Website help thread

[Alpha]

I am also a new business and need help with a website. I've looked at the google supplied 'getting british business online' which gives a free website with templates and also vistaprint will do one for £2.99 a month and I can get matching business docs with them. But I'm lost on how to buy a domain name, and all the web hosting jargon. Money is none exsistent at the mo, so I'm thinking of going the free route but I'm scared!!!!!!

 

[Ruth Mills]

I am also a new business and need help with a website. I've looked at the google supplied 'getting british business online' which gives a free website with templates and also vistaprint will do one for £2.99 a month and I can get matching business docs with them. But I'm lost on how to buy a domain name, and all the web hosting jargon. Money is none exsistent at the mo, so I'm thinking of going the free route but I'm scared!!!!!!

GBBO sites come with a free .co.uk domain name. Vistaprint sites should come with a domain name too, but of course you have the monthly fee then.

If buying a domain name on its own, 123-reg.co.uk are pretty good - £7.03 for a .co.uk domain name for 2 years (so over 10 times cheaper than the £2.99 per month Vistaprint site) - and it's possible to get 123-reg domains to work with other "free" sites like Weebly and Wix too...

Be careful with the 123-reg add-ons though - if you already have an email address, you can "redirect" your email to your exising email address for free, rather than paying the equivalent of 99p + VAT per month for a 123-reg mailbox.

Likewise, their hosting packages are probably best for people who are technically proficient to create their own websites (e.g. using Dreamweaver or FrontPage) and upload the to 123-reg hosting space via FTP, as from what I've heard, their template site builder is a bit limiting in what you can do with it. So unless you want to use something like Dreamweaver to create your site, then you're probably best going for something like Weebly instead.

Of course the main advantage of having your domain with a company like 123-reg is that it's a lot easier to move your website in the future should you ever need to - whilst keeping your domain name. As it's normally quite a hassle to move domain names between different companies - it usually takes at least a day or two to move a .co.uk domain - and a week or more for a .com!

 

[smooth]

When you do one way links where by you link your website to another (say advertising sites) then you are giving them priority as it is classed as relevant one way links which ranks high in google. The more relevant one way links you have the better google sees your website as being, when other websites rank above yours then this will push your website naturally down the ranking list. Organic SEOing works but you can easily do this yourself.

Have the search term repeated at least twice on your home page for a start and try and get other sites to link to you but don't do agree to this if you get an e-mail from someone asking for a 2 way link.

Hope this helps

 

[Ruth Mills]

When you do one way links where by you link your website to another (say advertising sites) then you are giving them priority as it is classed as relevant one way links which ranks high in google. The more relevant one way links you have the better google sees your website as being, when other websites rank above yours then this will push your website naturally down the ranking list. Organic SEOing works but you can easily do this yourself.

Have the search term repeated at least twice on your home page for a start and try and get other sites to link to you but don't do agree to this if you get an e-mail from someone asking for a 2 way link.

Hope this helps

I get a lot of those emails asking for a 2 way link too - often from fairly random sites; I nearly always treat them as spam and delete them straight away.

Incidentally, it's possible to link to someone but not give them extra credence on Google - by using the rel="nofollow" attribute on the link - although it's up to individual search engines as to whether they honour this attribute...

 

[smooth]

me too re the deleting of the e-mails! By the way, your websites that you have, the first one gives the impression it is a rather kinky one, if it is then glad you have the "balls to do it" and if not sorry, hope I've not offended you. How do you know about this link that doesn't give extra benefit to the other site?

 

[Ruth Mills]

me too re the deleting of the e-mails! By the way, your websites that you have, the first one gives the impression it is a rather kinky one, if it is then glad you have the "balls to do it" and if not sorry, hope I've not offended you. How do you know about this link that doesn't give extra benefit to the other site?

LOL, the most kinky bit about the Naughtygirl site is those "AdXpansion" banners that make me very little money at all - but will hopefully pay out $50 one day... it's really just alternative modelling though - there's no nudity or anything like that on that site (I'm wearing pants in all the body paint shoots on there lol)...

Here's the info about the rel="nofollow" attribute too... Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam - I just found it on my travels while doing a bit of research about the "robots" meta tag - and lo and behold it came up about the rel="nofollow" attribute as well...

 

[MissConfused]

i think this thread should be renamed to 'ask Ruth...' haha gosh you could be earning an absolute fortune charging for your time and advice Ruth!!

how sweet to dish out advice to everybody, even those who didn't use her to make their website! oh that sounded catty then didn't it? :\ it wasn't supposed to!! LOL i was just getting at how nice it was to have somebody on here who is willing to offer advice for free, when we all know that others would charge for it! i'll just keep digging... haha.

x

 

[SomersetPysco]

is it best to buy say.... fryingpan.co.uk or frying-pan.co.uk

just for example!!!

 

[smooth]

LOL, the most kinky bit about the Naughtygirl site is those "AdXpansion" banners that make me very little money at all - but will hopefully pay out $50 one day... it's really just alternative modelling though - there's no nudity or anything like that on that site (I'm wearing pants in all the body paint shoots on there lol)...

