Advice needed on creating a simple website for a business

Goose · 26 Feb 2015 at 14:15

I've been the local IT-help-guy for friends and family for about 15 years now and i'm thinking of starting my own little one man band business doing the same thing for people that need someone.

I'm well aware that it's not gonna be a big money spinner but i'm currently unemployed and only able to work part-time for health reasons so i'm just trying to do something with my time and maybe earn some extra pocket money.

I've never tried making a website before so i'm looking for a way to create one easily and quickly from some template type thing and then get it hosted somewhere. I dont know anything about this aspect of IT so i dont really know where to go form here.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Thanks

touch · 26 Feb 2015 at 14:40

Get a basic webhosting package for £2-5 per month (check web host sticky for best host)

Most will offer 1click install of wordpress, joomla or drupal (I'd go for wordpress as it's the most popular). They are all very easy to use and get a decent looking website up quickly.

Goose · 26 Feb 2015 at 14:49

Thanks.

TSOHost seem to pretty popular so i might give them and a whirl.

mtalk · 27 Feb 2015 at 10:04

you can even take a look at Webhosting UK, get hosting on SSD server for same cost.

joemc · 2 Mar 2015 at 11:37

As everyone else has said really, worth getting yourself a Wordpress template and customising it as you want.

Once your comfortable with it, look in to some basic coding so you can sort out issues quickly and efficiently.

It's probably a bit over the top, but I've been looking in to Adobe Business Catalyst quite a lot recently. It's an all in one suite, so it's unfair to put it up against Wordpress.

Goose · 3 Mar 2015 at 08:44

joemc said:
As everyone else has said really, worth getting yourself a Wordpress template and customising it as you want.

Once your comfortable with it, look in to some basic coding so you can sort out issues quickly and efficiently.

It's probably a bit over the top, but I've been looking in to Adobe Business Catalyst quite a lot recently. It's an all in one suite, so it's unfair to put it up against Wordpress.

Thanks for the advice, i've got a host setup with Wordpress now. Would you be able to point me in the direction of good, free resources for a complete Wordpress beginner? The default themes all seem to be aimed at blogs rather business websites and such.

Thanks again.

Goose · 4 Mar 2015 at 16:42

I've been messing around with Wordpress and to be honest I dont really like it. It seems far too fiddly given how simple a site I'm trying to make.

Are there any good alternatives to creating a simple but attractive site that has maybe 4 or 5 pages from a template using an offline editor of some sort? All the free web builder sites i've found aren't actually free and force you to use their hosting.

FeFiDoh · 4 Mar 2015 at 16:49

It really isn't that hard to knock up a website all that quickly. Draw it on paper to give you something to aim for and then look at W3C, they have tutorials and references for you to look up. The template from my very limited knowledge is actually the easy part. Creating decent looking graphics make it stand out.