Website cost

[kirsty]

Hi all,

Yell have been on the phone offering me a website for £125 then £20 per month. She said that includes website optimisation (they get feedback from google on the latest keywords etc) and I can phone to add / change things whenever I want.

Can anyone tell me if that is a decent price? My brother in law did my website for me but he doesn't really have time to keep updating it or anything.

Thanks geeks!

 

[Ruth Mills]

The monthly charge seems expensive; is the £20 inclusive or exclusive of VAT? Either way, you'd be paying at least £240 per year, every year.

Are they able to show you any examples of sites they have already set up? Do the sites look fresh, unique and distinctive, or are they a bit bland and generic?

To be honest, the search engine stuff isn't rocket science either; you can integrate Google Analytics with pretty much any website for free, and this will give you a very good indication of what search terms are working best for your site. As long as you mention words like "salon", "beauty", etc, and the name of the town you're based in enough times on your home page (within normal English sentences rather than a naff-looking list of "keywords" at the top or bottom of the page), you'll probably do reasonably well on the search engines. If you list your site on pretty much every "free index" site you can find, this will boost your site's performance on the search engines too, and won't cost you a penny either.

As for having to phone to add/change things to your site; I'd much prefer a CMS (content management system) where you can do it yourself exactly as you want, rather than play a game of Chinese whispers with a call centre!

 

[kirsty]

Thanks Ruth. I £20 is excluding VAT. She showed me 1 website they have done and it was really impressive. What exactly is a CMS and how does it work?

 

[M00min]

I think you should shop around - this website malarkey is so competitive! When I was getting quotes and circulating the brief for mine the prices ranged from a couple of hundred to £1,200 for what was essentially the same thing!!

I have to echo the many other Geeks who recommend Ruth (above!). She did my website and was/is always on hand whatever my questions. I am a very satisfied customer and her services are very competitively priced. Take a look at her site, Salon Alchemy for examples of the work she's done. Hth x

 

[Ruth Mills]

Thanks Ruth. I £20 is excluding VAT. She showed me 1 website they have done and it was really impressive. What exactly is a CMS and how does it work?

A CMS is a content management system; to put it simply, it's a "back office" website which lets you log in and update content on your main website. Many CMS systems provide "WYSIWYG" ("what you see is what you get") editors which make it fairly easy to edit text on your site (e.g. a bit like MS Word or whatever).

Most companies would tend to charge more for a CMS-powered website, as they are more complicated to set up (you usually need a database to store the content, and a server-side language such as PHP, Java or .NET to "power" the site), although there are exceptions, e.g. Vistaprint, Weebly, etc - but the cheaper options tend to limit you to a range of pre-defined templates rather than something bespoke to you.

 

[Beautification]

Ruth Mills..
Who i can see you have been talking to on this thread i highly reccomend!

I don't have a website from her but god know's how many people on this forum do and i've seen a heck of a lot of them and i can say they all look amazin and ruth has helped me out with website querys before & alsorts of it hiccups!!!!:idea:

 

[Diamondgirl]

Ruth is an absolute gem she rocks!! she has helped me so much in the last couple of days with my numpty questions and she really does have a lot of patience....I would highly recommend her if you need help with a website............

 

[smooth]

If you have your own server and you have the ftp details you don't need a CMS system. We have ours and we just update everything on dream from a mac and it works fantastically. You don't need to pay £20 per month, if you need to get someone to look through your site and write a report on the changes necessary and what they will do and you should be able to do them yourself. The onpage stuff is where you make changes to include the search terms to appear at least twice on the page whilst the off page stuff is creating one way links and registering your site at various locations.

 

[Ruth Mills]

If you have your own server and you have the ftp details you don't need a CMS system. We have ours and we just update everything on dream from a mac and it works fantastically. You don't need to pay £20 per month, if you need to get someone to look through your site and write a report on the changes necessary and what they will do and you should be able to do them yourself. The onpage stuff is where you make changes to include the search terms to appear at least twice on the page whilst the off page stuff is creating one way links and registering your site at various locations.

Yep, that's another way of doing it; software like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc, can be used to FTP files up to a web server. Or you could do it the "old school" way of writing your pages in HTML using a text editor and using an FTP client like SmartFTP to upload the content to the server.

CMS is a good compromise if you want someone else to sort out the design of the site initially for you (i.e. the site's "look and feel" - colour scheme, navigation, etc) but then want to take control with your content once that's done.

So really it's up to you, and how much time you want to devote to creating the site intially vs. how much you are happy to pay someone else to do work for you - and also how confident you are technically with things like using Dreamweaver/FrontPage in conjunction with an FTP client, or whether you'd prefer to just log on to a user friendly web-based back-end system and use that instead.

 

[smooth]

Yep, that's another way of doing it; software like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, etc, can be used to FTP files up to a web server. Or you could do it the "old school" way of writing your pages in HTML using a text editor and using an FTP client like SmartFTP to upload the content to the server.

CMS is a good compromise if you want someone else to sort out the design of the site initially for you (i.e. the site's "look and feel" - colour scheme, navigation, etc) but then want to take control with your content once that's done.

So really it's up to you, and how much time you want to devote to creating the site intially vs. how much you are happy to pay someone else to do work for you - and also how confident you are technically with things like using Dreamweaver/FrontPage in conjunction with an FTP client, or whether you'd prefer to just log on to a user friendly web-based back-end system and use that instead.

