how do you make a decent website for cheap?

Gnarly Dancer 42 · 360 flip Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 5121 City: kalamazoo

me and my friend were looking into starting a hat company and were wondering how to make a website...

if it makes a difference we would hope to have an online store with paypal, a team section with videos, and an about us section. nothing to fancy right now Smile

scott a · "a" is for angel Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 4126

What's your definition of cheap, and how much design experience do you and your buddy have?

jcoffey · Backside 180 Joined: 24 May 2008 Posts: 1339

yeah what scott a said.

if you really want to go straight budget go to bigcartel.com, but then again if you are anything like me the appearance of an online store has a huge impact on if i buy something. bigcartel being a free online store set-up you probably wont have a whole lot of traffic through only that.

Gnarly Dancer 42 · 360 flip Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 5121 City: kalamazoo

scott a, we have no expirence, and probably like $10-$20 a month is what i was thinking.

jcoffey, hmmm

scott a · "a" is for angel Joined: 17 Feb 2004 Posts: 4126

As far as I know....and someone please correct me where I'm wrong here-

-web hosting $5-8ish per month. emphasis on the "ish" bit because it always varies.

-if you're good at making friends you might be able to convince someone to make you a halfway decent website for 3.5 ramen noodle packets and a reach around or something. But honestly, get something legit because image is everything on the e-net (despite what Sprite said 5 years ago). There are a TON of website templates out there that you can buy that you just have to plug some info into and you'd be set. If you find the right one then it might be worthwhile to drop some coin on it because then you'll have a legitimate looking "store front" for people to see when they enter. Outside of that, paying/convincing someone to make you a website can get costly pretty quick! If you're good with computers it might almost be more cost effective to pick up a copy of Dreamweaver... Laughing

-after that I'm not sure what it costs to actually run an online store.

(This is the little bit of the puzzle that I sort of know...hope this helps!) And maybe someone will chime in...

mr robotto · Backside 180 Joined: 05 May 2007 Posts: 1052

I remember trying to help with someone with this... All I remember is trying to by the URL for cheap at GoDaddy.com and then you can buy nice templates like scott a, said... You can definitely tell the shiznackle ones from the good ones. Most of the money will be the template but the URL should be pretty dang cheap.

crispy · Posted: Sep 06, 2008 10:17 am Post subject:

yeah you guys aree right so far, i'd also start reading up on as much html/phpnuke coding as possible.. will help you for the technical difficulties you will face. and u willl face them

Calskater23 · Backside 180 Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 1795 City: FRESNO

This may sound stupid..

Maybe you should practice making a site on freewebs, or weebly. It's free. I know the sites are gay, but you will get some experience on the basics. You can figure out how you want to have you're site set up and then use that knowledge on buying the right templete for your real site. Also you'll learn what items you need to have on your real site.

Gnarly Dancer 42 · 360 flip Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 5121 City: kalamazoo

Calskater23, i made a freewebs site the other day, it was pretty good i'd say the only downside to that is that the url is freewebs.com/whatever.

mr robotto, my friend showed me godaddy.com and i bought a url for like 10 bucks, i was kinda mad when i found out i couldnt start designing the website, and pretty much gave up on it.

scott a, i guess one of my friends designed some websites for some people, but im not sure if it would be easier to just stick with the freewebs site, or try to see if he'll help me and maybe have to pay like 20 bucks for a host or something....

Evan71 · Posted: Sep 15, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject:

Gnarly Dancer 42, pics of the lids, also lemme get a freebee haha.

Gnarly Dancer 42 · 360 flip Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 5121 City: kalamazoo

LiquidForce71, http://www.freewebs.com/lovehats/

click on products, thats how they're going to look Wink

Evan71 · Posted: Sep 15, 2008 9:52 pm Post subject:

Gnarly Dancer 42, sweet