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Personal website creation

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Dan Dubeau

Ultra Member
I know a few of you have your own websites for showcasing projects, and hosting of files etc. I'm looking to do the same, but perhaps add an e commerce side for a few products I'm making in the near future. Any recommendations as to how to go about it? Any companies to stay away from? I have ZERO prior knowledge about website creation, aside from a bad story from a friend regarding godaddy.

What am I in for? Hosting costs? Upkeep? Other do's/dont's?
 
I was the Treasurer of a charitable organization at one time, and 15 or so years ago, we hired a pro to re-do our website. He charged $1,000 as I recall, took months and months to complete, and the end product looked like crap. A couple years later, I downloaded the i-WEB app to my Mac, used it's templates to build a new website, which was as simple as copy/paste text and insert photos, took about a day, cost nothing, and from the compliments, i would say it looked at least OK, and certainly better than the pro had done. The website was hosted by our internet provider at a small and reasonable fee. And I was able to maintain it, and have revisions/additions done immediately and also at no cost. If I had to do it now, I would probably start by going on You Tube and search "Easy inexpensive way to create a website" and see what tutorials pop up.
 
If you're looking to do any kind of online selling Squarespace is the way to go.

That said, I bought a Square card reader so I can accept debit and credit cards at shows. I will build my site on the Square platform because the integration with the card reader is easier.
 
David_R8 said:
If you're looking to do any kind of online selling Squarespace is the way to go.

That said, I bought a Square card reader so I can accept debit and credit cards at shows. I will build my site on the Square platform because the integration with the card reader is easier.
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Post a link to your website please.
 
Stay away from Netfirms and Godaddy, in fact stay away from US based hosts altogether. Check that your domain name isn't a trademark somewhere else.

I used to host several sites with Rebel.ca, now just have email and domain name with them. A variety of plans, and supports things like WordPress and various selling/ecommerce frameworks. And its Canadian.
 
I exclusively used Sibername until the owner died and his family sold out to WHC (WebHostingCanada). Other than the shark feeding frenzy that happened at the time, I'm reasonably happy. WHC Supports most of the major web site tools including e-commerce. I don't know about square. My wife used Square with her club activities though so I know it works but I dont know what she did to make it work. I set her up originally, but thereafter she did her own web management.

Generally speaking:

You buy a domain name you like. Preferably through whatever hosting company you want to use as they will discount the cost.

You buy a web hosting service from an outfit like WHC.

You setup everything yourself.


The hosting service will typically provide you with access to a control panel from which you install your website using their software or your own, E commerce, email addresses, forums, and any other services - most are free or at least are free to some arbitrary limit (eg 10 free email addresses on your domain). The hosting company will set up the DNS system for you or you can do it yourself. They will also do hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups and manage them invisibly for you.

Although I understand the reasons others have chosen a complete system from square. I don't recommend it. Just like GoDaddy and their ilk you are then a captive slave and lose all your autonomy. It's virtually impossible to move or do anything different than follow their rules. I'd rather buy my own domains and move them whenever and wherever I want.
 
Susquatch said:
I exclusively used Sibername until the owner died and his family sold out to WHC (WebHostingCanada). Other than the shark feeding frenzy that happened at the time, I'm reasonably happy. WHC Supports most of the major web site tools including e-commerce. I don't know about square. My wife used Square with her club activities though so I know it works but I dont know what she did to make it work. I set her up originally, but thereafter she did her own web management.

Generally speaking:

You buy a domain name you like. Preferably through whatever hosting company you want to use as they will discount the cost.

You buy a web hosting service from an outfit like WHC.

You setup everything yourself.


The hosting service will typically provide you with access to a control panel from which you install your website using their software or your own, E commerce, email addresses, forums, and any other services - most are free or at least are free to some arbitrary limit (eg 10 free email addresses on your domain). The hosting company will set up the DNS system for you or you can do it yourself. They will also do hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups and manage them invisibly for you.

Although I understand the reasons others have chosen a complete system from square. I don't recommend it. Just like GoDaddy and their ilk you are then a captive slave and lose all your autonomy. It's virtually impossible to move or do anything different than follow their rules. I'd rather buy my own domains and move them whenever and wherever I want.
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Thanks, your last paragraph is what happened to my friend, who's site was essentially held hostage by godaddy because he didn't know any better at the time. I don't know any better either right now, but mistakes of others sometimes slow me down a bit....Not only did godaddy hoop him, his first website creator did as well. Similar story to boilerhouse.

The Square route is interesting, My Wife has a Square device for payment at her shows, and it's foolproof enough that even I can use it.....I didn't realize they also did ecommerce stuff too, although she was probably aware (did I mention I have ZERO knowledge about this stuff....). I'll look into that, but I'm a bit wary about the "big" business holding you hostage, but realize with our collective knowledge we may be better of being the perfect prey/customer for them anyway.

I'll do some more poking around on line, but wanted to ask here as well. A lot of the info about stuff like this is very American specific, and it's always good to have a trusted Canadian source of info like this place to balance it out. I trust you guys more than a paid shill on youtube that is going to lock me into a bad deal I can't get out of.

Initially it's just for me and my personal stuff, but My wife would like to move her ecommece stuff away from etsy in the near future as she's grown to a point where it makes financial sense.

You've all given me a thread to pull, Thank you.
 
I should add that originally I bought my domains from domains at cost in Canada, which was bought by Rebel. I left my domains there and hosted them at siberbame for many years based on the fear that I didn't want to host my domains at the same place I controlled them. About 15 years ago, I changed all that and moved to domains to siberbame with my hosting packages. They had earned my trust by then and were offering free domains with each hosting service. So I saved a few dollars by moving them. That all moved to WHC when siberbame was sold. After 30 years of doing websites and such, I am totally comfortable with everything at WHC.

