Website Costs??...

[reelapeelin]

What all's involved in havin' a website and costs??...

[bcmarinamanager]

I think mostly just a set-up fee, and after that you're probably looking at a monthly up keep fee. I'm not positive, but a couple of years ago my wife and I were looking to get into the cabin rental business and we looked into a website for the facilities. This was in WV, so I'm sure it'll be more expensive else where. I think it was gonna cost us about 2-3k for start up and maybe 50-100 a month for up keep. This all depends on the amount of pages you have and what kind of details and what-not.

[parishht]

Actually, check with your sevice provider.

I have COMCAST and a personal website comes with the service fees.

[randlemanboater]

What all's involved in havin' a website and costs??...

Whatcha got in mind REEL?

[csvencer]

There are two fees you need to take into account.

The domain name fee, which is basically buying your name (www.wellcraftv20.com) and the hosting/storage fee.

The domain name fee is pretty damn cheap, a couple a bucks a month or a set fee per year. The hosting fee varies on the amount of storage space you need, which is drastically dependent on what you are hosting (pics or text). This also includes your bandwidth, which is the amount of traffic you will have. ie...you have a 100 megabyte webpage and the entire webpage is viewed 10 times a month you need atleast 1000 megabytes (1 Gigabyte) of bandwidth. Check out godaddy.com for rates on various plans.

Also like parish said some ISP's supply you with a hosting service and domain, although the domain will be long (myhome.comcast.net/csvencer...etc). You could use the free hosting space and buy a domain that redirects, as in svencer.com redirects you to my comcast page so I only have to pay a couple of bucks a year for the domain name and not the hosting but I still get the benefit of a simply website name.

Hope this helps more than confuses, if you have any questions fire away. I ran a page for 3 years a couple of years ago so got pretty familiar with the system.

-Svence

[Blue_Runner]

$10 startup fee and anywhere from $3 - $15 bucks a month Reel...what are we gonna sell?? :head: or is it one of these deals - :zip:

[Blue_Runner]

I KNOW WHAT IT IS!! You've bought a V-21 and decided to start:

www.wellcraftv21.com (http://www.wellcraftv21.com)


:sun::clap:

[tsubaki]

My wife built a site for our camellia society, up and running in about 2 months, less than $500. http://www.camelliaweb.org/
A similar site that we know has spent $50,000 for similar stuff. They are up and running after about a year. Their negotiations with different companies ranged from $35K to $150K.

A couple of others she did, don't know what she spent.
http://www.camelliashop.com/
http://thelandingsgardener.com/TLG/index.php
(I don't think she is in the "want to do more" market)

[bcmarinamanager]

i stand corrected. My bad.

[tsubaki]

bc, I think you're as close as anyone.
It depends on what you want or expect out of a site.

[Blue_Runner]

That's right, for example BigShrimpin ran this site for years for less than $10 a month...the domain name alone is under $20, so unless you have a huge site with really dynamic content and thousands of hits per day it won't cost much at all. Now on the other hand look at Craigslist. They have 20 - 30 employees. One wouldn't think a site as simple as craigslist which is policed by the online community would require such a large development staff. But I can tell you they probably have a freakin buttload of servers running that site because of all of the traffic.

I've been running a crappy little site for the past 10 years.

www.copperlighting.com (http://www.copperlighting.com)

I spent ~$50 for the name (it was more expensive back then) and ~$20 per month. Oh and I spent a whopping $20 on advertising to get listed in the search engines. I've had sales in over half of the lower 48!! And I don't even accept credit cards for cryin out loud!!

Ok, there's my plug for my side business LOL. The enforcer is gonna boot me for illegal advertising now.... :)

[reelapeelin]

BR your site is all I'm gonna need...doesn't need to be fancy...just pics and text...who set up yer site?...

[csvencer]

He used Microsoft Front Page express. Front Page and FP Express are really easy to use. There is a slight learning curve in the middle but once you get into it, it is no harder than creating a word document with graphics. There are a ton of templates out there that pave the way for you. If you are interested in Front Page I can get you some more info, let me know.

-Svence

[Blue_Runner]

Reel I set it up a long time ago. Its in need of a major revamp but I haven't taken the time to do it. Csvenser is right I used Front Page Express. I know other people who have bought a template for $50 where you just plug in your pictures and text via a simplified interface. The ones I've seen turned out pretty good.

[reelapeelin]

Reel I set it up a long time ago. Its in need of a major revamp but I haven't taken the time to do it. Csvenser is right I used Front Page Express. I know other people who have bought a template for $50 where you just plug in your pictures and text via a simplified interface. The ones I've seen turned out pretty good.


Thanks Csvencer...BR, how does I do it?...go to MicroSoft and download?...:head:

[Blue_Runner]

Let me see if I can find a link...MS Frontpage express may not be available any more????

[Blue_Runner]

I'm not having any luck finding it Reel. FP Express was at one time a component of Internet Explorer 5 and I don't know if its available for download anymore. I'll keep looking...in the meantime check this out.

Do a google search for Web Templates. This is probably the easiest option for a first-timer looking to start a web page. Some places you can get them for free and others you have to buy them for like 20 - 50 bucks.

What you would do is download the template to your hard drive. The main HTML page will be named index.html and other pages named whatever_you_name_them.html. Then any images such as .jpg/.gif etc. would need to be included in the same directory on your hard drive (c:/whereever) so that they would show up in the page instead of the red x.

When you have it all there in the same directory you can do File/Open from Internet explorer but instead of typing a www.reelswebsite.com (http://www.reelswebsite.com) do "browse" then navigate to the directory where your index.html is stored and select it. This will render your webpage using your PC as the web server. This is how you test changes or get everything like you want it before deploying it to the web. Now to get it out on the information super highway you'll need a host - like godaddy.com. They will give you an IP address. You would then download WS_ftp Pro or any FTP software utility, crank it up and sign on to the host site using the address they provide. This basically just opens up a network between your PC and the web server. Then you will be able to transfer the files from your PC to their web server. Once its all there, you will be able to open your www.reelswebsite.com (http://www.reelswebsite.com) and see your page.

Sorry not too specific. This is officially the reader's digest version LOL. Sounds complicated but once you've seen it done and done it yourself once or twice its a piece of cake.

Let me know how I can help ya.

Blue

[Monkey Butler]

You won't find FP Express availble for download from Microsoft now. You can grab a copy here:

http://www.monkeybutler.com/FPE/FPinstall.exe

for the next few days.

This is on my website hosted by Go Daddy. I think the last one I set up cost $50-$60 for a domain name and a years hosting.

If you want free shopping cart software try:

http://www.vpasp.com/

I set up this test site for a custonmer in no time:

http://www.kaufmancatalog.com

Any questions, please ask.

[reelapeelin]

WOW!!...thanks Blue and MB!!...out of pocket yesterday, but this is great to see this morning...:beer: