Website building

[Boats&Outboards]

it's about time we got a dedicated website. Before, stock has never stayed long enough for us to bother but my thinking is it will offer more than just a sales platform.

My question is as I'm not able to build one myself (not sure where to begin) can anybody offer any advice as to who to use, the likely costs, hosting etc.

If any of you on here is in the "trade", please feel free to PM or email me if your able to offer assistance.

Thanks in advance

Peter @ Boatsandoutboards4sale ~ askboatsandoutboards4sale@sky.com ~ 07930 421007

[Polwart]

Peter, you will get wildly varying prices for this. Make sure you define exactly what you want from a site (not what they want to sell you). Make sure you understand if this is locking you into using their hosting editing services going forward.

I would say you can easily make a simple site yourself in Wordpress or something similar (i have recently been experimenting with concrete5 and it may be even better for total newbies). Free templates are probably fine for a 2nd hand boat site, but a customized design should be no more than 500 if you have done everything else.

If you have enough stock that it needs to integrate with some sort of database or be easier to post advert to than rib.net then you will either need a developer or to find an off the shelf tool for doing that. Likewise if the system needs to integrate with your other it, e.g. accounting... but for a simple brochureware site with ads that you post and edit much like here its a simple DIY job if you are proficient with Google to find how to do things you want to turn on or off.

I assume you aren't looking to take payments or actual orders on line?

Personally I use cloudnext for my hosting (iirc less than 30 a year). It comes with both Wordpress and concrete5 reinstated on the server, as well as other alternative and useful tools.

[thomas]

I use a chap who charges £20 ph and takes a day to put a decent site together, I'll pm you some details if you want them

[Boats&Outboards]

Yes please Thomas, add your website if you would be so kind.

Peter @ Boatsandoutboards4sale ~ askboatsandoutboards4sale@sky.com ~ 07930 421007

[Boats&Outboards]

Originally Posted by Polwart

Peter, you will get wildly varying prices for this. Make sure you define exactly what you want from a site (not what they want to sell you). Make sure you understand if this is locking you into using their hosting editing services going forward.

I would say you can easily make a simple site yourself in Wordpress or something similar (i have recently been experimenting with concrete5 and it may be even better for total newbies). Free templates are probably fine for a 2nd hand boat site, but a customized design should be no more than 500 if you have done everything else.

If you have enough stock that it needs to integrate with some sort of database or be easier to post advert to than rib.net then you will either need a developer or to find an off the shelf tool for doing that. Likewise if the system needs to integrate with your other it, e.g. accounting... but for a simple brochureware site with ads that you post and edit much like here its a simple DIY job if you are proficient with Google to find how to do things you want to turn on or off.

I assume you aren't looking to take payments or actual orders on line?

Personally I use cloudnext for my hosting (iirc less than 30 a year). It comes with both Wordpress and concrete5 reinstated on the server, as well as other alternative and useful tools.

My thinking is if I'm going to get one I may as well do it proper and not a simple DIY one. It will be used to sell smaller value items with maybe PayPal/card payments.

I am also going to be looking at HTML templates for adverts to be listed on eBay and the other main boating outlets.

Peter @ Boatsandoutboards4sale ~ askboatsandoutboards4sale@sky.com ~ 07930 421007

[Alan Priddy]

Contact Laura@green rock.co.uk
You won't be disappointed Lookat www.company85globalchallenge.com for some of her work Alan P

[creeg]

Hi,

I can offer linux hosting for £24pa - unlimited bandwidth, mailboxes, space, subdomains, MySQL databases, distribution mailing lists etc. The hosting control panel has lots of apps/tools that can be installed/run with a click e.g. Joomla, Wordpress, Concrete5, CMS Made Simple, phpBB, Drupal... or if you wish you can upload your own.

Don't know if you already own the domain name you are planning on using, I can offer domain registration through our reseller account but I must admit that I personally use and recommend to my clients that they use 123reg for purchasing domains (it's cheaper and I prefer to keep the hosting and registration with separate companies). One other bit of advice around domain registration make sure you purchase the domain; I saw one nasty case where a client asked us to redesign a site and they were basically held to ransom by the previous company because they had registered the domain, if they'd owned the registration and pointed it to the hosting they could have switched without having to get the other company involved (it's the way they are now configured).

My personal life is just too busy at the moment to do any dev work myself but if you're interested the web/ui designer I work with might be available to do designs/logos etc that could be implemented by yourself or another developer.

To give you an idea of our costings, to design and build we would generally charge about £300-500 for a small brochure site built in the Joomla content management system (cost depended on the amount of design work needed). Integrating functionality e.g. shopping carts and payment providers into the site would see the costs rise to about £1500.

Hope this helps, if any of it is of interest let me know.

Graham

[treerat]

I built the dive club web site using front page (old but very simple) and hosted on my free webs. We then transfered it to Dot Nuke when we moved servers. A simple system that I keep updated, although very few changes to be fair.If you're just using it for overview, mailing, contact and a few pics it's easy to do your own.

DCCS looked after our lifeguard club one and is great bloke to work with - could do worse than to ask him for a quote, (even if just for comparason) he can do design, build and host and tell him you came from me

DCCS Limited

[Boats&Outboards]

Many thanks guys. Much to ponder. I've already hit one stumbling block in the fact somebody else has taken the trouble of registering "my" preferred domain names. A fellow trader of outboards too but he's not using them so that poses a slight hiccup. I could ask his price but I'm not going down that road! I guess I'll be using something else then

Thanks again.

Peter @ Boatsandoutboards4sale ~ askboatsandoutboards4sale@sky.com ~ 07930 421007

[Bigmuz7]

Originally Posted by Boats&Outboards

Many thanks guys. Much to ponder. I've already hit one stumbling block in the fact somebody else has taken the trouble of registering "my" preferred domain names. A fellow trader of outboards too but he's not using them so that poses a slight hiccup. I could ask his price but I'm not going down that road! I guess I'll be using something else then

Thanks again.

Peter @ Boatsandoutboards4sale ~ askboatsandoutboards4sale@sky.com ~ 07930 421007

Yes Domain names are a bit of a cnut .. some times I find a cheap host and register a bunch of similar ones to my competitors, and then point them to my site ..

As for site building .. its a doddle buy a wysiwig style editor like serif x5

review here

It really isnt that hard, just takes a bit of patience