posted on August 5, 2001 08:12:55 AM
My husband and I are thinking of starting up a business. It's relatively unrelated to ebay, but I thought people here who have their own websites could give us some advise. We have a few choices on domain names that are available. Does it matter at which site you register it? Also we are relatively computer illiterate (so we realize this is going to take us a long time to develop). Can you give us suggestions on web designing software? We will need to use a shopping cart and access to sound clips - realplayer or MP3 format (probably both). Also, people will need to navigate throughout our site - it has the potential of becoming relatively large. Do you pay by the page? Or does one domain name give you free reign to click to different pages. We would also like people to be able to link to other websites from us. Any advise you could give us is greatly appreciated.
posted on August 5, 2001 09:05:20 AM
Congratulations on a major undertaking. You have a lot to learn, but we all do, so welcome to the wonderful world of websites!
As for registering and hosting a domain, I use the services of Fat Cow http://www.fatcow.com and find them to be excellent.
You can register your domain name through them as part of the hosting package, which is a really good deal all around.
They also have a shopping cart wizard that makes listing and uploading a shopping cart site VERY easy. You can have the shopping cart listings as your main site, or you can have it as a special part of the site that access through a link on your main page.
With this service you also have lots of storage space, so you can link to quite a lot of secondary pages from your main page. You can also upgrade to more storage space on the fatcow server quite easily. Fatcow also has an excellent control panel, which is very handy and easy to navigate.
I'm not in any way affiliated with that website. In fact, I first heard about here on AW. But I am a satisfied customer all around, so just thought I'd pass that info along.
I will let others reply to your other questions. There are many good html or webpage design programs out there, so perhaps others will pass along the pros and cons of the programs they have used.
posted on August 5, 2001 09:22:32 AM
Frist Don't matter where you register your domain it's universal registration.
Second web hosts dont charge buy the page they charge according to the amount of hard drive space coose to lease on there computer and what other features and services your site will require and the bandwidth your site takes up.
Use of sound the best source of sound clips for a webpage is wav files they are plaied back you dont need the player on your webpage it will play from the users computer.
the frist sign of website falure for ant web business is links to the outside the Idea is to keep your clients at your site as long as posiable the internet is about community thatwhat makes AW ebay and other web businesses so sucessfull there community..
as far as editors to do all you plan rather then worry about these thing if you know nothing start reading and learning frist before you even invest any $$ in your online business inless your going to hire someone to design this for you it could take years to get it all running.
You can obtain a basic account at Bizhosting (with shopping cart) for free and you don't need to buy a domain name. It is only 12 meg but is great for experimenting and seeing the features available without incurring any costs. When you are ready to spend money, use the knowledge you've gained to make a decision i.e. compare the features at Bizhosting with those offered by other sites and compare the costs.
One feature at Bizhosting I liked was automatic inventory control (not too common in shopping carts at other sites). As sales are made, the inventory amounts left are automatically adjusted downward.
I haven't signed up there with a paying account because the credit card feature doesn't fit my needs but playing around with the free account has helped me in my analysis of other web hosting sites.
Irene
[ edited by stockticker on Aug 5, 2001 12:59 PM ]
posted on August 5, 2001 05:18:56 PM
I started with a commercial e-commerce platform that required no knowledge whatsoever of programming or web design. It served me extremely well for about a year, had all the bells and whistles. My business grew to an enormous volume and I now have a huge site I designed myself. The commercial site that put me on the map is now available so if interested you can email me at [email protected] ( I hope this does not violate any AW posting rules but it really is a very practical way to get started with everything you could ever want in a website at a very nominal cost.)
