website

[lookatrabbit]

Hi have many of you got your own website just wondering how to host and how much u all pay for the hosting and address? and what do you all use to make the site or get a designer?

 

[Sparky Ninja]

I recommend you go to 1and1.co.uk and click on professional web hosting packages. In there select business package (I think it's £8.99 per month), it gives most flexibility and includes three domains which you can then register.
Once all signed up you can login and there will be website buildings tools for you to try out. Alternatively you can contact a web designer and then host it on your package in the webspace explorer section.

I recommend them as you get unlimited bandwidth.

Other options are to use websites that provide creation services, but you cannot choose your URL. But you have no control and it doesn't look too pretty.

 

[Short Circuit]

1&1 are well known but are a German based company and are a nightmare if you ever decide to move sites. A friend of mine does web sites and charges £35 per year for hosting, which includes as many email addresses the business needs, plus sufficient space and bandwidth required for the site. Unlimited bandwidth sounds great, but it's just a sales gimmick, they tailor the package to suit each site.. Something like www.plumbcorps.co.uk run between £400-£500. If there is a referral via the forum you can get a 10% discount and a free .co.uk domain name for 2 years.If you want it, they do logo design too. A few years ago, i had a site with 1 & 1 and it was a nightmare trying to cancel the direct debit!

It is well worth having a professional looking website!

Contact Phil at NorthernMonk

Hope this helps

 

[Octopus]

When you're looking around you should look for:

1. Design costs (normally per page)
2. Change costs
3. Hosting cost per year
4. Email set up


Using a small independent designer, mine cost me:

£75.00 per page
£25.00 per small (ish) change
£100.00 first year set up and email set up, subsequent years are £100.00
FOC remote set up support getting my laptop & email and smart phone working.

My designer also created my business logo for me too in the cost.

All in all I spent £474.00 on the set up and have made 1 small change so far - ALL the feedback from friends and customers is very positive.

It may seem a lot but its been bullet proof to date and will last for years.

 

[eskimo39]

Hi mate, not sure if I am allowed to promote myself on here (feel free to remove this post mods) but I build websites and do SEO. For a basic 5-10 page website I charge £250. This is hosted for 2 years, includes .co.uk, twitter integration (useful for a real time news feed on your site which you can update whenever you wish), unlimited @yourdomainname.co.uk email address, and logo design if required.

A couple of my jobs are here: Wedding videos, Wedding dvds. Nationwide wedding videographer. and Korks - Wine Bar and Brasserie - Otley, West Yorkshire and DARU TV & FILM LOCATION CATERERS

If you are interested just drop me a PM and I will send you some more links to my work.

 

[Octopus]

Eskimo - gosh, web designers rates have dropped even more than sparkies!

 

[eskimo39]

Nah mate. No longer do it as a real job. Just for friends etc in my spare time. Got to find a way to keep buying new tools without my wife finding out. When I worked for DesignMedia a basic website would be around £1500 plus VAT, £3000 for a flash site and up to £15,000 for a eCommerce!!!!

Got out of the game as every man and his dog started up a web design agency and work was becoming harder to find. Thought I would be better off as a qualified tradesman in an area which wouldn't allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to work .............but it would seem that didn't work as planned

 

[ian]

Although I have a site its currently down until I (and 66 others) get a legal dispute sorted out with the old hosting company.

I had someone built my site and it looked fantastic, the only problem I had is hosting company wanted to triple the annual hosting cost to around £360.

Ian

 

[Sparky Ninja]

1&1 are well known but are a German based company and are a nightmare if you ever decide to move sites.

It is well worth having a professional looking website!

Contact Phil at NorthernMonk

Hope this helps

What do you mean by move site? Pay for the space and create the site yourself on your own server. If you want to change packages, just don't renew??

 

[eskimo39]

Although I have a site its currently down until I (and 66 others) get a legal dispute sorted out with the old hosting company.

I had someone built my site and it looked fantastic, the only problem I had is hosting company wanted to triple the annual hosting cost to around £360.

Ian

Hi Ian, you need to see if the company will release the local files to you on a disc, that way you can purchase your own hosting package independently and just upload them to there. Do you own the domain name or does your old designer own it? If you own it you can change the DNS settings to point to your new hosting.

If you can get them and need any help setting them up, feel free to get in touch.

 

[gpz900jim]

go to getting british business online. (GBBO)its free for 12 months, as much space as you want, i believe its a fiver a month after that

 

[ian]

Hi Ian, you need to see if the company will release the local files to you on a disc, that way you can purchase your own hosting package independently and just upload them to there. Do you own the domain name or does your old designer own it? If you own it you can change the DNS settings to point to your new hosting.

If you can get them and need any help setting them up, feel free to get in touch.

That’s where the problem lies buddy, they will only release the files if I pay £500. There are 66 of us in the same position, so we are taking them to court as a group. Basically they are robbing B****rds.

Ian

 

[eskimo39]

Have they copyrighted the design? If not let me have your web address and I am sure I can make something that looks the same for free. I can then upload the files for you to host yourself.

 

[-Alex-]

Hi there, take a look at www.daily.co.uk .

You don't want something too techie, and could do it yourself - just to have a presence, that way people will find you with ease.

Don't get suckered into pointless functionality that you don't need, remember you are offering a service and giving them contact details, keep it simple and people will read it.

(btw: Not sure if I can put a link in, but it is an example, there are many others with similar rates).

 

[philly4321]

I use www.fasthosts.co.uk they charge £2.50 a month at present for hosting this is a 50% discount for 6 months, you get 50 email adresses and an area to host your ftp files, really user freindly and something you can do yourself as they have really useful user guides on site. You can also register your domain name with them think its £2.99 a year for a .co.uk or £7.99 a year for a .com. They also have a free website builder tool but I would recommend getting someone to do this for you, I paid £500 for my site which has 6 pages with twitter feeds etc and looks great, was done by a company called mass appeal designs based in Liverpool. Just beware of the sharks out there as everyman and his dog appears to be in the web design business, most are part timers doing it for extra cash and we got bit first time around.

 

[mattyevz]

Iv used get british business online its free.its limited to a basic site,ideal if your just looking to get ur name out there for the meantime.

 

[lookatrabbit]

hi just checked that one out are you currently using them still? says free for 2 years do you definatly not get sent any kind of bill?

 

[BLBelfast]

Use them myself and as has been said it is free for two years

 

[mattyevz]

Yer its free mines been up for 6 months no bills nothing. FREE

 

[BluSparx]

I use www.000webhost.com - free hosting with 1.5gb server space and 100gb bandwidth per month - which for me is great.

I bought my domain name from Domain Names, Web Hosting and SSL Certificates - Go Daddy - paid 0.84p for my domain Blu Sparx Electrical Contractor Electrician in Billingham, Norton, Stockton, Middlesbrough, Teesside

Designed my site myself, used Dreamweaver to produce it
SEO completed by myself and works - just try Electrician in Billingham in Google or emerency electrician in billingham and i'm there on the first page.

Doing it yourself is hard work, and you do need to know what your doing but it helped me keep my cost down.

I update my site as and when I need to but it took around 6-8 weeks to start getting higher in google.

Once you have your site up and running add yourself to googleplaces this then puts you on the map when people search in a particular area (i.e. your surrounding areas) and helps you get on the front page of google without having seo at first.