We want to expand our family sugaring operation to a website. Does any one want to share their experience or know were i could get some direction or info from?
where is a good place to get a website statrted??
We want to expand our family sugaring operation to a website. Does any one want to share their experience or know were i could get some direction or info from?
3rd generation maple producer
3x10 Lightning Small Brothers (on natural gas)with piggyback
Still need more taps, 1100 on vacuum
A 24' x24' sugarhouse (2011)too small(2012)
Homemade Finishing and Bottling Equipment (on natural gas)
Brother to Brother operation with plenty
of family and friends support
Still expanding, new sugar house being planned for 2018
smitty76... is it safe to assume that you are not really familiar with HTML, hosting, and SEO? If that is the case and you don't want to pay the big bucks for a web designer and system administrator a few options I would recommend checking out are;
GoDaddy Website Tonight
http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/website-builder.aspx
This is a template system that you basically choose the design you like and change text and photos to suit. All inclusive with excellent support costs you $60/year with one email address. I have over 1 dozen producers listed on Sugarbush.Info using their service.
Small Farm Central
http://www.smallfarmcentral.com/
Includes domain, web site templates, and small farm marketing starting at $100 / year. I have close to a dozen producers using their service listed on Sugarbush.Info as well.
Square Space
http://www.squarespace.com/
Another template site that includes hosting except it's not exactly a template. This is the grand-daddy of pre-formatted web sites and will cost about $144 / year. Check out their demo to see how awesome this service is.
The final option I recommend is to buy HTML for Dummies (like I did) and just start mucking around with things. It will take a ton of time so be sure it's a hobby and not something you just want the end result from. Domain name about 10 bucks a year, hosting about 6 bucks a month, various software to design things with is up to you (free to $1000's).
Whatever route you go plan on spending a good amount of time on it to get the text or photos just right and then contact Bryan Ex for advice. He's pretty decent at knowing how the Internet works.
Thanks BryanEx, and you hit the nailo right on the head as i am not familiar with this stuff.
THANKS AGAIN, SMITTY76
3rd generation maple producer
3x10 Lightning Small Brothers (on natural gas)with piggyback
Still need more taps, 1100 on vacuum
A 24' x24' sugarhouse (2011)too small(2012)
Homemade Finishing and Bottling Equipment (on natural gas)
Brother to Brother operation with plenty
of family and friends support
Still expanding, new sugar house being planned for 2018
Well good luck with it smitty and like I say, be prepared to send more time on getting things set up than you may have bargained for at the beginning. This is one area I am actually researching for 2012. I would like to offer pre-formatted web sites as part of Sugarbush.Info specifically for maple producers but there may be more involved than I can handle as a free hobby based web site. I will keep you posted if this comes to be and keep us posted on your progress with your own web site.
- Bryan
Last edited by BryanEx; 09-07-2011 at 07:45 PM. Reason: typo, typo, typo... always a friggin typo
I've been doing a ton of research on offering pre-formatted maple web sites and figure I could do it for about $50 / year not including the cost of registering a domain name for each producer that wants one. The disadvantage would be that I can not offer the resources a giant like GoDaddy can offer but the advantage would be that being a maple producer myself I could offer industry specific support and advise. To make it work I would have to upgrade my existing hosting to be a hosting account myself which is about a 500 dollar investment to start. That means I would need 10 producers interested in an easy format web site to make it work. Would you be interested in having your own web site for $50/year? If there's enough interest I'll give it go for 2012.
- Bryan Ex
yes, I am interested. I would like to have it up for the 2012 season. I am currently remodeling the out side of the sap house so i would like to have that done before i create a web site. sounds like our time lines might line up. everything has come to a stop here do to the severe flooding, should soon be back to work on sugar shack. keep me postede Bryan Ex
3rd generation maple producer
3x10 Lightning Small Brothers (on natural gas)with piggyback
Still need more taps, 1100 on vacuum
A 24' x24' sugarhouse (2011)too small(2012)
Homemade Finishing and Bottling Equipment (on natural gas)
Brother to Brother operation with plenty
of family and friends support
Still expanding, new sugar house being planned for 2018
I have a small farm operation and used David McMillin. He providede what I asked for at a very reasonable cost. He also set it up so I could maintain the sight myself with little or know web experience. I would recommend atleast trying him: davidmcmillin@cox.net.
Originally I tried setting up my own as I am pretty computer literate, but not having much web experience I soon found out that I could setup a simple website using a so so template, but as soon as I wanted any bells and whistles I was left scratching my head.
If anyone is interested, I might be willing to help with a set-up. I do web design as a hobby, and would be happy to work out some sort of trade. (I'm just a backyard producer in the suburbs, and so I don't make a lot of syrup each year. I actually ran out already!)
As an example, I designed the website for a local coffee shop here in town: http://www.limestonecoffeetea.com/
The front page has changed a bit (and they actually recently closed), but you can at least get a sense for what I can do. Send me a message if you're interested or even just want some tips.
~DK
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