How to set up a free website?All advise welcome

hcreas

Hi all,
I hope I am posting this in the right place &that im not asking something that has being asked loads of time here if am I'm sorry:o!!

I am just wondering how do you set up a website. Does it cost anything and the places that say its free is it completely free!with absolutely no catches, is it free forever etc.. Have being looking online but some places say their free but thats only for the trial run. Is it easy/difficult to do.

All advise suggestions, tips etc. on how to do it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks (oh and this is my first ever post!!:))

--By the way the website is for a primary school that currently has no website. The aim is to let people know what is happening in the school and display childrens work. The website must not cost anything. I have three weeks to do it. Thanks;)

worc

You could get a site set up for free but it's going to depend on how much time you have to learn things and what the goal of the site is (i.e. are you looking to blog? Sell things? Business brochure website?).

Throw out some more info about your goal of the site and that'll help you get better advice.

nager

As previous poste said - the more details you can give the better. The people here can give good advice.

hcreas

Very true point;)thanks worc&nager for your prompt replies.

The website I hope to set up is for a primary school(so wont be selling things or trying to obviously). The school has no website at the moment. The aim of the site would be to promote the school, let people know what is going on in the school(contain photos of school concerts,sport events etc.), display childrens work(art work, poems, stories etc.) etc. The website would have to contain different sections for each class level, different section for sport etc. Obviously over time different things will be added on to the website, news of different events etc., different childrens work etc.

The website must be totally free with absolutely no catches, as far as I know some places like freehostia(not giving out about this site and please correct me if I am wrong with my information;)) are free but in the web address it contains yourwebsite.freehostia.com. I would prefer not to have for e.g. freehostia.com being in the web address however as far as I know to change this would cost money.
Also the website for the school must have no advertisments and no pop up advertisements etc. for companies or businesses etc.

I have time on my side about 3 weeks to do it so well I think this would be sufficient time to learn things well I hope:o

Thanks again:)

Trojan

hcreas wrote: »

The website must be totally free with absolutely no catches

Can't be done. The minimum you need is hosting, preferably also a domain, and you can't get either of those for €0 with no catches. You can get them for €0 if you put up with advertising, or if you're a registered charity, or some other edge case, but there's always a catch or requirement.

You could put a very decent site up for €50-€60/yr.

Mark Tapley

I found weebly a good way of setting up a free website - http://www.weebly.com/ The only advertising on the site was at the bottom the page it says "create a free site with weebly" .If you dont want weebly.com at the end of your domain name you need to buy your own domain name. I got one for less than 10 dollars a year.

nager

As per previous poster - it's not possible for free. My advice would be to get a single site hosting package. Get your domain (you can get a .com domain for €7.95/year) , install workpress (free) and build a site. You can update as you go.:)

There is lots of advice and help regarding building a website using wordpress, plus it can be administered/updated by a few people, either on-line from any PC or by even email.

nager

There are plenty of domain names & hoasting pacakges available - just google it.
I'm sure there are plently of others offering similar packages

Trojan

Some great advice above, but again, none of the solutions are 100% free. You could use weebly or wix, but get limited sites with advertising and a poor URL. Or a hosting account for ~€30/yr. There is nothing free that has no catch - you have to sacrifice something.

I'd recommend you ask the parents for donations totalling €50-100 quid and you're sorted.

hcreas

Thanks very much for the great advice.

Would be willing then to create website costing about 30-40e per year. Any suggestions on picking the best one or best suited etc. would be very much appreciated.

Anymore advise,tips etc. very much welcomed. Thanks:)

pcardin

nager wrote: »

As per previous poster - it's not possible for free. My advice would be to get a single site hosting package. Get your domain (you can get a .com domain for €7.95/year) , install workpress (free) and build a site. You can update as you go.:)

There is lots of advice and help regarding building a website using wordpress, plus it can be administered/updated by a few people, either on-line from any PC or by even email.

A .com domains can be bought cheaper than that but I would suggest .info domain that can be bought for $2.95 or even $0.99 at some places. You also need a hosting. I got mine for $12 per year with from a website that had a word hosting and dude in the name. Just search in google.
You can build up your own website then for free (providing that you do have a little knowledge in these things) using WordPress or Joomla. They are for free and great for what you need.

68Murph68

I'd strongly recommend Google Sites. I set up a GAA website using it and found it very user-friendly.

The hosting on Google Sites is free and there are no ads/banners/junk.

The only limit seems to be 100MB of storage which might not seem huge but there are very user-friendly gadgets that allow you to store video and pictures on YouTube and Picasa and import them, which mean they don't take up any of this limit.

Also would seem to be a lot of pre-prepared templates for schools so I'd imagine that these could be amended fairly easily to save a lot of time.

If you don't pay for a domain name the URL would be in the form of

http://sites.google.com/site/schoolname/

where schoolname would vary depending on what you set the site up under.

It's not the prettiest URL but for free it's not the worst.

Personally we decided to go down the route of paying for a gaa.ie domain name, which cost us €20 but there probably cheaper options available - quick search shows irishdomains.com offering .ie domains for €9.95. - It may be that you could get an .edu or .org URL

www.blacknight.com
www.hostingireland.ie
www.irishdomains.com

If you went this route all you would need to pay for is for the domain name as opposed to for hosting.

Also if you do go down the Google Sites route there is a help guide at
https://sites.google.com/a/bsn.ie/support-site/sites-help-page
This is aimed at setting up a GAA club site using a Google Sites template but a lot of the stuff would be very relevant.

TL : DR version

Google sites - user friendly, no ads, zero cost ; URL in the form of http://sites.google.com/site/schoolname/

If you decide you want to splash out on a domain name to make the URL look nicer you're probably looking at less than €10

pcardin

why is anyone suggesting to buy domains and hosting from Irish providers. They are a lot more expensive. I have all mines bought from US and never experienced any problems in the last 6 years.

aidan_walsh

why is anyone suggesting to buy domains and hosting from Irish providers.

Why is anyone suggesting any providers at all when they should know from reading the charter that its against the rules?

pcardin

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Why is anyone suggesting any providers at all when they should know from reading the charter that its against the rules?

Upps! I fixed my post. Provider name removed. :rolleyes:

cormee

pcardin wrote: »

why is anyone suggesting to buy domains and hosting from Irish providers. They are a lot more expensive. I have all mines bought from US and never experienced any problems in the last 6 years.

If cost is the only factor that's of importance to you, then the USA is probably better for you.

But, from an SEO point of view an Irish host is better if your target market is Irish.

Plus, most Isish hosts allow you host multiple sites on a €50 (or so) plan which makes the cost per site pretty much negligible.

Couple those points with the facts that there is no time difference, support is local, page load time is quicker and you're less likely to see the same sort of congestion on an Irish host's server, compared to some of the big American providers, and it's a no brainer.

hcreas

Thanks everyone for all the info;)
Really appreciated, thanks

TonyStark

cormee wrote: »

If cost is the only factor that's of importance to you, then the USA is probably better for you.

But, from an SEO point of view an Irish host is better if your target market is Irish.

I don't understand this part. I understand a .ie works well... but hosting a dotcom... it should make no difference...net neutrality and all of that...

Beggared

Leaving net neutrality aside the OP might have a better chance of getting YourSchoolName.ie than he would have of getting YourSchoolName.com.

Liam Byrne

Small bit of advice re photos of school events, etc - make sure you get parental/guardian permission to upload them!

It's a horrible thing to have to consider nowadays that people have ulterior motives for viewing kids' pics on websites, but it is a major issue and without consent of parents you could open a can of worms!