My guy is quite cheap, quoted me £45 per page but my hubby can add pages etc using dream after looking at the codes. If you get someone else to do it for you then it is more money but looks better than the sites that you can make up yourself. One of my sites has a CMS on it and it cost me a s**t load of money over 3 years ago (into the thousands). When it was on someone else's server it was great but now that we have our own it is easier to upload new content via this dreamweaver system.

It's a scary web world out there but you have to just go with what you think suits you. x

 

[Topmarks]

I use a website template from www.daily.co.uk. it costs me £5.99 per month. You pick one of their templates, customise it to your own taste, writing, pics etc. It includes a shop if you want one. its fab and cheap. You can also get google ads on your website and web optimisation. I have no complaints and you can cancel anytime.

take a look at my site with them www.fabulous-me.com

xx.

 

[Jack1102]

Hi

I designed and hosted my partners site (Gentlehands - Beauty Treatments at home or at work) using Dreamweaver, and 1and1.co.uk hosting.

Although, not flashy or dancey (is that a word), its colourful, creative, and does exactly what shes wants.

At roughly 25p a day to run and maintain (via ftp upload), its very easy to do (even the other half can do it!). The 25p a day includes domain name, upto 100 email address (although we find 2 is enough) and 12 months hosting.

 

[Ruth Mills]

Hi

I designed and hosted my partners site (Gentlehands - Beauty Treatments at home or at work) using Dreamweaver, and 1and1.co.uk hosting.

Although, not flashy or dancey (is that a word), its colourful, creative, and does exactly what shes wants.

At roughly 25p a day to run and maintain (via ftp upload), its very easy to do (even the other half can do it!). The 25p a day includes domain name, upto 100 email address (although we find 2 is enough) and 12 months hosting.

So around £91.25 per year for a domain name, web space with standard FTP access, and up to 100 mailboxes? I think there are cheaper options for that; if you didn't need as many email addresses, then I'm sure that 123-reg hosting would work out cheaper, for example.

 

[gareth_gillman]

Hi all,

I am new here, was told to post here by another member.

Let me get down to the thread... Do NOT ever get a website from Yell. They tell false stories and the websites are worse than a flash website (yes that bad).

Yell DO NOT have any affiliation with Google, if any company says they have affiliation with Google then it's all a load of codswallop.

Yell sites are poorly coded, poorly optimised and aren't exactly good looking either (based off templates). Yell are sales people and NOT website designers / developers and they would sell their mothers if they could.

If you're serious about a website then get a professional company in, the best way to find someone is via friends or google your area e.g. website designers in oxford...

As always do your own research (portfolio, talk to existing clients and google their name) and if a price seems cheap then your website is going to look cheap (in my opinion).

Good luck in your search.

 

[Oldtimer]

Hi there, I just had my website completed by www.neilcawse.co.uk and can really recommend him. He is very professional and finished my website within the specified time frame. He didn't mind all the millions of times I changed my mind about things nor did he mind all my clueless questions - I know absolutely nothing about webdesign. I can now edit the finished website from home and it's as easy as using a word document. No hidden or ongoing charges either. Well worth emailing him! 10/10!

 

[Jack1102]

So around £91.25 per year for a domain name, web space with standard FTP access, and up to 100 mailboxes? I think there are cheaper options for that; if you didn't need as many email addresses, then I'm sure that 123-reg hosting would work out cheaper, for example.

sorry, 19.5p per day - £70 per year but that is the 1&1 Home package, which allows me to design and host several emails with 10gb webspace and monthly unlimited traffic, with upto 10 seperate logins for additional websites if anybody wanted the option to update themselves.

so, in theory, that equates to 10 websites roughly @ £7 per year should anyone need a site including hosting. I orginially had 5 at one time, but have recently got rid of two. All 5 sizes, took up a max of 950mb, leaving almost 0.9gb (900mb) of space, which is more then enough.

 

[Ruth Mills]

sorry, 19.5p per day - £70 per year but that is the 1&1 Home package, which allows me to design and host several emails with 10gb webspace and monthly unlimited traffic, with upto 10 seperate logins for additional websites if anybody wanted the option to update themselves.

so, in theory, that equates to 10 websites roughly @ £7 per year should anyone need a site including hosting. I orginially had 5 at one time, but have recently got rid of two. All 5 sizes, took up a max of 950mb, leaving almost 0.9gb (900mb) of space, which is more then enough.

Not bad if you want to get into reselling web space then! I run a couple of Dell servers myself that I bought outright, and pay a local data centre a monthly fee for co-locating my servers there. But that's primarily because I want total control over the servers and what runs on them, as I run a lot of Java web applications on there and various databases and whatnot.

 

[Mrs RSM]

I used Vistaprint and got the Premium package for about £15pm with the add ons I think.

Its easy to use and you can have all sorts of options, as many pages as you like, the colour and style you like or one you have already, gallery, contact forms, images, you name it, you can do it and best of all I have a co.uk address and you can have up to four email accounts free with it. Its great.

 

[Jack1102]

you got a link Slurpetta?

 

[trozzina]

Hi Jack,

I'm also with 1and1 but only pay about half of that - £35.11 incl VAT to be precise - for the whole year. The domain name is separate at £2.99 + VAT per year.

Might be worth checking you're on the best deal.

I also make my own changes via ftp and would highly recommend this system (or CMS as Ruth suggests). Personally I think it's crazy to be at someone else's mercy when you just need to make a little change to your website, and you also get billed for it. I wonder if it's too easy to think that it's beyond us when really it's not - it's easier than I think many web designers would have us believe.