[trubleshtr]

Ok I'll admit I don't know much about how web sites are made, but, I want to set-up a web page for my business, and thought I would ask around if any of these "free" web pages advertised are worth the effort? Sounds to good to be true.
Which one(s) are the best? or should I just find a way to build it and then have someone "host" it for me for $....?

thanks for your input

......I feel so analogue.........

[djh82uk]

You will tend to find that the free hosts, either force advertising on your site, have slow speeds or charge you the earth for any extras such as email. Also you will find most of them only offer html, if you want a business site your much better off with ASP or PHP, I run a small hosting reseller company, if you need some hosting to get you started let me know.

i'll host it for free for 6 months, after which it will be about $10-$15 a month depending on bandwidth, or if by then you know what you want then you can move to another host with no charges incurred, ive always had good prices from godaddy.com aswell so you may want to check them out.

I used to run a web design company so if you want a hand figuring our what you need just let me know and will try and help, just send me a PM

DJH

[elwoodbeauchamp]

Ok I'll admit I don't know much about how web sites are made, but, I want to set-up a web page for my business, and thought I would ask around if any of these "free" web pages advertised are worth the effort? Sounds to good to be true.
Which one(s) are the best? or should I just find a way to build it and then have someone "host" it for me for $....?

thanks for your input

......I feel so analogue.........

Hello,

I have a couple of web store sites on ecrater.com

Absolutely free, unless you wish to advertise on their home page, or on the category main page.

I have barely started to add items to my first store, http://goodthings.ecrater.com

With any new web site, the search engines will not "crawl" your pages for some 6-8 weeks.

You can pop in on ecrater.com

You can build a Contact Us page, FAQ, Categories, About Us, Terms etc.

Each store comes with a shopping cart with PayPal and, until Dec 31 Google Checkout...No charge.

You also may setup multiple stores, only each must be for different products.

The Shopping Cart has several methods you can set up for Shipping, Country, Weight, Quantity, etc.

You may also fill in the meta Description, meta tag, etc. and even submit your site to the top search engines.

Enough chatter..check it out. It may or may not be what you are looking for.

Oh, yea, they track the hits on each item for sale and reset the counters on the first of each month.

ttfn

Woody

[Switcher]

MS claims they will host a free site, I havn't tried them, I do know that one of the members (phooddaniel) here on cnczone uses the service, at least the link at the bottom of the page would indicate they do.

This is phooddaniel website, I think it looks great.




http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/of...534261033.aspx

Reserve your own domain name
Make the first step in taking your business online by creating a unique and personalized domain name (like www.adventure-works.com). Microsoft Office Live Basics includes one FREE domain name for your business.



Easily create and update your own Web site
Site Designer is a simple, yet powerful Web design tool to help you create a professional, fully customized Web site. You can create a Web site quickly, and won't need to hire technical help to maintain it. Microsoft Office Live Basics gives you:
Free Web site hosting
500 MB of Web site storage
Easily upload your logo, images, and documents


Access your own e-mail, contacts and calendar anywhere
Quickly access and manage your e-mail, calendar, and tasks, whether you are in or out of the office.
Up to 25 e-mail accounts, each with a full 5 GB of space
Keep track of people, events, and information
Access e-mail, contacts, and calendar from most Web browsers


Learn more about your Web traffic
Our Web site reports can help ensure that your Web site is really working for you. With Site Reports you can:
Monitor the success of your Web site
Determine which search engines and keywords are driving traffic to your Web site
Find out how many unique visitors and page views you get on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis


Help customers find your Web site
Promote your site to customers searching for what your business provides with Microsoft Office Live adManager beta.
Set a budget, select keywords related to your business, and write a brief text ad.
Your ad may appear to interested customers using Live Search to find your products or services.
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.

[elwoodbeauchamp]

Yes, MS will set you up with a Web page, as I set one up about 4-5 months ago. I didn't keep it very long. To be honest, I don' know what turned me off about it. I do remember something to do with adding some HTML to several pages before I discovered that something was amiss and I could no longer access 75% of the product pages I had spent week upon week to set up.

Any way, here is the link to compare FREE vs. PAY site and services included.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-US/of...e/default.aspx

Woody

[Drakkn]

PM me if you wish - I run several websites from a managed web server in which I can give you some space for you to test the water.

[harryn]

It is not free, but I am reasonably happy with fatcow. $ 100 / yr for 100 email adr, web site, small store, storage, etc. Support is decent.

If your site needs are "simple", they have some free templates that you can set up a site with a sort of copy / paste approach. I did that for mine - very basic, but enough to get started. I am about ready to move up with web site quality chain though. The hosting is fine.