidding, he told me to mind my own f'ing beeswax... no he is too nice to say that, really he is getting a homeless guy that lives in van by the river to whip it up in Dreamweaver with a JS storefront for $8.69 and cup of joe.

[Quato]

I tried Blue Voda website builder and Frontpage....couldn't get far at all...Dreamweaver is tough too but I suppose it's just us. We're the kind of people who pay other people to do it right the first time. LoL!

I'm tellin' ya... Mozilla Composer is Free for a basic web page. If you download the Seamonkey browser it is oart of the package. Mozilla is basically the developer version of Netscape. It's what Firefox is based on. I'm too lazy to learn Dreamweaver. I started using Netscape composer in 1997 and it's done nothing but improve since then.

Q

[Hoss]

There are also a ton of great free open source "store" softwares available. You'll have to do your homework and learn a little bit of coding, but it can be very easy after using it awhile. All you'd really need to learn is how to change the skin so it doesn't look like all the other sites that are using it. Some of the software that is very good and feature packed are Zen Cart (http://www.zen-cart.com/), Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com) and OSCommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com/). I have played with both ZenCart and OSCommerce and have heard really great things about Magento.

As far as site hosting I would stick with with GoDaddy for domains only. Their hosting is not so good, in my experience. I use both SimpleHelix (http://comicscorral.com/forums/www.simplehelix.com)and Hostgator (http://www.hostgator.com) and have had great experiences with them. SimpleHelix is optimized for ecommerce and for use with the Magento store software.

I've enjoyed building my own sites and have learned everything from trial and error for the most part. As long as you back up everything, you really can't mess things up. I have also received lots of great advice (and encouragement) from James over at STL (http://www.stlcomics.com)!

--

[disneyteddies]

See..I didn't understand ANY of that..but did you know that Sad Sack first came out in 1949 or that Wonder Woman first appeared in All Star Comics #8...and as for pages we're well beyond 40 web pages of material already and we're no where near done. Thanx Ken...is that guy a motivational speaker as well LoL! Sorry to kind of hi jack the thread, I'm just very excited about all that's going on and want to share what info we have learned.

[SolitaireOne]

As far as site hosting I would stick with with GoDaddy for domains only. Their hosting is not so good, in my experience. I use both SimpleHelix (http://comicscorral.com/forums/www.simplehelix.com)and Hostgator (http://www.hostgator.com) and have had great experiences with them.
Again, all great info folks... from uber-high-level on down, Thanks! :mrgreen:

Hoss, that "SimpleHelix" link didn't seen to work for me, but the "Hostgator" site seems quite interesting. They too, offer the tempalate-based webpages that I've seen elsewhere, which all look promising.

So, in the most simple terms: with GoDaddy I can buy/register a domain name and then go to Hostgator, etc. to actually host it and make it functional, right? It's then the additional functions and content that begin to add layers of coding, etc?

Doesn't sound too bad, though I can certainly see why in some cases, it's easier to simply let the professionals handle things!

:rolleyes:

[Quato]

Get your feet wet with HTML..

1) Take a basic tutorial online for free. Here is one I found from a search engine search. There may be better ones.
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_intro.asp

2) Download a basic WYSIWIG (What you see is what you get) editor like Seamonkey Composer. It comes with the web browser, so be sure to install the whole package.
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

3) Once you install the browser, surf to a simple web page you like and click File>> Edit Page... That will open the page in composer. You can start changing the text and making the page say what you want it to say. The page may have scripts, so the more simple the page you practice with the better. After you see what it can do, go back and open a blank composer window and start writing one from scratch.

A very simple page to edit and play around with is one of my pages. Something like this...
http://thor.prohosting.com/ultrav/Ultraverse_Checklist.html

(I'm not saying you have to make simplistic web pages like mine, I'm just saying it helps to learn the basics. )

4) Later on you can incorporate scripts which are available at sites for free..
These are just some sites I've seen before.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/
http://freeajaxscripts.net/

5) As others said, consider buying some store software packages. It's best to get your feet wet first and it WILL take an investment of time.

Q

[SolitaireOne]

Wowzers - thanks for all of the hyperlinks there, Quato! Certainly, an awful lot of info to digest. #explode#

It's good to know that quite a few folks here at The Corral have "been-there, done-that" when it comes to this kind of thing.

#oldie#

[fulltimer56]

Here are a few good places to practice your HTML to see what you pages would look like:

http://www.practiceboard.com/

http://practicewriter.com/index.php?try=setuid

Here's a site that I have used from time to time:

http://www.eobcards.com/tutorial3.htm

Linda

[SolitaireOne]

Good stuff, Linda! :mrgreen:

Some great (and simple) HTML Codes in there, thanks so much.

[kullerfilms]

I've had my own for a few years, and I love it. Besides the picture storage (being able to name the url's yourself is a HUGE time-saver, especially if you have a turbo lister database), anytime you have a personal project going you can just direct people there. It's just waiting there whenever you need to display public information. After awhile you wouldn't want to do without one.
It does NOT need to be a tech wonder. I make mine on Word, for Pete's sake (tech guys snickering here). Once you get used to it you can create some semi-pleasing pages that get across what you want to get across (limitations can spark inspiration).

So, if you are not Mr. Tech, but tend to figure stuff out as you realize a need for it, I say go for it!

My company is aplus.net. They have free 24 hr. Tech support and it's $9.99 a month.

I'd be happy to help you novice to novice if you'd like.

[alecholland]

Hoss' recommendation to use an open source solution is good advice in my opinion.

Here is a site that I finished a few weeks ago for a guy that collects glass target balls:

http://www.glasstargetballs.com/

It is hosted through a company called Bluehost. I used the Joomla CMS (Content Management System) and even added a fully functioning, very robust forum using a free forum extension called Fireboard. All free open source.

I like Bluehost because they offer one click installations of several open source solutions, including Joomla, OSCommerce, ZenCart, Wordpress, etc... I also have had no problems contacting support and getting help when I need it.

Using a free open source solution, you could create a very nice looking e-commerce website (if that is your plan) for very little money and a few hours of your time.

[kenmacny]

Glass target balls? I had tennis elbow once...

[spacecitycomics]

http://www.1and1.com

Biggest, baddest, IF you only want a host.
EZ if you do your own html.
I still don't own a WYSIWYG editor, or if I do
I don't know how to use it.
I type it all out in Word, then FTP everything
to my server, hell, it even comes with an
old shell acount, but I have never used it.

[Evil Parsnip]

I have several websites, and I do use godaddy, but not for website building. Go to a place like ipowerweb.com and you'll get a lot more flexibility and reliability in designing your own site from their templates. That being said - I'd probably do a free wordpress.com blog/site (you can make it look like a professional magazine) if I didn't know anything about websites/design. It's much easier and you'll be rolling in less than 20 minutes.

The hard part will be promoting the site.