Setting up a website advice

[Farmer Fin]

Any advice on how to go about registering a domain and setting up a website? Thanks

 

[Chris F]

It’s all very easy these days. All can be done DIY. Buy your domain and use something like aiteground or godaddy for hosting.

we use 123reg to buy domains.

What you doing?

 

[Dry Rot]

I have built and put up my own web sites since Frontpage and cannot agree with Chris. For some reason, the IT brigade seem to want to make everything complicated and then explain how to do it with a language that is not standard English! Sorry, but it's true! I have had some involvement with the printed word, have been published (and have published) and I think I am reasonably good at communicating but trying to get my web site back up since sacking Godaddy has been a traumatic experience! Godaddy is fine for beginners but they do apply the hard selling to sell you stuff you don't need -- which is why I dumped them.

If you are a beginner, probably best go with Godaddy who have an excellent Help service. They seem to employed freelancers who you score after each help session so they are keen to give you a good service. I build my own sites with Dreamweaver but there are good cut-and-paste sites which are (apparently) easy to use. I really think I have the wrong sort of brain because I've recently gone through at least six hosts (who provide the online space when you upload your site) because I found their instructions so annoyingly imcomprohensible. They write in acronyms and technology (probably translated from urdu) which I simply don't understand! But maybe you will!

I am currently with (or trying to be) Hostinger who appear to be Estonians!

 

[Farmer Fin]

It’s all very easy these days. All can be done DIY. Buy your domain and use something like aiteground or godaddy for hosting.

we use 123reg to buy domains.

What you doing?

Thanks for the advice. Thinking of setting up a site where farmers come together to chew the fat and maybe flog them some stuff at the same time ?
Its for the mrs and involves horses - I would imagine that’s where most people on here lose interest rapidly!

 

[Chris F]

I have built and put up my own web sites since Frontpage and cannot agree with Chris. For some reason, the IT brigade seem to want to make everything complicated and then explain how to do it with a language that is not standard English! Sorry, but it's true! I have had some involvement with the printed word, have been published (and have published) and I think I am reasonably good at communicating but trying to get my web site back up since sacking Godaddy has been a traumatic experience! Godaddy is fine for beginners but they do apply the hard selling to sell you stuff you don't need -- which is why I dumped them.

If you are a beginner, probably best go with Godaddy who have an excellent Help service. They seem to employed freelancers who you score after each help session so they are keen to give you a good service. I build my own sites with Dreamweaver but there are good cut-and-paste sites which are (apparently) easy to use. I really think I have the wrong sort of brain because I've recently gone through at least six hosts (who provide the online space when you upload your site) because I found their instructions so annoyingly imcomprohensible. They write in acronyms and technology (probably translated from urdu) which I simply don't understand! But maybe you will!

I am currently with (or trying to be) Hostinger who appear to be Estonians!

I don't actually like GoDaddy, they were complicit in the theft of a number of our domains and were zero help (they allowed telephone access to an account we then got locked out of). But they do offer a beginners service.

That's why I suggest siteground first. Just not quite as simple, but still easy to do a Wordpress site. Direct Driller website is wordpress.

 

[Chris F]

Thanks for the advice. Thinking of setting up a site where farmers come together to chew the fat and maybe flog them some stuff at the same time ?
Its for the mrs and involves horses - I would imagine that’s where most people on here lose interest rapidly!

Can't believe no one else has done that before! Maybe consider setting up an online Union next!

If you wanted a suggestion for a cheap company to do the whole thing for you, I could suggest some names. The company that did all the Tigerfert branding and stands does small websites as well. I met him a few times and was really nice.

 

[Farmer Fin]

Can't believe no one else has done that before! Maybe consider setting up an online Union next!

If you wanted a suggestion for a cheap company to do the whole thing for you, I could suggest some names. The company that did all the Tigerfert branding and stands does small websites as well. I met him a few times and was really nice.

If you wouldn’t mind. It’s not something that either of us know anything about and both lack a bit of creativity!

 

[Chris F]

If you wouldn’t mind. It’s not something that either of us know anything about and both lack a bit of creativity!

Here you go - say Chris from The Farming Forum recommended him:

Rhys Larcombe | Director [email protected]


Telephone: +44 (0) 1538 787559

Unit 2 Sneyd Mill, Sneyd Street, Leek Staffordshire ST13 5HP

I did suggest he set up a service for farmers, as loads of us need our own small websites for diversifications.

 

[Zippy768]

Used GoDaddy to set up ours. Tried wordpress and just did not get on with it. As with anything techy, if your not familiar, it takes a bit of getting use to. Dont think that you'll set one up in an evening.
Through GoDaddy you buy the domain you choose and pay a yearly fee, which I think is quite reasonable. It was the most straightforward option I found - and me and tech dont get on!

I make regular changes to it but it doesn't contain anything other than pics and text. No interactiveness just navigation from page to page. I dont need anything more.

Imo the more tech savvy you are the more options you'll have.

 

[Dry Rot]

Interactive sites used to be easy. They were called forums and on, I think, usenet. Anyone remember rec.business.agriculture?

No, I don't like Godaddy either. They are money grasping barstewards, to put it politely.

