How do I start my own website?

Question

I sell t-shirts I make myself, and I have made so many that it gets difficult to promote all the different designs... So I want to do a little website, where I can upload pictures of them. also I wanted to do one with the possibility of a "Shopping Cart" so that I can add paypal to it.
Which hosts do you recommend?
How can I add carts to it?


Thanks , sorry for the noob questions :)

Answer 1

As you may know a domain name is just a name, not a real website. If you are going to create your website: 1- Buy a domain name. A domain name is a name you want to call your website (ex: www.yahoo.com). To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. 2- Buy a web hosting service to provide your online space and enable you to get your website online at your purchased domain name.



To get further information take a look at:



http://www.threehosts.com/build



You need a web hosting service which supports online payments like, Master Card, Visa & PayPal. It is very important that your service be uptime. It means that you can access your account whenever you want to update your web pages, and your visitors can view your website whenever they type your website address. If your hosting service is not uptime it is real hell!



If you want to start your website I recommend purchase your domain and hosting together. In this way it is possible to get your domain for free. Some hosting services offer this gift today.



Take a look at:

http://www.threehosts.com/business



There you can reach the three reputable companies that are leaders in the E-commerce web hosting industry. They fulfill all your requirements to sell online or do/accept any online payments. By using each of them, everything you need for such a website is provided in one business Hosting Package.



Hope this helps.

Answer 2

GoDaddy offers a service called "Quick Shopping Cart" which is a cheap and easy way for noobies to open an online store. If you have 20 products or less - which is a good sized store for starting and learning the ropes, you pay only $9.99 a month for hosting, over 600 ready made store templates, you can easily upload your catalog and accept paypal or credit cards and you get a ton of free vouchers for advertising online which is in itself worth the price of hosting.

Answer 3

Costs vary as it really depends on what features you want on your website: flash, autoresponders, live chat, blogs, rss feeds, search engine optimization, payment options, video, audio, google adsense, social networks...just to name a few. Other costs include: domain name registration, web hosting, site building and maintenance, all of which are subscriptions. If you want your own custom template that can cost a couple of thousand dollars. Here is an example of how costs vary: a company I know of paid over $800 for a website to be built and pays $225 a year for domain, hosting and site maintenance. The hospital I work for is paying $55,000 for a website to help recruit employees (my god who pays that much for a website). WYSIWYG site builders costs are low as $4.95 a month which may include domain and hosting. So look into Web designers and developers and check the websites they've built and compare prices. Compare all the different features and see what best suits your needs. Hope that helps and answers your question.

Answer 4

Shopping carts are expensive as you have to buy software to develop your site and then the shopping card facility unless you want to use paypal.



Joomla Open Source Software is template oriented so faster design plus they have lots of free plugins to expand the platform without having to buy extra software. A little difficult to learn on your own unless you have a video to follow along with. Some resources below.

Answer 5

If you want to save yourself a lot of money you could try Joomla as it's a scalable web platform that uses free software and plugins. Shopping cart facilities can get expensive unless you use Pay Pal.



I have a product that gives video tutorials on how to make and market your own website as it's not that easy to learn on your own if you want to take a look at that. Ref below:



The other options is signing up for a Web Hosting Account here http://bit.ly/9u2HPs and using their free website builder and shopping cart facility. You can get a hosting account for as little as $7.95, their customer service is excellent.

Answer 6

This probably isn't that noob friendly, but you may find my site, www.StuzzIT.com useful for this, since hosting plans start at $1.95 per month, plus $12 per year for the domain name. While we don't include any site building tools, it's possible to use WordPress. Also, the hosting includes website templates that you might find useful.



And yes, definitely use PayPal for selling your goods.

Answer 7

Hi Kaichan,



You should check out Office Live Small Business. It's a great tool for people interested in starting their own sites. It's template-based, so you don't need to know how to code. You can choose your own domain name. And, you can add PayPal to your page!



Here are some customer testimonials from folks who've used Office Live SB with great success: http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us/customer-gallery.



Best of luck!

Cheers,

Kim

Microsoft Office Live Outreach

Answer 8

For all your eCommerce solutions, you can check the services provided by FatCow. They have one of the most popular methods for payment processing, shopping cart integration so that your online store can provide the most convenient online shopping to your customers. Their services come with a secure SSL Certificate which can provide your customer the ultimate security.

http://www.webhostingbreak.com/fat-cow-ecommerce/

Answer 9

I suggest you this website http://www.tenhostingreviews.com where you can find a list of the Top 10 Web hosting companies with the best features, support and pricing. You can get everything you need and it's very easy. Hope this could help you.

Answer 10

hi,

3 most important points to be noted during web site creation

1)designing the contents of your site

2)domain name

3)hosting

i'd recommend http://www.tucktail.com/ from where i procured my domain name and hosting services

Answer 11

getting professional help for your website is going to be a vice decision as it will help you expand your business. Email me on [e-mail] and i'll help you design a website according to your needs.

Answer 12

Webs.com is the best. free and easy