Setting up your own web site!

[Jonzjob]

If anyone is looking to set up their own web page but had the same kind of dread as I did then relax! I was put onto a site that offers a frre web site that is an absoloute doddle to set up, working on the principle that if I can do it then a one eyed guide dog can!

The site address is www.hpage.com . You can pay a small one off sum if you don't want the small ad banner, but for me it is perfect! My new address is http://jonzjob.hpage.com but when I have accessed it I have just used the www. and it has found it no problems!

I was really surprised at just how easy it was to set up and very pleased with the result. I am still adding to it every day, 10 minutes or so at a time.

How things move on!

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Good site that John, perfect for your needs. You have a presence, space to write about your products and a good image gallery.

There's many other places to get a site up, like blogger.com or wordpress.org, although they are more for blogging.

If you have your own domain name and server space, and are a bit more technical minded, you can also get a good looking site up using wordpress and one of its many themes. You can create a site that is a cross between a regular website with a blog within the space of an hour or so.

[JohnM]

And.... you can create your content by just using "Word" and when it comes to saving it, choose to do so as a (an?) HTML page. That way you don't have to use the template that everyone else uses.

[Quillan]

You could try Microsoft Live for Small Business which is free, you can buy a domain name through them if you want or use their domain name 'system' where the URL looks similar to the OP's on. Persoanlly I always think a proper domain name looks better and more proffesional. The type of domain name as seen in the OP's post always looks 'cheap' to me but then thats me.

 

[Jonzjob]

If this was a pro site then it would be better for it to be pro from the feet up, but as this is a hobby site and a totally free one at that the expression that comes to mind is "What do you want for nothing? Your money back???"[8-|][B][8-|]

I have no Mikrosaft on my nice shiney new Macbook Pro or iMac...

I will go with the setup n the site as is for now and as I get more used to it I will experiment a bit. As far as I am concerned anything software is mumbo-jumbo and if I can hit it wiv me 'ammer the I can fix it. That's the way it's always been and I'm too dammed old to change now!!!

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="JohnM"]And.... you can create your content by just using "Word" and when it comes to saving it, choose to do so as a (an?) HTML page. That way you don't have to use the template that everyone else uses.[/quote]

There's thousands of different wordpress templates and adding pages and changing theme is as easy as. Plus google likes wordpress which helps with the rankings.

[Araucaria]

[quote user="Quillan"]

Persoanlly I always think a proper domain name looks better and more proffesional.

 

[/quote]

Some other things help, too.[:)]

[Judith]

John,

Do you know if you have to submit your web page to search engines, so others can find it, or does hpage do it for you?  This is a stumbling block I've found with a web site 1 designed a little while ago in google....

[Jonzjob]

Judith, if you mean this John then I have no idea? I will ask the question on the hpage forum..

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Judith, getting your website high in the rankings is a full time job in itself.

One of the quickest ways to get your site listed is to submit it to this site:

http://www.feedping.com/

Google should pick it up from this within a few days.

But there is so much else you can do, write articles on the theme of your site and submit to ezinearticles.com with links to it, make squidoo lenses and link to it, submit to other article sites, rss feed sites, social bookmarks... the list is endless. Basically, the more sites linking to your site, the better your google rank will be.

But you can have the best looking website in the world, but if noone visits, it's a waste of time.

And before doing all this, you need to decide what your main target keyword is (the word that you want people to type in to find you). Have I bamboozled you yet?

[pachapapa]

[quote user="Araucaria"][quote user="Quillan"]

Persoanlly I always think a proper domain name looks better and more proffesional.

 

[/quote]

Some other things help, too.[:)]
[/quote]

[:D][:D][:D]

[Judith]

CdL

Thanks, no you haven't bamboozled me, I searched web sites for years as part of my professional life, but never set up a site before, hence the questions.  The site is "only" to put our house for sale on, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep trying the "free" route, or just pluck up courage and pay to go on some of the well know sites.  I'll look at feedping and see how difficult it is.

[Judith]

[quote user="Jonzjob"]Judith, if you mean this John then I have no idea? I will ask the question on the hpage forum..

[/quote]

Yes, I did, John.  Thanks, I don't want to spend time subscribing and uploading if it won't do the job - it's only to try to sell our house .....

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="Judith"]CdL

Thanks, no you haven't bamboozled me, I searched web sites for years as part of my professional life, but never set up a site before, hence the questions.  The site is "only" to put our house for sale on, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep trying the "free" route, or just pluck up courage and pay to go on some of the well know sites.  I'll look at feedping and see how difficult it is.

[/quote]

Feedping is simple, just copy and paste the url of your site, add a title, select check all and hit submit. It'll take a few minutes to ping all the selected sites and some may even fail.

I'd suggest setting up a simple "web". You have your main site, if you do 5 squidoo lenses that link to your main site, and perhaps write a few articles about the house and area 350 words or so and submit to ezinearticles.com (it'll take a week or so for them to approve them, but they are the best article marketing site out there) and link these to your website, this will give you a bit of a boost to get up in the rankings. Squidoo and ezinearticles have high authority with google, so the links from there to your site will be quite powerful.

Think of some keywords that you might think people will search for and use the google keyword tool which will show you how many people are searching for that particular term as well as what the competition is. Then use these keywords in the titles of your articles and squidoo lenses, and hopefully you'll get a bit of traffic and some authority in google.

Of course, you can do much more, if you have facebook or twitter, again link to them from there, submit your ad with links to property websites as well, the more the better.

You can also, once you've created your lenses and articles, submit the url of these to the feedping site as well.

And over the course of time, any more links or articles or blog posts etc that you make and link to your site is only going to do it good. It will take time to build this up, but it can be well worth it just for a few hours work.