Free website for businesses (.co.uk) ?

[Morningside]

Some Googling and I find this

http://www.gbbo.co.uk/

Gives free .co.uk url and free webspace. Anyone tried this or is there a catch?

If it looks too good to be true and all that....?

[smele]

Looks good to me. Only a supposedly minimal charge to pay in two years time to keep the domain registered.

[smartie]

I've got one - no catch!

Website is a template thing and not great, but for the money.....

[whitechief]

I looked at this recently and after a bit of reading up on it, the consensus seemed to be that the template programme is so basic it's very difficult to create a professional looking website.

[Altrezia]

whitechief said:

I looked at this recently and after a bit of reading up on it, the consensus seemed to be that the template programme is so basic it's very difficult to create a professional looking website.

Thank god some people still think like you.

Sums up these free things imho. Do you really want your customers to think you skimp on stuff?

Edited by Altrezia on Saturday 7th August 19:57

[john_p]

A UK domain is £2.99/yr from someone like 123-reg

I daresay you'd be able to get basic basic web hosting for under £10/yr if you shop around, you can even do it on Google Sites for free...

[Morningside]

Gone down the webhosted route. But I suppose for 'web presence' www.onmanbandwithvan.co.uk it would be ideal.

[littlegreenfairy]

Register1 - get my vote.

[condor]

Read in one of the weekends' papers ( probably the Mail) that you can get free business websites from www.freeindex.co.uk
Am needing to set up a site for myself in the next week so thought I'd give them a go...or the other one posted earlier.

[Pappa Lurve]

There are a number of these sites that all offer roughly the same. For what they do they are great but it is pretty much impossible to get anything terribly professional looking or well optimised for the search engines with these kind of sites. People do sometimes make the mistake of using these kind of sites, seeing very little traffic and even less in the way of conversions and assume the web is not for them. They are a great service but just don't lose sight of their limitations and why companies will often spend considerable sums on a string web site.

[iAlex]

I've set one up very quickly, but now I want the [e-mail] to go with it. Any ideas on how to do that through Google?

[Scraggles]

interesting site

registered to google ireland, but using 123.reg to host it

http://www.who.is/whois/gbbo.co.uk/

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread... gives an interesting slant on it

http://www.google.com/corporate/address.html

Ireland
Google Dublin
Google Ireland Ltd.
Gordon House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4

review site - http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthrea...
Ireland

[iAlex]

iAlex said:

I've set one up very quickly, but now I want the [e-mail] to go with it. Any ideas on how to do that through Google?

Anyone?

[H18 ENF]

Try Google Apps, I'm not sure if it only applies if you've got you're website with Google Sites but it certainly worked for me, managed to get the whole thing setup in about 6 hours.

[rpguk]

Agree with the people above who say it's difficult to get anything professional looking from a rigid template.

For the sake of saving a couple of quid a year on a domain name, it also seems that you're getting tied to that service. The terms are pretty vague on the ownership of the name, they state that you can't sell it unless selling the business as a going concern. This suggests that they retain some control over the name.

I'd feel much more comfortable paying the £3/year to buy the name independently and have full control over what I do with it.

[condor]

Did anyone go with the free site? I haven't as yet as advice on this thread has been to pay for it.

I need to register my domain name within the next couple of days, so I can add it to flyers for my business launch at a show next week. I've a very poor website design using my own html, but it will do as a start-up...can always be improved later However, if there's a wysiwyg web design site which is very easy to use, and can be transferred to my domain name ( once I've got it) that would be better
I've looked at the register1 site - but I don't understand the wording for what the options mean. I'm not a computer savvy person at all.

[playerone]

condor said:

Did anyone go with the free site? I haven't as yet as advice on this thread has been to pay for it.

I need to register my domain name within the next couple of days, so I can add it to flyers for my business launch at a show next week. I've a very poor website design using my own html, but it will do as a start-up...can always be improved later However, if there's a wysiwyg web design site which is very easy to use, and can be transferred to my domain name ( once I've got it) that would be better
I've looked at the register1 site - but I don't understand the wording for what the options mean. I'm not a computer savvy person at all.

I would always recommend wordpress even to a beginner. Its very flexible as a CMS rather than just for blogging. High quality templates are very cheap now.

I got this website http://www.thegoldpartners.co.uk up in a couple of hours.

[Andrew[MG]]

playerone said:

condor said:

Did anyone go with the free site? I haven't as yet as advice on this thread has been to pay for it.

I need to register my domain name within the next couple of days, so I can add it to flyers for my business launch at a show next week. I've a very poor website design using my own html, but it will do as a start-up...can always be improved later However, if there's a wysiwyg web design site which is very easy to use, and can be transferred to my domain name ( once I've got it) that would be better
I've looked at the register1 site - but I don't understand the wording for what the options mean. I'm not a computer savvy person at all.

I would always recommend wordpress even to a beginner. Its very flexible as a CMS rather than just for blogging. High quality templates are very cheap now.

I got this website http://www.thegoldpartners.co.uk up in a couple of hours.

but make sure you strip out all the Wordpress references and setup the security properly....as I learned the hard way!

[condor]

Morningside said:

Some Googling and I find this

http://www.gbbo.co.uk/

Gives free .co.uk url and free webspace. Anyone tried this or is there a catch?

If it looks too good to be true and all that....?

I spent a few hours trying to get a domain sorted today - I think it might be registered although I'm unsure as the cookies got rejected and by the time I'd allowed google cookie access the registration/website choice type page had time expired.
Will just have to wait and see


eta just did a check on another site and it seems my domain name is still available - so obviously it's not been registered.

Edited by condor on Thursday 2nd September 20:33

[Chocmonster]

iAlex said:

I've set one up very quickly, but now I want the [e-mail] to go with it. Any ideas on how to do that through Google?

You can do it as I set one up for the site I did for my Dad's hobby business.

This link should tell you how:-

http://www.gbbo.co.uk/help/yourquestions/mywebaddr...