Personal Website

[lolita]

Any ideas of the initial outlay/costs to set up a website. I know there are ones that are free like weebly and godaddy, are these any good. would a paid website be better vis a vis reach/ranking on google?

thanks in advance

[kevsboredagain]

I cannot recommend GoDaddy website builder. I helped someone out on their site a while ago and the GoDaddy website builder was terrible. They have good sales people though and will try and sell you lots of extras.

I've briefly tested out Weebly and it's a nice package. The results will still depend on your ability and no tool is going to do all the work for you.

However, I cannot recommend using anything "free". You'll be saving a few hundred Euros in the initial outlay but trying to be so cheap will lose you way more money than you save. Now I think about it, in 7 years, I must have searched 1000 times for holiday rentals and rarely, if ever, seen a free website appear in the results. Considering you have 3 properties and a good eye for photos, a decent website would pay for itself easily in the first year.

Your ranking on Google is likely to depend more on content than anything else, although with your own site, you may have more control over the technical aspects of SEO.

Lots of people will now follow and suggest PMP

[lolita]

Hi
Thank you so much for such an informative reply and appreciate it very much.

forgive me if I sound naive but I am a little lost when it comes to search engine optimisation and the ranking on google. How do you improve these?

Would the domain name make a difference to the ranking? also will there be a separate charge for a domaine name and hosting cost?
Can you recommend a brilliant hosting site? Also do all hosting sites have an annual fee?

too many questions.. I know but thanks alot.

[kevsboredagain]

SEO is a huge subject and cannot be answered in a single post. casasantoestevo posted some links to articles online recently, which may be useful. See this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=23415&highlight=seo

By the nature of the questions you’re asking though, I fear these articles may raise even more questions and doubts.

The domain name would definitely affect the search ratings. It would make sense that www.beachvilla.com would be much better than www.myhomesite123.weebly.com if you had a villa on the beach.

A domain name will cost about £12 a year. You can buy this on its own or via a host provider. Some companies might give you one domain for free with the hosting package but it’s normal to pay for the name separately. There are many 1000s of hosting companies around the world. I would avoid some of the large, cheap US based companies who lure you in with low starting rates and try to make more money by selling extras, which you may not even need. If your clients are mainly from the UK then slightly better to have a UK hosted site. Choosing one will depend on your needs. Do you need one domain or several? Unlimited or limited space? Linux or Windows servers? Email accounts? Web based tools? Templates? The list of features offered can be enormous. I would say the average cost of hosting would be around £100/year. You can find cheaper. You can find more expensive.

[CSE]

Excellent advise so far.
May I add one other thing. If you want a website purchase and register the domain name. Do not allow the domain to be register to someone other than you.
If you do you could loose control if you want to change hosting or when it comes to renew the domain name.
Further reading:
http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/re ... main.shtml

[Netherway]

Interesting blog ! We are thinking about our own website now having started with sykes/ HL. It's seems the consensus is to register for a site name , make sure it's owned by you and employ a professional to do the site. Presumably this is a matter of getting the structure , add ons such as pay,net etc. this is then populated with photo and narrative supplied by the owner.
Anybody know someone who could do this effectively and roughly what the price would be?
NETHERWAY.
Ps to secure the domain I have in another business found 123reg.com to be reasonable and effective.

[kevsboredagain]

May I add one other thing. If you want a website purchase and register the domain name. Do not allow the domain to be register to someone other than you.

In some cases your webmaster would register the domain name and handle renewals. I have several domains which I have registered for clients and I do the renewal myself. I don't really see a problem here and it makes it a little easier to have hosting and domain all handled by one firm. If the client wants to end the agreement, then I have absolutely no right keep the domain name.

I guess in theory, the person who registered the domain name, could refuse to hand it over at a later date. Seems unlikely though.

[teapot]

I do dislike the term Webmaster, makes them sound like some kind of Jedi

[Nemo]

I guess in theory, the person who registered the domain name, could refuse to hand it over at a later date. Seems unlikely though.

It happens and it happened to a LMH member. Even if you have a professional do the design etc, I would still advise the home owner to have the domain registered in their name. It's often people's livelihood at stake should anything go wrong.

[bornintheuk]

I use a company in South Wales called Penguin Internet and their hosting packages start at £8.50 per year plus VAT.
I have used them for many years and their uptime and responsiveness has been excellent.
I use Kompozer to code my own websites, not difficult once you get the hang of it, and its free.

[kevsboredagain]

I use a company in South Wales called Penguin Internet and their hosting packages start at £8.50 per year plus VAT.
I have used them for many years and their uptime and responsiveness has been excellent.

A good example of some of the things to watch out for. The cheapest package there is limited to 100MB which is barely enough for an average site. The data transfer is also limited. Even their top package has limits on size and transfer volumes.

[bornintheuk]

I use a company in South Wales called Penguin Internet and their hosting packages start at £8.50 per year plus VAT.
I have used them for many years and their uptime and responsiveness has been excellent.

A good example of some of the things to watch out for. The cheapest package there is limited to 100MB which is barely enough for an average site. The data transfer us also limited. Even their top package has limits on size and transfer volumes.

Horses for courses I guess. I personally prefer simple non-flash based get the information over type of website which doesn't require a huge capacity or bandwidth.
Also the response of clients both actual and potential have been positive when they have clicked through.
Choices are good, and if you want to spend more money then you can easily.
But then again I'm not selling web design services

[Hells Bells]

Lots of people will now follow and suggest PMP

PMP provide a clear, easy to follow system with a dashboard that anyone can understand. YOu don't need expert knowledge, FTP or anything technical to be able to build your site.

You can build it yourself without needing any coding knowledge, but if you want to put some html in there you can.

It is affordable, not everyone has the cash flow to spend
hundreds on a site.

They do offer SEO assistance, and other features if you want them.

As said above horses for courses. It is working well for me, and for others.

[lolita]

What an interesting discussion. I must say I learned through your contributions and I would like to thank everybody.

so if I understood correctly you pay a one time fee for the website and an annual hosting/ domaine.
I am trying to look for a web design company based in the Uk preferably but so many come up that it's hard to choose and I 'd rather choose one through a referral. Any idea what it costs(range between cheapest and highest) ie for a basic rental apartment page with enquiry form?

thanks once again

[Casscat]

If you're starting from ground zero then you seriously should consider something simple like Promote My Place in spite of what the techies might say. It really is idiot proof. I can give you a referral code for a discount but it is cheap anyway at, from memory, £69 a year. If you purchase your own domain name you can use that and it means that if you decide to invest in professional web design at a later stage you just dispense with PMP and switch to the new site.