Thread: Web page software

Mate have you had a look at WordPress?

Easy to setup, easy to custimize and has plugins for most stuff others have mentioned here.

Generally quite WordPress is a blogging type website but as I said you can change it to make it so what ever you want.

I would endorse the idea of looking for a 'package' involving templates, hosting and so on.

When my wife and I were dipping our toe in the water of an online hobby business, we started off with Shopify. There are many similar sites, but we found the customer service etc. to be excellent. They take care of payment processing etc. In the end though, it was more than we needed and we moved over to just using Etsy. The issue with Etsy is that it is US centric, so one attracts many views but few orders as they are overseas.

Back in the early 2000s I did some amateur websites, getting as far as using basic Dreamweaver programming. I would not touch it now as it is too time consuming and distracts from the main activity of running the business. The financial saving is not worth it, if you cost your own time.

For non-commercial stuff, blogger.com is good, as is wordpress. I find blogger simpler.

For commercial, look at Shopify or similar sites.

I have no paid affiliation with any of the sites mentioned.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by DRMS

I would endorse the idea of looking for a 'package' involving templates, hosting and so on.

When my wife and I were dipping our toe in the water of an online hobby business, we started off with Shopify. There are many similar sites, but we found the customer service etc. to be excellent. They take care of payment processing etc. In the end though, it was more than we needed and we moved over to just using Etsy. The issue with Etsy is that it is US centric, so one attracts many views but few orders as they are overseas.

Back in the early 2000s I did some amateur websites, getting as far as using basic Dreamweaver programming. I would not touch it now as it is too time consuming and distracts from the main activity of running the business. The financial saving is not worth it, if you cost your own time.

For non-commercial stuff, blogger.com is good, as is wordpress. I find blogger simpler.

For commercial, look at Shopify or similar sites.

I have no paid affiliation with any of the sites mentioned.

Good luck.

Thanks , I've made the various notes and going through them to see which one best suits me.

When you said you didn't quite know what "hosting" was tells me you are not clear on how websites work.
To have a web site, you need to be able to "put" your designs and pages and pictures "on the Internet" somewhere - that means on a web server. Since you would not want to run your own, you need your pages "hosted" on someone else's. That's the "hosting compnay". You pay a fee for that starting at $20 a year or so. Some hosting companies run "content management software" with "templates" for web sites. THat means you don't have to design anything, just select a template that fits your needs and 'fill in the blanks'. That's it. That's what I recommend - as other have here before. No programming to learn.
The other thing is of course that you need a "name" for your website. That's called a "domain name" (like albi123.com.au) and cost about $40 ma year or less. You will have to register the domain name with a registration autority and then get your hosting company to host your website in that domain name space.
It would be best therefore to go with a hosting company that also offeres domain name registration - many if not most do. Just be aware that these are separate processes and your will get separate bills for those.
If you can find a hosting comapny that also does the e-commerce side (another fee), then you can have a single contact for support. I would recommend that if you want to go e-commerce.
Good luck!

Originally Posted by jhovel

When you said you didn't quite know what "hosting" was tells me you are not clear on how websites work.
To have a web site, you need to be able to "put" your designs and pages and pictures "on the Internet" somewhere - that means on a web server. Since you would not want to run your own, you need your pages "hosted" on someone else's. That's the "hosting compnay". You pay a fee for that starting at $20 a year or so. Some hosting companies run "content management software" with "templates" for web sites. THat means you don't have to design anything, just select a template that fits your needs and 'fill in the blanks'. That's it. That's what I recommend - as other have here before. No programming to learn.
The other thing is of course that you need a "name" for your website. That's called a "domain name" (like albi123.com.au) and cost about $40 ma year or less. You will have to register the domain name with a registration autority and then get your hosting company to host your website in that domain name space.
It would be best therefore to go with a hosting company that also offeres domain name registration - many if not most do. Just be aware that these are separate processes and your will get separate bills for those.
If you can find a hosting comapny that also does the e-commerce side (another fee), then you can have a single contact for support. I would recommend that if you want to go e-commerce.
Good luck!

Thanks for the explanation of what hosting is, quite often I see and understand a lot of what happens on the internet but I never quite understand some of the words used to describe various things. Just because one knows how to do things it doesn't mean you know the word describing what you can do.
It reminds me when I was sewing some shade cloth and my neighbor asked me if I was a sail-maker, to which my reply was "I've never sewn a sail"; as it turns out the type of stitch that I was using was the same way that a sail gets sewn together.