Help! How do I set up a website?

[Tyre Smoke]

It would seem that a .com domain name that would suit me down to the ground has not yet been registered. Can someone please help me, I know absolutely diddly squat about all this.

1. How do I buy/register the domain name?
2. How much does it cost to set up a website and maintain it?
3. Can anyone do this for me without ripping me off?

Feel free to email me offline if you wish. I don't want to fall foul of the 'no advertising on forums' ruling.

Thanks!

[chim_knee]

Have a word with Jamie Beeston That's his company up in the top right, I believe and I hear he helps out a lot of PHers.

[Plotloss]

Yeah, another vote for the lairy trousered host...

www.register1.net

Stick the domain in the domain checker at the top, follow the instructions.

Easy.

[jacobyte]

Tyre Smoke said:

1. How do I buy/register the domain name? 2. How much does it cost to set up a website and maintain it? 3. Can anyone do this for me without ripping me off?

1. Use one of many companies - e.g. uk2.net, exahost.co.uk, etc - plus look in the business directory on here.
2. Depends on what you want. Anywhere from a few hundred pounds to many thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
3. YHM

[jamesuk28]

We would happily help, and we offer affordable website design and cover the whole of the UK

www.geminidigital.co.uk

Edited by jamesuk28 on Sunday 22 October 16:33

[Don]

jamesuk28 said:

We would happily help, and we are affordable. www.geminidigital.co.uk

We would happily help too. But we're not!

petervenkmann said:

No job is too large. No fee is too large.

...Only kidding...

>> Edited by Don on Wednesday 24th May 13:03

[slapmatt]

1) I register my domains though UKReg.com. It costs about a tenner for 2 years. Very reliable, easy to use, easy to configure.

2) As for the cost of running a site - how long's a piece of string. One people build, run and maintain their own site and the only cost to them is their time. On the other hand you can pay a professional, which will probably cost a few hundred up to a few thousand, depending on what you're looking for - and then a small retainer to do updates.

3) I've forgotten what the third question is!

[slapmatt]

OK

3) Word of mouth is your friend. Find sites you like, sites that are similar to what you want etc and ask why built their site and would they recommend them. Remember, a designer should do more than just build you a site, drop it on your doormat and then do a runner. They should be able to advice you on how to promote it, both offline and online, how to optimise it so it does well on search engines and now to do about doing updates and further development.

[jamesuk28]

slapmatt said:

OK 3) Word of mouth is your friend. Find sites you like, sites that are similar to what you want etc and ask why built their site and would they recommend them. Remember, a designer should do more than just build you a site, drop it on your doormat and then do a runner. They should be able to advice you on how to promote it, both offline and online, how to optimise it so it does well on search engines and now to do about doing updates and further development.

Well said that man.

[Plotloss]

Slight side question (sorry TS)

If one had an optimised website, thats CSS/xHTML and follows the general keyword density, title etc rules

Is there anything a designer offering an SEO service can offer me over and above what I have already done?

Or is it just a case of building contextual links with other sites and waiting?

[aceparts_com]

s a m did my site. I've very chuffed with it. It's more than paid for itself in just a month. Cost £1250. www.ACEparts.com

>> Edited by aceparts_com on Wednesday 24th May 15:54

[roadsweeper]

We can help too: Cantarus

We've worked for a few PHers now and have a decent portfolio of delivered sites.

Edited to say: Oh, and we use register1.net too for domain purchasing, but not hosting at the moment.

>> Edited by roadsweeper on Wednesday 24th May 16:50

[jamesuk28]

roadsweeper said:

We can help too: Cantarus We've worked for a few PHers now and have a decent portfolio of delivered sites. Edited to say: Oh, and we use register1.net too for domain purchasing, but not hosting at the moment. >> Edited by roadsweeper on Wednesday 24th May 16:50

Prices?

Our single page sites start at £45 including domain name and hosting (1 Year)

Our full websites start at just £199 including domain name & hosting (1 Year)

All sites are search engine ready with keywords and meta tags installed and we only manually submit to search engines and once every 2 weeks for 1 year (also included in the price)

>> Edited by jamesuk28 on Wednesday 24th May 20:02

[JamieBeeston]

chim_knee said:

Have a word with Jamie Beeston That's his company up in the top right, I believe and I hear he helps out a lot of PHers.

