I want to build a website for a business that sells products?

Question

yahoo wants to charge me $40.00 a month plus a $90 set up fee, finances are tight and I want to build a site on my own that way it would only cost me a couple bucks a month to have it hosted, I have Dreamweaver, flash and a couple other add ons for flash, what is the probabilty that I could set this up myself, I am a novice website builder, but a fast learner, any ideas would be very apprecated, thanks

I want the website to have ordering capabilities, they can select items, put them in the basket and pay with a credit card, like amazon.com only smaller scale

Answer 1

Hi,

I personally think you are in way over your head... Custom scripting a full e-commerce site without any web programming experience is going to impossible no matter how quick of a learner your are. I am a very quick learner and it took me over 3 months to learn the basic programing language of PHP and I had experience with web programming! Integrating a MySQL database into my scripts took another month to learn... Learning flash has been a journey that I've been on for years...

I think it would take you 4 to 6 months to create the site you want to build. Also its going to cost you a little bit of money... Taking credit cards is not a cheap thing as far as I am aware and the SSL certificates used to keep credit card numbers encrypted can cost $100+ dollars a year. I'll push you in the right direction though so you don't spend too much... First off find a free webhost. There are lots... Check out http://www.free-webhosts.com/ and find one that supports PHP and MySQL. Then figure out how to accept PayPal instead of credit cards... Spend some time learning PHP and MySQL, there are plenty of tutorials online just pick a few and start reading and experimenting. Last when you decide to build your site draw out it. Figure out where all the data is going and hows its moving...

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Most hosting companies charge a set up fee of $50 and you can get monthly hosting for a business class server for under $30. If you are building a site to showcase your product and send customers to a phone number or email they can order products from then that is easy to do. But, building a shopping cart site is a whole other animal which requires some difficult coding and embedded security forms. So since you say that you are a novice with Dreamweaver it may be hard to do the latter on your own.
www.tutorialized.com is a great reference site for all things design and may be of some help. Also I would pursue other hosting companies to try and get better rates.

Hope this was helpful.

Answer 3

probally pretty quick. Dreamweaver is very easy to use, but it really helps if you know HTML pretty good too. Its really not that hard. You can find good tutorials online. Now when it come to selling stuff, i was never able to get the submit button to work right for me, like on order forms and whatnot. Those submit buttons are tricky. You have to do server-side .php script editing or something of the sort, whitch i have no idea how to do. But for a simple webpage, you should have no problems using dreamweaver

Answer 4

Godaddy is probably your best bet. My uncle is doing a website for his company with them, and the fee's are dirt cheap. Yahoo, MSN and others, typically charge hefty monthly fees, unless you sign to a longer term. Some even charge a small percentage of each sale made on the site. I don't know all of the details of their plans, but at least to me, they seem very reasonable.

Answer 5

£500 to £5000. Just don't pay £5000 for the £500 one. If you are really serious and want a site that is good now and future-proof, A. Do it right and B. Don't do it yourself. You will be asking for trouble!

Answer 6

If you know basic html.. that is a start...
But in order to make a good website... you must know css and javascript too...

Dreamweaver is the easy way out... If there is a mistake and you want to fix it... .i find it harder to correct it, because it uses more complicated coding...

Answer 7

Why not post your request in webhosting forum and get response directly by different hosting services? You can find discounts if you go to the discount section.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com

Answer 8

check out zen cart (link bellow) find a host with php/mysql and you should be good to put your inventory online and roll. Good luck.

Answer 9

i would have to agree html code is the way to start and its always easy to fix. i would try looking on go-daddy.com for a domain name that you can buy, but beyond that, i don't know much.