web site

[QMAO]

Does anyone have a website for their personal or bussiness use?
How and who did you purchase the domain name through? Did you have help building and setting up the web site and how is the support?
I currantly have a site and domain, but it is coming up for renewal. Looking for information and suggestions on what to use.
Raging Bull Audio custom system

 

[Couch]

I use GoDaddy for hosting - cheeper options out there but saving $50 on yearly hosting fee for a business that depends on uptime & reliability to generate revenue is not worth the hassle.
I use a Wordpress theme from Themify for the design - bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of it you can make changes that you want and not be charged every time you need to change a price or add info / images. Their support is decent and they have a bunch of tutorials available.
Many of the "professional" web design firms use the same type of templates and in many cases appear to have little to no understanding of the background coding necessary to build a site from the ground up. BTW, if you go that route then you are beholden to using them for practically every change.
I considered WIX and a few other hosted web design providers but while simpler, you are still more limited in layout - Wordpress gives loads of flexibility + your site is then portable.

Best advice - I spent a $1000 upfront for a one on one consult with a social media prof which was really worth the investment and helped to lay the groundwork.

For me, biggest issues have been dealing with getting all of the other components to fit ... esp google rankings, adwords, analytics, FB ads, etc. as it takes a while to figure all of it out and is constantly changing - likely part of google's plan to baffle us with BS so they can continue to continue to milk us for ad revenue.
Be sure too to own & register your domain in your own name / business name - makes moving & controlling it easier.

If doing site in house, take some time to ensure that pages are named properly, snippets are accurate, alt tags are added, etc. and that you have a basic understanding of SEO as this will go a long way to getting your site at the top of the list esp if you are selling online!

 

[Chump]

Working on getting a website built with yellow pages right now. Super reasonable pricing, not charged yearly for domain name or for any changes you might want.

Nothing annoys me more then going to some website you can tell someone made themselves. If there website doesn't look professional, why would I hire them.

 

[eclipse1966]

we had a web site built several years ago from a company out of Kelowna. Despite hiring a "pro" we got an invoice from Getty Images for $4,500 as apparently a picture of a train that we had on our web site was copyright protected. I told the "pro" and despite it was him who added the image he claims its our responsibility to make sure we are not using copyright images. I don't agree with his answer so changed to a new host also out of Kelowna. We ignored the invoice from Getty and have never heard further about it. It has been over 5 years now. Good luck!

 

[ZRrrr]

Go Daddy for a years now just because someone pointed me that way. Starting to explore new options. There are lots of sites starting to pop up where you submit a request for builders to present website ideas. These builders present you with an idea and if you choose to go with one they get paid. Prices vary by project and designer. Neat idea. Couple friends have used them for logo and site design. Costs were decent and product was great. Here is one:
https://99designs.ca/