Plotloss said:

Yeah, another vote for the lairy trousered host... www.register1.net Stick the domain in the domain checker at the top, follow the instructions. Easy.

Reccomended by 39 Pistonheaders and rising

You'll find our banner permanently in this very forum and the Computing Forum

slapmatt said:

1) I register my domains though UKReg.com. It costs about a tenner for 2 years. Very reliable, easy to use, easy to configure.

Tenner for 2 years.. more like £17.78 + Vat! for a .com .net .org for 2 yrs

£5.48 a year from Register1.net (£10.96 for 2 yrs!)
£2.74 a yr for a .uk!


TyreSmoke, feel free to drop me a mail if you have any queries... come join the literally hundreds of PH'rs with Register1

I have a designer also if you need a site doing (do you like our new Register1 site )

GL

J

[Tyre Smoke]

Mr Beeston, I have availed myself of your facilities and indeed can recommend wholeheartedly your site

Thanks for all your advice and help everyone, think it's all sorted now! Fingers crossed!

[jacobyte]

Plotloss said:

Slight side question (sorry TS) If one had an optimised website, thats CSS/xHTML and follows the general keyword density, title etc rules Is there anything a designer offering an SEO service can offer me over and above what I have already done? Or is it just a case of building contextual links with other sites and waiting?

Plotloss

The short answer is "yes".

There is more to SEO than clean & correct accessible (X)HTML, keyword-relevant content and tags. Much of the success is in the choice and order of words that you use. Hierarchichal Title tags are worth getting just right, for each page, and getting that hierarchy right generally requires someone with a good mind and lots of experience in this field, with plenty of research on your target audience and their habits.

PM me if you want to know more detail.

[s a m]

aceparts_com said:

s a m did my site. I've very chuffed with it. It's more than paid for itself in just a month. Cost £1250. www.ACEparts.com >> Edited by aceparts_com on Wednesday 24th May 15:54

Clean and clear - the site works and Alan did a fantastic job listing all the products with decent photos and descriptions.

For heavily SEO’d sites we build from scratch, but out-the-box eCommerce is available to keep costs down for start-ups (not great for SEO though). The cost/odds of getting top rankings fast are not good for start-ups and require long term effort to get the results. Google usually ignores new sites for some time before properly indexing them.

However, we have achieved top rankings for many customers (including our own sites).

If your serious about SEO, its to be done when the site is built, not “stuck on” later. The absolute fundamentals of the site play a major part of the SEO effectiveness and most can’t be changed easily, and on some sites, its imposable without re-writing the software.

WE HAVE A NEW ECOMMERCE PLATFORM AVAILABLE SOON, DEVELOPED IN-HOUSE THAT IS EXTREMELY WELL SEO'D FROM THE GROUND UP.

[s a m]

One other thing...

If your UK, get a .co.uk - buy the .com too, and foward it to your site, but make the content load from the .co.uk. UK domains will do better for UK searches from UK web users.

www.namecheap.com

2 years @ 17.76 USD = 9.49977 GBP (a tenner for 2 years, or £5 for 1 year)

You can get .com's / .net's even cheaper but NameCheap accept PayPal as well as normal credit cards, they let you pre-load your account with a balance too (very handy, saves typing in card info every time!), and their control panel as I have said already is excellent - makes managing your domains a breeze.

PS: Our site - www.2dmedia.co.uk

>> Edited by s a m on Thursday 25th May 13:59

[JamieBeeston]

s a m said:

2 years @ 17.76 USD = 9.49977 GBP (a tenner for 2 years, or £5 for 1 year)

have you seen their .eu prices

Not aware of anything on their Domain control panel that we don't offer

Still, free market and all that if people want to base their decision on price alone.. I'll happily take them on after they leave again hehe

[s a m]

Take a look mate, its bloody good. It’s easy to use and it works properly. Most of the features are what I would call friendly things that it just does with out making a fuss about, but make it better all round. For example, you can manage any number of domains at once, applying the same set of config to lots – such as changing the DNS or NameServers for 83, in one go, which I had to do recently.

It pays to shop around, we use 123Reg.co.uk for UK names, NameCheap for com/net/org and there are others about for .eu if that’s what your after. They get their best deals on com etc, their co.uk price is also high, but if they don't sell many of them its not surprising.