Making Websites for Local Companies

[prolemur]

I'm thinking of making websites for these companies, but I need to know about some things first:

 

• Choosing/Getting a Domain Name

This would probably just be the company's name .ca/.com

• Getting the Website Hosted

Are there any good website hosting companies?

Could I host the website myself?

• Building the Website 

Should I use HTML, PHP, Javascript...

or

Look into a website building software WordPress, WebPlus or provided by hostess?

 

[Coombzy]

I would recommend Adobe Dreamweaver for website building I personally use it and its feature packed the pre built website programs like wordpress don't look as professional as designing it from scratch hosting I would recommend godaddy they seem to be the most reliable I myself use Falcoda but its a UK based service and I am not sure they will host outside the UK still worth checking out though.I also find .com to be the best domain its normally the most expensive but gets a larger viewer base I find than something country specific.

[rashdanml]

1) Namecheap.com - can register as many domains as you want to. Good prices.

2) Look into Kimsufi. Affordable dedicated servers capable of running multiple sites. Setup is straightforward with any Linux OS. $20/month.

3) PHP is a good choice for server-side stuff, HTML/xHTML for markup. CSS for styles. MySQL for databases. Easy as it gets. Use Notepad++, fairly simple to use. Don't really need an IDE for web development.

[lutzee]

Personally I wouldn't go round buying domains yourself, I'd just advise the companies you client for on what is best and easiest to manage/

As for making sites it depends on what the clients want

There are many types of sites eg:

1. Simple e-commerce
2. Advertising based site
3. Blog style site (can be included with others as a news page, wordpress is a great thing to build around and easy for the consumer to manage)

For each of these a different style can be used

For the advertising based site, does the client want

• a static page, something simple with no fancy details? This would be the cheapest
• A more fancy page with dynamically changing contect? This would need javascript, and will take longer to make, so cost is higher

For e-commerce this is more complicated, you'll probably want a database for products and dynamically load them when pages load using PHP.

You can however buy an off-the-shelf system and customise the layout and stuff to suit the clients need. These packages still cost a fair amount of money though.

 

On the points you asked first, Personally GoDaddy is a big name in the small business hosting stage, they host thousands of businesses sites with easy to use systems at affordable prices.

Giving small businesses basic VPS/dedicated hosting services through you will put you as the person then responsible for the site, if you become popular and start managing 50 sites for people who have no clue about hosting it will come back and bite you. 

 

Some useful tools:

Jquery - will make a lot of work a lot easier

PHP is really useful if you need to load any data from places

HTML/CSS for the markup obviously

 

Wordpress is great for what its meant to be used for, but takes a lot of learning

Web building sites are bad, a lot of them put reliance of the website on the system used to build the site

Lastly building sites from scratch is time consuming, build a portfolio of basic templates that are free on the internet (theres literally thousands) and get customers to pick something out, if something needs changing in it then thats a lot less time than building each from scratch ;)

 

The last thing, do you know exactly how much you should be charging for websites?

[prolemur]

-snip-

Thanks so much. 

 

I'm probably going to only manage a few websites and I'll probably charge them a one time fee (not sure on base price) and then I call them one year later to see if they still want the domain and get $11 for that.

 

First of all I'm going to get started on one for Steve's Auto a mechanic down my street. It will probably just be a static web page about his shop so he doesn't have to reply to many emails

Idk what to use for an essentially static page... 

[NinjaStyle013]

Thanks so much. 

 

I'm probably going to only manage a few websites and I'll probably charge them a one time fee (not sure on base price) and then I call them one year later to see if they still want the domain and get $11 for that.

 

First of all I'm going to get started on one for Steve's Auto a mechanic down my street. It will probably just be a static web page about his shop so he doesn't have to reply to many emails

Idk what to use for an essentially static page... 

 

From my expierence with DreamWeaver I found it alot more easier to just manually code the site. Use ntoepad++ if you dont have dreamweaver.

 

If its just a static page have a few photos, nice layout, logo & maybe a phonenumber or more info. I dont really fully understand what you mean by static page though.

[prolemur]

From my expierence with DreamWeaver I found it alot more easier to just manually code the site. Use ntoepad++ if you dont have dreamweaver.

 

If its just a static page have a few photos, nice layout, logo & maybe a phonenumber or more info. I dont really fully understand what you mean by static page though.

I mean static page as in it will not change dynamically very often such as a blog or a store would.

[lutzee]

Okay, generally for 1 weeks work you should be looking in the $300 region for the site, $30 a year if you are going to manage it, and the rest of the money required to set it up.

[Purple]

If I were you i'd learn html,css,php ..etc before you do it for a company ;)