Best DIY Website Providers

Everything to do with using your own website to advertise your rental property. Design, usability, hosting, getting listed on the search engines, optimising your site, pay-per-click, etc, etc.
KAB-Dennis
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Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:55 pm
Location: Beaches of the East Coast
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Best DIY Website Providers

Post by KAB-Dennis »

With all of the mergers in OTA's I am close to creating my own web page. Paid someone once to do this but never really took on SEO etc so it was sort of a waste.

I would like to do it myself and use a template style as I have no coding experience BUT I would prefer a site that does not look like it came from a template. I know that is a tall order but need some help.

1. Looking for the best template style do it yourself website
2. Easy
3. Costs are reasonable

TIA
Kate
USA
zebedee
Posts: 1270
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:57 pm
Location: yorkshire dales

Post by zebedee »

Hello Kathleen,
Many of us would recommend Promote My Place.
I set up our current website via PMP after I read such good things about it on this forum.
It is easy to do and the support is great with quick responses to any queries.
Very good cost wise as well.
I will pm you a code so that we both get £10 discount.
It costs about £70 a year full price. You can add pages, photos and amend as and when you want. You get 10 days free trial as well.
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kevsboredagain
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Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:32 am
Location: France
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Post by kevsboredagain »

Why not look into a cms system Wordpress where you can start with a template? If you can use something like Microsoft Word or Excel then you have enough skills to learn Wordpress. Quite a few Wordpress site on LMH, not to mention the millions of other sites around the world.

Another good online site creation place would be Weebly. I gave that a test once and thought it was fairly good. Probably the worst one I ever tried was the GoDaddy sitebuilder.

Then you also have offline site creation tools where you build a site on your PC and hit a button to upload. Many are simply drag and drop and include templates. My parents built a site this way and they are in their 70s, which means anyone can do it if you are prepared to spend a little time learning.
KAB-Dennis
Posts: 613
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 10:55 pm
Location: Beaches of the East Coast
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Post by KAB-Dennis »

Thanks kevinsboredagain I am familiar with these types of sites but not familiar with offline you build it sites ....is it software that you buy?? Can you elaborate?
Also I guess I did not phrase my question correctly I'm looking for the best template site that doesn't look like a template site LOL. Thanks look forward to your response
Kate
USA
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kevsboredagain
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Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:32 am
Location: France
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Post by kevsboredagain »

Kathleen wrote:Thanks kevinsboredagain I am familiar with these types of sites but not familiar with offline you build it sites ....is it software that you buy?? Can you elaborate?
Also I guess I did not phrase my question correctly I'm looking for the best template site that doesn't look like a template site LOL. Thanks look forward to your response
Offline line would be tools such as Dreamweaver (steep learning curve) or this one http://www.serif.com/webplus/ (I've not used such tools for nearly 20 years so cannot comment much) Perhaps some other people have found similar software? There are even free ones http://www.kompozer.net/

As an example in Wordpress of a template which can have any look you like would be this one http://www.kriesi.at/themes/enfold-overview/ All these demo sites were made using the same template.
OrangeBlossom
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 12:03 am
Location: Tavira, Algarve, Portugal

website builders

Post by OrangeBlossom »

Kathleen wrote: Also I guess I did not phrase my question correctly I'm looking for the best template site that doesn't look like a template site LOL. Thanks look forward to your response
I'd give Weebly a try. They have lots of templates including free ones so you can play around and see if you could get something a bit more distinctive because you can tweak the templates so that your site won't look just like all the others using the same template. You can also export away from them later if you want to and aren't tied to them for ever, as you are with Wix, for example.

I'm not speaking as an expert. I've started building a site using one of their free templates but not published it yet. However, I did do some research into which one to try before starting out.

Not sure how sophisticated you can get with the free templates regarding forms and calendars though; you'd have to look into that.
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French Cricket
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Post by French Cricket »

I'd recommend Weebly too - my main site is built on its platform, though not with a standard Weebly template (mine is a third party template - paid for but only around 30 dollars I think - it was a while ago). I've also customised the template quite a lot.

The third party templates all work seamlessly with the Weebly builder platform and give just that bit more functionality to a Weebly site - some come with particular widgets too. I'm working on a new site at the moment which uses a template called Ethereal, which has lots of interesting page types.

I haven't used any other CMS type builder - I moved straight over from MS Front Page (!) onto Weebly, 7 years ago when it was a tiny company that pretty much knew everybody by name! But I really like the fact that you have total access to the HTML and CSS and so can customise away to your heart's content if you're that way inclined ... or you can simply use Weebly's own templates, which are all free, without modification.
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Bassman
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Post by Bassman »

I use webacappella responsive you can down load it for free and try it out
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