Here's the info about the rel="nofollow" attribute too... Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam - I just found it on my travels while doing a bit of research about the "robots" meta tag - and lo and behold it came up about the rel="nofollow" attribute as well...

Oh my god, I've just seen what I put and I definitely need to apologise, I'll PM you this.

x x

 

[smooth]

LOL, the most kinky bit about the Naughtygirl site is those "AdXpansion" banners that make me very little money at all - but will hopefully pay out $50 one day... it's really just alternative modelling though - there's no nudity or anything like that on that site (I'm wearing pants in all the body paint shoots on there lol)...

Here's the info about the rel="nofollow" attribute too... Official Google Blog: Preventing comment spam - I just found it on my travels while doing a bit of research about the "robots" meta tag - and lo and behold it came up about the rel="nofollow" attribute as well...

I thought you'd get a fair bit of money for the ad banners, maybe every time someone clicks on your site!

 

[Ruth Mills]

is it best to buy say.... fryingpan.co.uk or frying-pan.co.uk

just for example!!!

Probably choose the one without the hyphen unless it's ambiguous - e.g. Expertsexchange.com could be experts-exchange.com or expert-sexchange.com

 

[SomersetPysco]

thanks x

 

[Ruth Mills]

I thought you'd get a fair bit of money for the ad banners, maybe every time someone clicks on your site!

Probably about 15 or 20 quid a year for the naughtygirl site so hardly worth doing it but better than a poke in the eye with a stick I guess lol...

 

[Ruth Mills]

Oh my god, I've just seen what I put and I definitely need to apologise, I'll PM you this.

x x

No apology needed lol... I wasn't offended, just amused

 

[smooth]

Probably about 15 or 20 quid a year for the naughtygirl site so hardly worth doing it but better than a poke in the eye with a stick I guess lol...

Ha ha yes if I had the choice of £20 or a poke in the eye, I'd go for the cash, in fact I'd probably pay someone £20 to not poke me in the eye with a stick.

 

[NoisyMonkey]

Fryingpan.co.uk is better than frying-pan.co.uk in terms of how quick you'll rank in Google.

This is because lots of spammers bought web domains like bristish-airways-bookings.co.uk, got to the top of Google and then (effecitvely) charged the actual business owners for the enquiries, which wasn't helpful for Google's users or the legitimate business, so as a rule Google doesn't like hyphenated domains quite as much.

Does that help?

 

[Ruth Mills]

Fryingpan.co.uk is better than frying-pan.co.uk in terms of how quick you'll rank in Google.

This is because lots of spammers bought web domains like bristish-airways-bookings.co.uk, got to the top of Google and then (effecitvely) charged the actual business owners for the enquiries, which wasn't helpful for Google's users or the legitimate business, so as a rule Google doesn't like hyphenated domains quite as much.

Does that help?

There are exceptions though. A while ago, I read about a company called "Powergen Italia" (an Italian engineering company, not related to the UK company that were taken over by E-On) who had supposedly registered their domain name *without* a hyphen - with linguistically amusing consequences :green:

 

[smartypantz]

Not sure if I should post here or not,but.... just created my website through Weebly, (as I am broke and saw Ruth mention it here) Now I know nothing about computers, except how to shop and geek :lol:, so I wondered if anybody could check it out and tell me if it is ok thanks a lot here is the link Shellac And Minx Nails                                 Tel+34  647290895 - Home

 

[Jack1102]

Not sure if I should post here or not,but.... just created my website through Weebly, (as I am broke and saw Ruth mention it here) Now I know nothing about computers, except how to shop and geek :lol:, so I wondered if anybody could check it out and tell me if it is ok thanks a lot here is the link Shellac And Minx Nails * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Tel+34* 647290895 - Home

Having had a glance I can see:

two different font types (your homepage is too big)
services: has a "vertical" scroll bar, doing nothing at all - remove this if you can
price list: is in Euros? Are you in Ireland, if so, where, as you have not detailed this at all
gallery: again, text too big, but personally I would remove this until you're ready to display it
contact us: again, no location or telephone number, or even name
contact number: but this on your own page, and that's where people will look to contact you (and separate your number +34 647 290 895 so its easier to read)

 

[Baggybear]

Hi
I have a bit of experience using FrontPage as my other half had a website made for him using this. We have the programme and had to add our own pages to the site as he was selling comics and needed to put a page for each comic with a photo and a paypal button and a discription (the person making the site wasn't willing to load them all - we have thousands & my OH prefered to do it himself anyway lol). We paid a lot for the site (I think we were stung big time) but it didnt bring in the customers that we hoped for and we have now taken the site down.

So I've been on 123 Reg and chosen a domain name for a new site for me and I know how to make pages etc with FrontPage but thats where my knowledge stops. Should I pay the £19.99 for Instant Traffic with 123 Reg?. Will it be easy to find a cheap/free host and how hard is to then upload my designed site to the host (was told something about pointing my domain??).

Am I thinking of taking on too much or do I know the harder bits and just need a little help to get it all to come together.

Advice would be apreciated.