Lastly, I asked my wife about Square. She says the payment portal is just a portal. The portal and her website are not connected other than through the portal. She likes that because it gives her both control and independence.
 
It's been a long while since I set anything up, but pay attention to the payment side of it. Lot's of rule for the merchant account, back in the day. My guess is there is probably even more that need to be followed. Best to use a service to handle your payments. They get a little off the top but well worth it in the long run.

Also you mentioned a "few products". How many is a few? Will your site be accessing a data base to build the web page on the fly? (PHP, ASP) Active server pages that are build and displayed after a user has made a query on your site (think of Kijiji, you search and the site builds you a page to display from their database) or will each page be a static type page (and linked pages)that always shows the same info each time a user visits you site? If it's the second, you could possibly host off your Internet Service Provider account. I know Shaw gives you an amount of space to set up a website. (The fine print probably does say that you can not use it for a commercial website, but I know more then a few people using it for this.) Run it from your personal space until the demand and traffic forces you to purchase space somewhere else.

Just a few thoughts.
 
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@Janger - @Dan Dubeau - choose wisely.

Predicting the future and your needs trajectory is difficult so you might be tempted to ignore it. But if you do, it might bite you so badly later that you quit.

My advice is to make sure that whatever you do is scalable and portable. It's not painful to do if you do it now.
 
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Susquatch said:
Although I understand the reasons others have chosen a complete system from square. I don't recommend it. Just like GoDaddy and their ilk you are then a captive slave and lose all your autonomy. It's virtually impossible to move or do anything different than follow their rules. I'd rather buy my own domains and move them whenever and wherever I want.
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I don't entirely understand that. I have move sites that were with GD away from GD, no big deal. (I did however leave the domain register with GD)

I'm a big advocate of registering domains with one Co., and hosting with another. Makes any movement much easier. I currently have domains with GD, hosting with Hostgator and email with Zoho. I'm no super boffin but each have patient, good tech support used to dealing with neophytes. Especially HG, can't believe they are still in business based on how little it costs and how much of their time I've gotten.

Thats all just mechanics, anyone can do it, just takes patience and willingness to learn and buddy up to tech support.

The bigger question is how are you going do the content? You'll go broke paying someone to do it and sites need to be dynamic, i.e. you're going to want to be constantly changing, adding and modifying.

My recommendation is learn how to build sites in Word Press. Its free and while there is a learning curve, it is like learning a new piece of software vs coding, no nasty HTML knowledge needed. 43% of the worlds web sites run on it. There are countless addins and the general shtick with each you get a lot for free but can elect to pay more for the premium version. I've never paid for anything and want to keep it that way! Did I say free? No monthly fees?

You start by trying it out with an installation on a local machine. Power through all the new BS (creating databases etc) and follow the tuts and you'll be working on your site in a few hours. You can do that today and start building the site as you figure out who you want to host it.

As for Etsy, business point not IT, but is the lions share of the value proposition the access to the market, or ecommerce function. I can make a site to sell stuff, but its not going to bring me the world the way for example ebay does. I don't know her business, so maybe it is worth, I'm just asking the question. There are ecommerce plug ins for WP but its probably not going to be as simple as calling shopify and paying them.
 
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Mcgyver said:
I don't entirely understand that. I have move sites that were with GD away from GD, no big deal. (I did however leave the domain register with GD)
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How does that saying go???

YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary.

The biggest two problems I've had with GoDaddy related to:

Moving domains.

The other one was that they are a huge US outfit and they don't seem to like Canadians.

The two might be related because there is a US registry authority and a Canadian one (CIRA). They both have their own rules.

In one case, I also had an issue with privacy laws which are different in the US vs Canada. I could not protect the Canadian entity from money hungry US lawyers. We eventually abandoned the domain, got a new domain in Canada, and then hosted it in Canada. Problem solved.

Another difference is that its easy to get/buy privacy screens in Canada. But the minute you register in the USA, you get 90 million web authoring outfits from India trying to steal your business because anybody can figure out who owns it.

Don't get me wrong. GoDaddy works and so do the other US hosting outfits. One look at their customer base and you know that's true. But I've personally had better experiences sticking to Canadian services.

One other piece of advice. Stick to dot CA domains. That keeps you a bit safer too. Not only that but it's a bit cheaper than dot COM. I have a few dot org domains too but I prefer dot ca.
 
Shopify would be a better option for sales than Etsy IMO. My wife is thinking of starting something, it would be on Shopify if I didn't want to build a WP site.

And yes to .ca domains registered with aCdn vendor. .com and US hosting opens you to the DMCA, which is a vile pos legislation that you have virtually zero defence against. Your US provider will drop your site based on an unproven complaint and while you might get it back up, in the meantime that business is done due to length of time it takes.
 
When I started it seemed there were low cost, high service offerings (support wise) with really good self serve web sites in the US, like Godaddy. Canada was comparatively dismal. Much higher cost and lousy web sites.

Has that changed? Who would you go with now for domains in Canada? Not so much hosting, who would you use for the domain register?
 
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Mcgyver said:
When I started it seemed there were low cost, high service offerings (support wise) with really good self serve web sites in the US, like Godaddy. Canada was comparatively dismal. Much higher cost and lousy web sites.

Has that changed? Who would you go with now for domains in Canada? Not so much hosting, who would you use for the domain register?
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WHC.ca is biggest by a wide margin and still have great service. I have about 2 dozen domains with them and no complaints except during the takeover of Sibername. Can't really blame them for that.

They do hosting too. I know you don't like both on the same service and I used to feel the same way. Times have changed and I do everthing at WHC now.
 
Just be aware of the teaser rates, they start of cheap for the first year. I have needed to keep moving it's a bit of a PITA.
 
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