The Newbie’s Ways in Creating Website
I’m not a programmer or designer or anything like that.
I’m hoping to set up a website that hosts a video blog, a written blog, articles, links, and is able to sell products and services (via paypal).I have access to Dreamweaver, but I’m not at all proficient with it. And, I’ve looked at several wordpress templates, but they all seem to be either video blog OR written blog based (and not that flexible beyond the basic template). A friend told me about Joomla, but I got confused while he was talking about it, and I haven’t looked into it.
Can anyone help me discern the best way for me to proceed (doing it myself).
Should I learn Dreamweaver, and make the entire design happen myself? And if I do that, how long does it take a good learner to do so?
Are there wordpress templates I haven’t seen yet, or something similar, which would meet my needs?
Or are there other ways, like Joomla, where templates, or a basic framework, make what I’m trying to do relatively simple and easy?
Expert Answer: You are not alone Web hosting is one of the most important part of your online presence and can mean the success and failure for your business.
Common Misconception
Some website owners are confused on how can they create their website. They thought that it would be impossible for them to create their own website since they don’t have a background in programming in the first place.
Clarification
Do not be afraid to make your own website. Venture and try out new things and you will surprise on the outcome! Creating your own websites wouldn’t be that hard to do. There are lots of easy ways you can create your website.
1. Get a web host with free templates included in their web hosting package so that it would be easy for you to customize your website. Or upload your own website theme and customize it using their user-friendly dashboard.
2. Use a sitebuilder. You can use the standalone sitebuilder installed in your computer such as Dreamweavear and Kompozer and just upload your files or you could use the built-in sitebuilder that most web hosting companies are providing today. Usually, these built-in sitebuilders have ‘drag and drop’ features where you can just drag the widgets and drop it to the part of the pae where you wan it to be and publish your website when your done.
3. Use of content management system(cms) such as Joomla, WordPress. and Drupal. These cms can be easily installed using one-click installer such as Fantastico and QuickInstall whichis found in your cpanel. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have available templates and plugins/extensions that you can install easily in your website.
Just make sure you have your own domain name already or get a webhosting package with free domain registration included to have a cheaper expense. Make sure also to get a web hosting company that has free templates, cpanel, one-click installer support and built-in sitebuilder support so that you are guaranteed that you can really make your website.
To answer the above query, here are 7 factors to look for in a good web hosting. An excellent hosting:
- has cPanel so you can manage the hosting account easily,
- gives more-than-enough webspace,
- offers unlimited bandwidth,
- gives multiple add-on domains,
- has easy-to-use Site Builder,
- has Fantastico and QuickInstall to quickly install apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OSCommerce, ZenCart and more
- can be easily upgraded to VPS or one of the cheapest dedicated server plans if and when your business require.
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Why You May Want to Avoid Hostgator
To be honest, no web hosting service is perfect. Drawback of Hostgator includes:
- No free domain name – but you can easily get a domain name from the best domain registrar such as Godaddy or Namecheap for $10 or less. That is fairly cheap considering a domain name costs no more than a few cups of coffee.
- You need to pay full price after your first invoice – well, they need to make money too and all the support and great service do come with a cost
If you are still not sure if HG is right for you, or you have specific query about anything at all, try the Live Chat at HG. They are fast and knowledgeable. Just shoot them some questions before you decide.
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Pay someone else, it will make your life easier.
I’ve used a few different CMS scripts. E107, Drupal, Joomla , I’ve also used wordpress and textpattern. My favorite is WordPress. The irc support channel is very helpful, forums are as well. there’s hundreds of plugins you can use to set your site up the way you want and they are usually very detailed on how to use them.
For a video blog theme, there are many you could use that are free or paid. Themeforest probably has the best paid ones. Doing a quick google search I found http://themetoday.com/2009/wordpress-theme/cool-video-blog-themes-for-wordpress/ which has some free ones.
If you plan to link videos from a site like youtube, to display them on your site, this is easily done with wordpress. There’s a plugin I use myself poppysvideos that lets you embed videos from many sites like youtube just by using a shortcode [youtube] URL [/youtube] in your post.
I’m sure other scripts might do the same thing, but I found wordpress the easiest to use and to create or edit themes for, and 3.0 beta 2 was released last week, it seems to work great. Also, many webhosts include wordpress in their cpanel.
PS: I’ll also add, wordpress is very flexible, just because a theme is set up one way in a demo, doesn’t mean you can’t set your site up differently.
It depends on what your goal is. If you want to concentrate on creating contents and you want to have it done soon, i recommend you hire someone to create theme (google freelance online or something) be careful with scammers though, don’t pay before you got your theme.
It would be possible to create theme your own, but then you will need a while. First you will need to understand html codes, then, css then php. It will probably need a month (depends on you as well)
I would look for free theme first before you decide to hire or learn to create the themes.
Refer to:
http://www.threehosts.com/reviews/1st
Hope this helps.
I am a professional web designer I would say that Joomla is easy for beginners but I would use Drupal.
Dreamweaver will take longer to learn. You will need a number of modules added to the basic Drupal installation like ubercart.
WordPress is also an option and may be easier for a beginner.
For hosting, if you don’t yet have it I recommend :
http://hostingpad.mestore.us
If you need professional help for cheap :
http://www.samwilson3d.com
Hi there!
You could use Microsoft Office Live Small Business to build your website. It is easy to use because it is template-based, which means you don’t have to know how to code. It is also ad free which cannot be said for many free website hosting services. You can even set up e-mail accounts and PayPal through Office Live Small Business.
To learn more about Office Live Small Business, check out http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us/.
Cheers,
Isabella
MSFT Office Live Outreach Team
Go with WordPress. It’s easy to set up and maintain. Then you can also make your own themes with a program call Artisteer.
You can download it here: http://bestwebdesignsoftwaredeals.com/visit-artisteer/
The cool thing is, you don’t have to know how to code. It’s all GUI. You can download a free copy and test it out to see if it will work for you. Within the first day of downloading it, I was already making my own themes. You’ll never go back to standard HTML sites.
Plus, with all the free plugins available, you can make a WordPress blog do anything.
contact any professional web designer.