# Building your own website



## hcwoodwkr (Mar 23, 2009)

Hello, lumberjocks, I have 2 quick questions. How many of you build your own web sites to sell your projects? And have you found any good Hosting servers that offer reasonable shopping carts with their service.

Thanks 
Bert


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## cmaxnavy (Dec 23, 2007)

I have created my own site and I use free extended services. I pay only for the right to maintain my domain name - - - www.hardwoodclocks.com and I link to both Picassa and youtube addresses for pics and video storage (both free). This way I don't have to buy storage and bandwidth at the host provider. I do have to suffer the ads at the top of my page. Small price for the minimum cost of maintaining my domain name. My wife thinks I should pay a monthly fee to remove the ads. From a professional point of view she's right. But, I don't make any money building clocks and I just assume not pay without the prospect of a return on that investment. The difference is $10 a year with ads versus $100 a year without ads! I'll stay with $10/yr for now!


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## dfletcher (Jan 14, 2010)

I did my own site. I went through dot5hosting, at the time, not to expensive. About $95/year to host the site. They have a fairly good free website builder that allows you to make up to 6 pages for free.

I use PayPal services to sell product, again, free.

I bought my domain, www.ahomespecialist.net, so the cost is around $105/year.

Small price for advertising, I would say.


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## a1Jim (Aug 9, 2008)

I have my own site but my son set it up.


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## tfr (Feb 10, 2010)

Try Weebly.com. It's a free site to create your own website and easy to use. If you want them to host it, I think they charge $50 per year or check out GoDaddy for hosting. Tom


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## daveintexas (Oct 15, 2007)

I am in the process of building my own site thru http://www.intuit.com/website, its really pretty easy.
They offer the first 30 days free, then its $4.95 per month.
Plus they offer free tech support, where you can call in and actually talk to a live person.


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## bench_dogg (Oct 23, 2009)

I am building a portfolio site for my wife and ran across this the other day: http://www.squarespace.com/ Looks like they have some super slick design tools-don't know about shopping carts though-probably could be added. I haven't used them though.

As far as hosting, I have been using godaddy for a while and like them, though with most anything on the internets many will disagree. I think I pay about $7 for the medium sized plan and haven't come close to hitting 10% of my quota. They support a lot of different apps including a few shopping carts.

-bd


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## bent (May 9, 2008)

have you considered setting up a store at etsy or artfire, then just linking to the items from your personal website? when i looked into it, the overall cost was cheaper than upgrading to a merchant account from my webhosting. plus you may get a little extra traffic from searches on the selling site, in addition to people visiting your personal site.


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## lew (Feb 13, 2008)

Check with "DeGoose" he uses a really great group.


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## hcwoodwkr (Mar 23, 2009)

Hey guys , thanks for the replies, I am currently with Godaddy and at this time my site is in standby mode, ( due to a deployment to Afghanistan ) so I thought I would kick it around and see what other woodworkers were using. I have looked at all of the links, and everyone does such wonderful work.

Thanks again
Bert


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## depictureboy (Jun 5, 2008)

I use goDaddy with Joomla it has a nice shopping cart module…link


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## Wood_smith (Feb 12, 2010)

I use godaddy for my domain name, and 'website tonight' (offered on godaddy). I've been there for almost a year. It's good, but I think I'll dust off my html book, and try to do my own, more options, when I remember how to do it.


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## plankandboard (Mar 3, 2010)

I used this company www.emergentmediagroup.com to create my website (oh wait … that me). I'm having a hard time finding the time to finish my new site though. It's currently just a landing page: www.plankandboard.com

If you're on a budget, squarespace and WaterCMS are decent solutions.


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## Wood_smith (Feb 12, 2010)

Good start, Ben.
..um, what's a lumber trunk?


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## plankandboard (Mar 3, 2010)

The "lumberTrunk" that I make looks like a pile of 2×8, but it's really a giant storage trunk on wheels. I'm hesitant to post this project oh LJ, though. It's not exactly fine furniture.


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## Wood_smith (Feb 12, 2010)

Hey, go for it, it looks like a neat idea.
Someone asked me about my Kerry-All Pouches and I posted some info, got a lot of good responses, some great suggestions. 
I think all the people on here would agree, if it's got anything to do with woodworking, it's welcome here!


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## cstrang (Sep 22, 2009)

Lloyd said it best Ben, if it has anything to do with woodworking we would love


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## fge (Sep 8, 2008)

We use www.webzpro.com. It was easy to use, only 60.00 per year and I was able to design as many pages and add as much pics as I really needed. Cheap and easy to use. My web site is www.topqualitycabinets.net


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## Wood_smith (Feb 12, 2010)

Very nice website, Jerry. If I could make one small suggestion- perhaps think about making the explanation paragraph at the top of your accessories page with a slightly smaller, less bold font? Your cabinets are awesome.


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## LisaC (Oct 10, 2009)

I'm happy with http://www.iPage.com. I pay $3.50 a month. They offer a shopping cart, and all kinds of other tools. They ranked second in a 2009 major independent website hosting review.

I also run my website with Drupal, and that takes some serious web dev skills to use. However, I used to do that for a living. So it works out well for me. I spend way too much time fiddling with my website. My clients appreciate that I keep a blog.


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## Wood_smith (Feb 12, 2010)

Lisa, does iPage have a maximum number of pages allowed? Some sites don't tell you up front, but once you dig a little deeper, you may see a limit of 5 pages.


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## Padre (Nov 5, 2008)

I use readyhosting.com. $99 a year for a ton of stuff. Unlimited pages, email, etc. You should check it out.


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## Blake (Oct 17, 2007)

I built my own website. I originally built it through Yahoo! and the free program they give you "Sitebuilder" is pretty good for beginners and novist web-builders.

http://www.blakeweberwoodworking.com


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## fge (Sep 8, 2008)

Thanks wood_smith. I should select to watch these forums because sometimes I post then get busy and don't check back. But thanks for the comments. I have sort of grown our webpage for a long time.


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