if developing a website is on your to-do/new years resolution list...

elven

Pay attention.

Seriously good advice, and a bit of humour in there too. Thank heavens my design doesn't fit any of those categories! Now I just need to actually build the thing... :rolleyes:

Borderfox

I went the easy way and used www.clikpic.com got the domain off them too. Easy and painless.

bovril

Cheers Elven, LOL.

"wow 'em with sound"

Paulw

Very interesting. I'm about to rebuild my own site.

I got my hosting and loads of useful bits with SiteGround.

Fenster

I think most of us are just lazy Wordpress-using bums.

whyulittle

Proficient Dreamweaver user here! :cool::p

stcstc

i actually used apple iweb and it only too me around an hr to build the site

kensutz

Just bought myself a mini mac and gonna go through that iWeb to see what it's about

stcstc

its really simple, and works quite like a desktop publisher rather than a web authoring tool


not sure you could do anything too clever with it, but worked for me for something simple

Calina

Coppermine user.

I spent a lot of today trying to change and eventually just changed the skin.

Cabaal

hosting wise I have to recommend godaddy.com, damn good value

shepthedog

Building a site is on my new years to do list so this is a very interesting thread..
What type of feedback or image sales are people getting through their sites??

unreggd

I use doteasy

free hosting when u buy a domain [got a .com for a year for $10]

might upgrade to the next package for the xtra data transfer

No popups, just a Doteasy link at the bottom, nothin major

deegs

Cabaal wrote: »

hosting wise I have to recommend godaddy.com, damn good value

Ya but hosting in an american server is a sure fire way to not get into any irish search engines.

Stick to Irish hosting agents, you can get them quite cheap also.

rymus

deegs wrote: »

Ya but hosting in an american server is a sure fire way to not get into any irish search engines.

All my sites are on servers outside Ireland are are listed in search engines... Also, Irish search engines? Are there any? I assume you meant search engines with localised Irish content. In other words, every search engine. Google.ie comes to mind. As does yahoo.ie. Who really cares about any of the lesser used engines?

deegs

rymus wrote: »

All my sites are on servers outside Ireland are are listed in search engines... Also, Irish search engines? Are there any? I assume you meant search engines with localised Irish content. In other words, every search engine. Google.ie comes to mind. As does yahoo.ie. Who really cares about any of the lesser used engines?

Rymus, Hi, i do this for a living and that is why i know how it works. You are misinformed, hosting in a country non-native to your market is a big boo boo...

If you host in america your ranking on google.com (or yahoo or any other service.com) will be good, but you will not be as good if you user searches from google.ie (selecting either the web, or pages from ireland)

The search engines are not clever enough to figure out where your business is. They need to rely on the IP address of your server, more important than this is the top level domain (TLD) of your server... For me my servers TLD are related to hosting365, and google is smart enough to know that these are irish registered servers. If you are with godaddy, it sees you as american.

Therefore (at the moment) the search engines will give precedence to poorer marketed sites that are of irish origin over good american sites.


do a few searches on "Geo hosting" or "tld location" to get a few entries like below
http://seo-space.blogspot.com/2007/11/geo-hosting-and-seo-rankings.html

if you dont believe me check the difference between your rankings on google.com and google .ie

Paddy@CIRL

Got my domain and server space from www.ctsolutions.ie, site is all my own work in dreamweaver with a slightly modified version of simpleviewer for the images.

Cameraman

deegs - I just tried a search as you suggested - my .com site is hosted in the UK :

google.com and google.ie give the same result.
If I choose "pages from Ireland" on google.ie, then I appear higher-up.

So, to me this would indicate that it does 'know' that my site is relevant to Ireland !

Sully

deegs wrote: »

Ya but hosting in an american server is a sure fire way to not get into any irish search engines.

Not something that iv noticed.. any site that iv developed that's Irish based has worked well on Google.ie/.com.

Example: Search for a pure Irish site on Google "Discover Tramore". Guaranteed #1 on .ie and .com (at least it was at time of posting!)

Also, my own company site which isn't as well optimised comes up on Google.ie and Google.com. Despite heavy competition with similar names.

Stick to Irish hosting agents, you can get them quite cheap also.

Shop around and you will. However, there nothing compared to our UK/US Friends. Webmaster forum had a debate on that, interesting conversation.

deegs

Cameraman wrote: »

deegs - I just tried a search as you suggested - my .com site is hosted in the UK :

google.com and google.ie give the same result.
If I choose "pages from Ireland" on google.ie, then I appear higher-up.

So, to me this would indicate that it does 'know' that my site is relevant to Ireland !

Hey cameraman, actually forget about google.com as your debate is a uk vs irish issue.

on google.ie a search for courtney frank puts you in fourth place
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=courtney+frank&btnG=Search&meta=

but on google.co.uk the same search puts you in third place
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=courtney+frank&btnG=Search&meta=

not much of a difference but its academic.
google puts your origin as UK.

There is not a huge difference as the search string is the same as your domain but you can see what i mean. Ireland and uk are quite similiar but there is a big difference between usa and ireland.

Carrigman

I went the Clikpic route and this is the result:

www.johnfinnphotography.com

Purely a vanity project born out of Christmas/New Year boredom. Still, I'm pleased with the final product.

elven

Looks great Carrigman, well used. The photos are what stands out with the nice simple design, really classy. You have been busy, a site and a slideshow

Roen

God forgive me but I'll be plumbing for a flash based site for myself. And yes, I still maintain it's the devils work! Watch this space.........

elven

Plumbing? Sheesh, I never knew you needed a wrench to build a website!

Have to find out about this flash malarkey. Maybe you can teach us after you're done

Roen

I don't think any woman ever needed to be shown how to use a credit card, but I'll be more than happy to show you should the need arise

bernard0368

Has anyone used Mr site for the site. I have heard good things but havent come across anyone who has used it.

Paulw

I just rebuilt my website. It took a good bit of work, and plenty of learning, but I'm quite happy with the results. Maybe a bit more work is needed, but that will be done in time.

The gallery stuff was easy enough, thanks to Lightroom.

CraggyIslander

Oldie but goodie

I've been piecing something together with coppermine, but cant seem to get away from that fabricated look (unless start making my own skin from scratch! no time for that :P)

Think i'm going to give the Zen framework a go to see how it handles customisations

Fajitas!

Right, I think my website ticks off every box on that list.

They were supposed to match up, right?

RoryW

This is the webhosting company we use in work who are very good value http://www.vodahost.com/

They also have free website building software
http://www.bluevoda.com/

there are two types of websites that can be built, one of which is one (called soholaunch) which has ecommerce capabilities

Easy to use and design for website luddites

whyulittle

If anyone is interested in getting a bit more hands on developing their own sites, I have some free books going over on adverts.ie.

monument

If you don't already have a Google account (for Gmail etc) set one up, access the webmaster tools.

From there you can claim your sites by a number of ways, after this you can "Associate a geographic location with this site" (ie Ireland or wherever).