Anything Adobe now has to be rented, as is lots of other stuff, but there is usually a workaround which I use because I am allergic to rips offs.

I think one of the most annoying things about modern life is the continual need for things to be "updated" and 'improved", usually just after you've half learnt how to use what's existing. But that's from an 80 year old who is just getting the hang of life! (Nothing wrong with horses. I have 10 of them!).

A friend put up this temporary site for me in return for a favour. She said it took her about ten minutes, lifting pages from my regular site which is currently down, but she does it professionally. It cost nothing either. http://morrichstud.mystrikingly.com...mLpoHJMw9ay8nBaRo3-lE3C-sjnSOZtHACWrzZa0Y1DNo

 

[J B]

I did my own (very basic) website on https://www.weebly.com/uk
I've had my own domain name for years, it was registered with UK2, but I've just swapped to 1&1 (ionos) who redirect it to weebly for me

 

[Scribus]

I used to build websites using an HTML editor and the process, once you'd got over the apprehension of actually doing it, was remarkably easy and I have had three page websites up and running within a couple of hours whereas the normal 'professional' website builders would want a fortnight and 500 bucks minimum. But then that's oh so old fashioned and belongs to a much more innocent era of websites simply being shop windows and information points rather than datarape portals. Anyway, whatever your intentions I'd strongly recommend that you keep it simple and easy to update, and you also update the content regularly to keep it looking fresh.

However, the most important questions you need to ask yourself are what is the purpose of the site and how are people going to find it? The answers may not be as straightforward as you first think.

The best hosting service I have used is Hosting Ireland -

Web Hosting Ireland - Buy Website Hosting, Domain Names, VPS & Dedicated Servers. Register cheap .ie Domains

Hosting Ireland is Ireland's leading provider of web hosting solutions and domain names, specialising in Shared Website Hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting and Dedicated Servers.

www.hostingireland.ie

 

[Clive]

Any advice on how to go about registering a domain and setting up a website? Thanks

use siteground to buy domain and build a site - it’s VERY easy with no tech knowledge required their help is good

i did the farms website in less than a day using it and most of that tine was writing the content ! it’s not great but does the job. www.twbfarms.co.uk and it costs less than £50 a year

avoid godaddy - as chris says they were complicit in a domain name theft from us and not at all helpful

 

[Farmer Fin]

use siteground to buy domain and build a site - it’s VERY easy with no tech knowledge required their help is good

i did the farms website in less than a day using it and most of that tine was writing the content ! it’s not great but does the job. www.twbfarms.co.uk and it costs less than £50 a year

avoid godaddy - as chris says they were complicit in a domain name theft from us and not at all helpful

Cheers Clive. Your farm site looks the level we are after.

 

[Scribus]

use siteground to buy domain and build a site - it’s VERY easy with no tech knowledge required their help is good

i did the farms website in less than a day using it and most of that tine was writing the content ! it’s not great but does the job. www.twbfarms.co.uk and it costs less than £50 a year

avoid godaddy - as chris says they were complicit in a domain name theft from us and not at all helpful

I'm sure it does the job for you Clive but it does tend to epitomize the problem I see in many CMS based sites and that is the over reliance on white space and simplistic geometrical layout rather than a more engaging pallete and innovative arrangement of information. Wordpress has a lot to answer for.

 

[Clive]

I'm sure it does the job for you Clive but it does tend to epitomize the problem I see in many CMS based sites and that is the over reliance on white space and simplistic geometrical layout rather than a more engaging pallete and innovative arrangement of information. Wordpress has a lot to answer for.

it’s £50 ish a year and a few hours unskilled work - can’t expect a lot for that but it’s all most would want for a shop window farm website

i could get something really cool done - but could also easy spend 10k plus doing so !

 

[Scribus]

it’s £50 ish a year and a few hours unskilled work - can’t expect a lot for that but it’s all most would want for a shop window farm website

i could get something really cool done - but could also easy spend 10k plus doing so !

And a lot more than that should you wish. It all depends on how you view your marketing, whether it's an essential part of the business or a necessary evil that is to be attended to as a last resort.

It's not just you though, the necessity of being able to view sites on much smaller screens has driven the web to an unceasing blandness that few companies make any effort to try and avoid.

 

[Clive]

And a lot more than that should you wish. It all depends on how you view your marketing, whether it's an essential part of the business or a necessary evil that is to be attended to as a last resort.

It's not just you though, the necessity of being able to view sites on much smaller screens has driven the web to an unceasing blandness that few companies make any effort to try and avoid.

i think the likes of google, amazon, facebook etc have proven that less is often more and white space works - not much they do isn’t carefully researched and A/B tested to death

 

[Scribus]

i think the likes of google, amazon, facebook etc have proven that less is often more and white space works - not much they do isn’t carefully researched and A/B tested to death

Facebook uses a pale blue background, Amazon a grey and Google isn't actually selling products directly.

 

[Clive]

Facebook uses a pale blue background, Amazon a grey and Google isn't actually selling products directly.

think you are in a “different” internet to me !

white space is king of ALL the big sites ..... for a reason, it works and they have spent billions testing and researching that