Starting a website (Questions).

McKBrew · 07-12-2008, 05:05 PM

I want to start a dot_com site sometime in the next few months. I have already reserved the domain name via go.daddy.com. I understand that the next step would be hosting and building the site.

1) Should I host via go.daddy or are there better options?
2) What other things do I need to know? For example, best resources (books/websites) on how to build a website, most affordable ways to do so, etc...

Any help in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

And yes, in case anyone was wondering, it's going to be about beer.
__________________________________________________

Thanks,

Jess

**Orfy** · 07-12-2008, 05:23 PM

The first thing is the name.

Is it just about beer?
Is going to be used for other things?
Is it commercial or personal?
If it's personal do you want the option to go pro?

McKBrew · 07-12-2008, 06:04 PM

I have the name already.

The main focus is going to be beer and brewing. It is not going to be a combination of commercial beer/brewing and homebrewing. For anyone who might have concerns, it is NOT a competition site for HBT or anything like that at all. In fact I will do nothing but support this site when I discuss the best resource for homebrewing.

As far as business/moneymaking, the farthest I have thought is some logo items on zazzle and probably some hosted ads to start with. I honestly would like to generate some revenue with the site, but I'm not expecting it to be a full-time business at this time.

I'm looking at starting with a free Google Blog to see if I get any interest in my concept and wanted to have the dot_com domain available in case I decide to expand. There are alot of beer sites out there, and I don't think I have anything that hasn't been done before, but I think the format of my site will be a bit unique.

**bradsul** · 07-12-2008, 06:55 PM

It depends how much you want to customize the site. The simplest way to start is a freebie blog site (no hosting fee's etc) or you can get a basic hosting package somewhere - you should be able to find something for ~$10/month or less) and find an opensource blogging system or something like phpnuke or dotnetnuke (depending on the language you would want to work with).

If you go the hosting route with your own software package you can customize all you want, if you go with a blogging service you're much more restricted in what you can do with it.

nealf · 07-12-2008, 06:59 PM

I use bluehost and powweb for hosting; and gotta say bluehost is easy and user friendly if thats what you're looking for.

McKBrew · 07-12-2008, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nealf

I use bluehost and powweb for hosting; and gotta say bluehost is easy and user friendly if thats what you're looking for.

I definately need easy and user friendly, I'll take a look at the sites you recommended.

Tenchiro · 07-12-2008, 07:43 PM

godaddy is as user friendly as they come and very reasonable to boot. I spend $6 per month and have more bandwidth and storage space than I know what to do with. (1.5G storage & 150G bandwidth as well as space for 25 MySQL Dtabases)

Currently I just use Wordpress for a blog as the main page w/ the brewblogger software that I use as my brewlog. Both are quite customizable, although Wordpress has a huge community of developers for just about any plugin/widget you could hope for. It is written in PHP and that alone allows for easy customization of anything you can't find elsewhere.

**WillPall** · 07-12-2008, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nealf

I use bluehost and powweb for hosting; and gotta say bluehost is easy and user friendly if thats what you're looking for.

I used to use powweb, but their service was always terrible. Took a week one time for them to fix an ftp problem for me to login to my site. I recommend site5.com cheap for what you get.

As for where to start, I also suggest just setting up a blog-style page, using Wordpress or the like. Or if you really want to get into the coding side you could try http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/ or search Google for HTML help.

McKBrew · 07-12-2008, 08:23 PM

I'm not the coding type. I am sure I could figure it out, but I'd rather stick with the basics. Thanks for the advice so far.

html034 · 07-13-2008, 05:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by McKBrew

For anyone who might have concerns, it is NOT a competition site for HBT or anything like that at all. In fact I will do nothing but support this site when I discuss the best resource for homebrewing.

Phew! I was reading the thread, and until you mentioned that part, all I could think of was, What will become of HBT with a new competitor out there? Will he shut us down outright, or allow us to continue to go on in some reduced capacity?