Maple Website

[backyardsugarer]

What software or websites do some of you use to make your businees web pages? I don't need anything fancy. I was thinking about building a site for my business. Thanks

Chris

[red maples]

Godaddy.com it's not too hard and pretty cheap. just leave yourself a few hours or alot of hours depending on how good you are on the computer.

[BryanEx]

It's a very big answer to your question Chris. If you haven't already done so I'd recommend you check out THIS THREAD (http://www.mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?t=10297) for some info but to answer you questions directly...

If you know how to code and host your own web site Dream weaver MX is the leading software followed closely by M$ Front page. If you are not too familiar with web sites you may want to check out http://wordpress.org/. Wordpress is a pre-formatted script that allows you to choose from various templates (designs) and just add your own text and photos. You can use it with your own domain name or register for free hosting and a sub domain from Wordpress. Here are two Wordpress examples to give you an idea. Ennis Maple owns their own domain name (about 10 bucks a year and up) while Occasional Creek is hosted by Word press.

http://www.ennismaple.com/
http://occasionalcreekmaple.wordpress.com/
(You will notice that Occasional Creek has Wordpress in the domain name)

The thing I recommend to EVERYONE is to buy your domain name first. Get that perfect name and do your best to find a .com rather than the other TLD (.net .biz .org, etc). In the mean time register with WordPress and play around with it, get things figured out, and see where you go from there. If you want to host your own site most hosting packages include web site templates that you just need to change to suit and also offer shopping carts if you want to do online sales but you will be getting into a monthly fee for hosting. If you decide to go for it just drop me a line anytime or reply to this thread and I will help you out as much as I can.

- Bryan Ex

[Clan Delaney]

http://occasionalcreekmaple.wordpress.com/
(You will notice that Occasional Creek has Wordpress in the domain name)


That's cuz I'm too cheap to buy a domain! :lol:
It's on the to-do list for the coming year, though. It involves not only buying the domain, but buying an "upgrade" from Wordpress as well. $17, I believe.

[S Culver]

If you set up a site look at the web hosting costs as well. We just redid my companies site and I was amazed the difference. There are lots of factors to watch out for. Intuit had some easy software but their hosting was like $ 900.00 a year:mad: but the set up was free. Of course we had been working with my brother inlaw for about two years before cutting that cord. My wife found Mike Russel who did a great job at a very resonable cost. Like $ 1,100.00. and the webhosting is about $ 180.00 a year. My site is probibly a lot larger than you are looking for ( culverdesignbuild.net ) But he is a one man show and is pretty adaptible to your needs. If you want you can find him on the bottom of my site or I can get you the contact info. Good luck

[holey_bucket]

In my opinion, Dreamweaver is the way to go. But there is a pretty serious learning curve, if you aren't familiar with it. There used to be a 30 day free trial for it too. You can find details at www.Adobe.com

[BryanEx]

Chris... I do not have any formal training on web sites or running servers. It somehow became an interest for me in 2001 and since then has been completely self-taught. My home Internet provider included a 5 meg "home page" in their service package so I bought a copy of HTML for Dummies and started playing around. I made the page pretty colours, added big text, little text, different colour text, and then even a photo or two... looking up how to do each step in the book. As time passed I continued to look up in books or online how to do the things I wanted, figured out how to do some basic graphic design stuff, evolved into php scripts and databases, and eventually Apache web servers. If your computer experience goes back far enough to remember DOS based word processors that required "tags" to format text you will find HTML very easy to learn. If you are newer at computers a for Dummies type book will walk you through the whole process for basic web pages and from there it will be easy to customize freely available templates or just do your own thing.

[BryanEx]

That's cuz I'm too cheap to buy a domain! :lol:
It's on the to-do list for the coming year, though.
Patrick... when you do buy a domain name remember to go back to all sites that link to you and update those links with your new web site address.

[bees1st]

check out"google sites" I believe they're wicked cheap if not free

[Clan Delaney]

Patrick... when you do buy a domain name remember to go back to all sites that link to you and update those links with your new web site address.

MORE work!?!? GraaaaAAAA! It never ends! :lol: