# Website building/designing



## tctaylor79 (Apr 19, 2011)

Hey LJs I have a couple of business website questions I wanted to pose to everyone. First off, do any of you making a living from your woodworking have a website? Did you develop/design your own site? What was your initial budget for a "pro" to build your site if that was the route you took. I've been getting more and more customers asking if I have a website. At the present I have set up a blog site, but that's it. Can someone give me some insight into web design? HELP!!!!!


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## rhett (May 11, 2008)

Unless you are trying to set up a site to sell items and make money from advertising, a simple "portfolio" website can be done cheaply and with little effort. It always looks better to prospective clients if you have a web presence and a place they can tell their friends to look.

I used godaddy for my domain name and they have a website template program which makes it easy to plug in photos and text. I have the ability to add or edit whenever without going through a third party site designer and paying for changes. My good friend is a site designer and he makes upwards of $100 an hour for design and hosting. I'll keep that money and put it back into my business not his. Without opening quicken, I want to say I re upd my contract last year till 2012 and it was under $200.


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## tctaylor79 (Apr 19, 2011)

Rhett, 
Thanks a bunch. That's exactly what I was looking for. I just want a site to showcase projects and display all of the appropriate info prospective customer might be looking for.


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## Dchip (Jun 30, 2009)

Hi Tim,
I actually started a casual blog about this topic, but saying there was minimal interest would be giving it too much credit. Apparently either a lot of people here are uninterested in making a website or do it professionally on some level and have far more knowledge and experience than I. Regardless, I made my website using the godaddy builder mentioned by rhett and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I haven't worked on it in a while, though, and it's a little rough around the edges, but it displays my work for anyone interested and gives a "business" (I use " marks in my case since i dont really have one) a bit more legitimacy. The domain cost 9 bucks a year and the builder is free, so with some time it can be done quite cheap.


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## superstretch (Jan 10, 2011)

Tim,
I gave up godaddy about 2 years ago and got myself a pretty serious dedicated server. I've leased space out to people before for a lot less than they'd pay for a small plan through godaddy or similar. Most of the sites that I run on behalf of other people have wordpress installed on them-very flexible, very customizable. PM me if you're interested in setting something up.


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## tctaylor79 (Apr 19, 2011)

Dan, thanks for the offer. I'll shoot you a PM about website stuff.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

A site is pretty cheap to put up and run these days. You don't need
anything fancy really.

But for artisans a few essential tips:

1. set up dedicated email at your website - example: [email protected] - 
don't use [email protected] because you'll get spam for using "admin".

I use a desktop email client, but if you prefer to do your email online, you can
route your domain email to a gmail or similar "cloud" account.

2. Make at least part of your site iphone compatible. Install a gallery of your
work for smartphone users. This is not hard to do - the pictures are just
sized and formatted a certain way.

3. More tips in the book in my signature line, but mostly you'll be promoting
your site offline with business cards, advertising, word-of-mouth. You an run
ads on Craigslist and promote on Facebook and similar sites, but think of your
site like a convenience to prospects you send them to by actively engaging
them in your community, not a thing that gets traffic all by itself and brings
you money. Of course there are sites like that, but they are specific types
of sites.


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## brian88 (Oct 26, 2010)

Hello, I have a website for my business. I use yahoo hosting as my website provider. It only costs about $15 a month and the design program is easy to use and update. It is deffinately not the most fancy of sites but is I feel a good value and does what it is meant to do. Here is my website so you can see an example of what you can do. There are hundreds of templates available. 
www.udreamitwoodworking.com


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## Puzzleman (May 4, 2010)

I use "3D Cart.com" for my website. Unlike above, my website is an e-tail site that lets customers order and pay online. The format was easy to set up and took about 10 - 12 hours of my time to get it started. They also have tools that help you market to your customer database such as newletters, blog, "like" buttons, coupons, reviews and etc.

Check it out on my signature.


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

I bought a Frontpage for Dummies type book and made mine in a weekend. I pay $11/month to host it. It's not very difficult, nor expensive, so I think it's a good idea.


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## helluvawreck (Jul 21, 2010)

If you will go to www.lynda.com and take a look you will see the best place that I have ever found to learn as little or as much as you want to about everything there is to know about biulding and maintaining websites. The last time I check it cost from $25 to $30 per month but you can join for just a month if you like. I think that you have a short free trial period. They have some great introductory courses that are well worth the months fee. If you were willing to stay on for three months you could get a good basic education that would serve you well for a small 3 month price. The lessons are taught in video format and are excellent. You can follow along on your own computer. Another good litlle course is htmldogs website.

Take a look at http://www.hostica.com/ or webnet77 for some hosting packages. There are many hosts that have similar packages.

If you would just join Lynda.com and take a month of the various beginning courses, spending about 10 hours per week, you would be more than competant to biuld a small business site such as you are talking about and your knowledge would serve you well. If you stayed on a few more months you could expand on that. I get nothing for recommending any of these. However, I studied courses at linda.com for several years and they are very good. Good luck.


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