talkmagic.co.uk

I want to build a website to promote myself as a magician. I want to start simple and cheap and at a later stage get someone to do it professionally for me. But for now I want to do it myself for free (or close to it).

I have no technical expertise in doing this and have had a look at Frontpage but haven't a clue how to use it.

Is there a simple user-friendly tool I can use to design & build my own without having to resort to templates ?

What's the cheapest domain host etc. out there ?

What is the step by step process of getting it onto the web so people can find it ?

Any help appreciated

Some ISP's (like mine www.bravenet.com) have a web builder software free with the hosting. This is very easy to use and will take you through each step from building your site to publishing it to the web.

why not use a free host? you can decide on buying a domain/host later if your site works

Option wrote:why not use a free host? you can decide on buying a domain/host later if your site works

Getting in with free hosts is not recommended if you're thinking of progressing your site to a professional level in the future.

Free hosts will tend to host your site for free under certain rules, such as holding you to ransom over your domain name when you decide to leave them.

My personal recommendation (I've been designing/hosting web sites for about 15 years) is to join a company called 'Easily.co.uk'. Their domains are cheap, there's NO hidden costs, and they have a web-builder functionality for total HTML novices.

What's good about a reputable company such as Easily is that their products are scalable, and can grow with your needs. Plus, you get a professional product from the start, rather than a bandwidth restricted, ad-heavy, cruddy free service.

seige do you design flash websites?

stephenmagic wrote:seige do you design flash websites?

Yes. But only when pushed too. I avoid flash sites because A: they're predominantly search engine hostile for many reasons, and B: a lot of your target audience is potentially offput by flash intros, navigation etc. which relies on a plugin being downloaded.

My many moons experience has taught me to design sites to impress your clients, not other designers or colleagues. Impressing your client means far more than the wow factor—communication is vital in website design.

Well, if you have no technical experience whatsoever you have two options.

One is, as has been said, to use one of the novice HTML website builders. A lot of ISPs do them; I have a friend who runs a web design business who is in the process of writing one right now.

The other is to use something like Frontpage or Dreamweaver. Personally, I can't stand Frontpage unless you are just using it to code HTML, so I would recommend you download the trial version of Dreamweaver and go through the built-in tutorials - you can then design pretty complex websites using CSS layouts alone.

(Bonus third - learn HTML and CSS and do it yourself! )

Kati

A bit off topic here but you don't really need all those flashy apps like Dreamweaver, I just use 'Window's Notepad' and build my websites that way.

But yes, those programs make it easier if you don't know any HTML and/or CSS. But learning HTML is recommended by me.

While you could design entire websites in notepad - for more advanced web design, it's hardly practical to use only that.

Seige - are you a freelance designer or do you work with a firm? I'd love to see some of your web work.

Demitri wrote:While you could design entire websites in notepad - for more advanced web design, it's hardly practical to use only that...

Yes you're right but my piece of advice there was to learn at least HTML and CSS and that you can make a website without all those (expsensive) applications such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage

That is what I did, then I got Dreamweaver. it so much easier, as you can just scoll down and click on what you want it to do.

ie.

Code: Select all

<a href="bshashbasb">Something</a>

In dreamweaver, you would only really need to type the web address and the 'Something'

http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/index.ph ... ANN_id=788

This might be what you want, a self contained, easy to edit website. You have to host it yourself, but its aweseome

Dreamweaver is pretty easy to use, its WYSIWYG apart from some small features which you will easily be able to master, but for the price of dreamweaver it would be easiar to pay for hosting and use the web hosts site builder.

My opinion is that you really need to know HTML and CSS to design a webpage. You can try to make one using a web design tool but it willl never be perfect...

By the way, domainbuster.com is a lot easier to use than easily.co.uk, and I think it's cheaper too (£15/year for 50MB+email+domain)...

Kati

Use sitemaker.co.uk (also gives you a free trial for a couple of weeks) its good and easy and like seige said use easily.co.uk thats the 2 that i use one for building my site and the other for a domain


Jags