Making a website

[FrontBackSide2Side]

Im thinking of making a website but i dont want to pay anything. There are loads of free webhosts but has anyone got any advice on which one to use, which ones give the best domain names, which ones are more prominent in search engine results etc?

Before anyone says it, no its not porn

[W1ggz]

We bought our website off of monster template think it was £26 quid and then my mate modded it a bit to make it our own domain name was about £10 I think for 2 years. Just got a local guy hosting it. Seems to have worked well http://vipervalets.com

[Ammo]

WordPress

Google it it's free, you need a host, and a domain name.

After that wordpress is a ballache to setup, but once it is it's so easy to update with content

I had a load of help to set mine up, cheers @indigolemon

www.ammophotography.co.uk

[bennyboy]

DITTO to ALL of the above. Nice one @indigolemon

http://www.originalcanvases.co.uk

[nucleustylzlude]

If you need any help, I design, develop and host websites for many people, as does @Kawa who built this very site. @indigolemon seems to be the resident hardcore developer for coding though.

I'd agree Wordpress is a great open-source (free) platform to start with. Endless support, themes to choose and plugins to get it to do just about anything you want it to. At the end of the day it's a blogging platform, but it can be anything you want it to, you don't have to use the posts feature, just setup static pages.

Depends what you want the site to do really.

Oh and none have the best domain names, you either pay for an actual domain which will depend if it's taken or not, all the main hosting providers have search facilities to purchase the domains. The prices vary slightly from company to company. I'm paying about £7 for a .co.uk for 2 years and £18ish for a .com for 2 years, which isn't bad.

However, if you use one of the hosting providers 'packages' where you get a free website with one of there 'website builders' they are generally very basic (crap in my mind), and you usually end up with a subdomain unless you get the domain name with them. Even then some aren't great at submitting to search engines.

I would personally decide what the site is for, search for a good domain name and decide who you are going to get hosting with, then try wordpress as a first port of call if it suits you. I know Kawa has used Magento alot too as another option. If you need help setting it up, we're all here to help. Then build and edit it yourself with the backend admin panel and page editors.

[rob quilter]

I used serif to make our hydrocustomz website, it was free and easy to use. Gives you the option to make it however you want rather than using templates.

Its not live yet but will be next week when our IT guy hosts it.

[Kawa]

Just be careful will some of the 'free' hosting providers. If you want to move at a later date, you may struggle to get 'your' data. Even if you do get your data, it may not be compatible with the new system that you eventually move to.

3 steps :-

1) Domain - I recommend to all my clients they but their domain from a third party, like 123-reg.co.uk. This way if you fall out with your hosting provider, it's makes the move a lot more simple.

2) Hosting - For a small bandwidth site, for the sake of a 2 or 3 quid a month - get your own hosting and point your domain at it. The rewards later on will be worthwhile. There are 3 things to consider with hosting - good price, good speed, good service. You will only ever be able to tick 2 of these boxes!!

3) The website itself - Wordpress is my weapon of choice for all my websites, with the exception of eCommerce then I go with Magento. The online support for both systems if awesome. Install the system of choice on your hosting. Your hosting provider should be able to provide a one-click installation for both these systems.

You can theme each system (change what it looks like). Just make when you choose a theme that you consider a responsive theme. This means it works well on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops.

Don't worry about the colours and styling too much, it's the overall functionality that is king. Styling and colours can be changed as you go along - some theme's even allow you to easily change colours and backgrounds yourself with no technical knowledge. There are drawbacks to these types of theme's but it's negligible.

If you later find your website needs to do something new, both Wordpress and Magento allow you add plugin's to give extra functionality.

If you do go with Wordpress, there are some nice SEO plugin's. The one i use is Yoast SEO. Also consider ShareThis - adds social bookmarking buttons to page and posts.

If you go with Magento for a eCommerce site, Facebook_Reviews is a nice plugin that lets your customers talk about your products on the page (and replicates to their FB page). fbfanbox - Lets users login and buy stuff using their facebook login.

Summary - if you go with FREE hosting - you may not benefit from having the freedom to do what YOU want to do. Can you remember PUK and ForumUp?

[4thgenphil]

[FrontBackSide2Side]

i only want a really basic website to be honest. i just want to make a site about the Peugeot boxer van (boring i know) as there doesn't seem to be a lot of info available for them. I was hoping there would be a hosting site with its on website building tools.

Thanks for all the replies so far, I'll be looking into it all

[indigolemon]

For something really simple easy and basic, have a look at this man https://sites.google.com/?pli=1