The time is here, my site is being built.

Hello my friends, it's Jamie here.
I know it's been a while. My old computer bit the dust and had to wait until my income tax money came in.

I registered my business name with the state this last week, so I am ready to begin building my own website and build my VC mall website. I am so exicted to get started on this.

I have got the clothes from my grandmother and are now in the process of getting them ready and organized.

My biggest thing now is getting the website build. I was wondering if a few of you had any good advise on web hosting services. I am overwhelmed with all the web hosting services and stuff. I have black and white pics of my grandmother's that I am using on the site.

 

I've been using Bravenet (Bravenet.com) for about 18 months now, and I'm pretty happy with them. I've had to e-mail customer support a few times and I've always gotten a quick response.

My only complaint is that they recently changed the file manager utility, and it has a bug that they're still trying to work out. It's pretty darn inconvenient, because it orders the files randomly and it's almost impossible to find a specific file. They say they're working on it and it will be fixed, but I'm still waiting. If they don't get it fixed within a reasonable period of time, I will switch hosts.

Even if you choose a different host, Bravenet offers a lot of freebies (such as a mailing list, poll-taking, etc) that you may want to use on your site.

Good luck!

Laura

 

I feel so overwhelmed with the many choices that are out there. I know the basics to look for, but everything else I am just not sure about.

 

Well...if you are talking about a babylon mall website, you don't need the software, you just type in your descriptions and load your pictures in and you are all set.

But if you have a seperate doamin name and want a solo website, you do need to learn some basic html or use a program that uses WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) capabilities

If you look in the workshop forum of this board, an html workshop just ended and there is a lot of useful tips read up on....or ask about.

Chris

 

Oh, and to follow up on what Chris said, basic HTML is pretty easy to learn. Send me a U2U if you want some book title suggestions.

I was never able to get the WYSIWYG programs to do what I wanted, and they always seemed to have link errors. Maybe an operator (ME!) problem, I don't know. Having grown up with computers, I found it easier to just bite the bullet and learn HTML. You can make nice webpages without learning anything too fancy or complicated.

Laura

 

Here is a great place to practice.

http://www.vc-mall.com/practice.php

The good thing about WYSIWYG programs that even if you decide not to use it in the end, you can switch back and forth between code and what people see....and sort of look to see what code matches up to what you just did. And that reinforces learning too

 

Thank you for the great advise so far. I just want to say you guys are wonderful with the advise. And I am very sorry I missed the HTML workshop. I hope you guys will offer that again really soon. I am going to do the VC Mall really soon (trying for this weekend). And wanting to do the solo domain site too. I found one web hosting place that lets me build a website using templates. I like that and think I will go with that for now until I get better at understanding everything. Also waiting for my friend to come back into town from a trip b/c he is letting me borrow a really nice digital camera and software that he has. :bouncing:

 

templates are definitely good!!!

I did my mall first, and am working on a regular site to fuel some more traffic to my mall shop and to provide extra gallery pages for my collection for people to look at as eye candy as well.

Let us know how it goes

 

You guys will be the first to know how things are going!!!:bouncy:

 

Hey, thanks for the bravenet recommendation, Laura; I've been looking for a way to create a more extensive gateway to my mall store, and after fiddling with a free Bravenet registration for a couple of hours, I came up with this:

http://noirboudoir.bravehost.com/index.html

Fun!

 

I guess too many of us looked at that Lin as it says:

Error: Daily Bandwidth Allocation Exceeded
Sorry, this Bravenet hosted web site is temporarily offline.

The web site you are trying to access has used its allocated daily bandwidth. Please try accessing this site again later.

 

Whoops - due to my clunky picture down-loading I expect... Hmmm, considering expanding the bandwidth...


OK, I'm back - I splashed out on a 'Pro' hosting package, cos this is the kind of flexible web space I've actually been looking for for a while.

<b><i>http://noirboudoir.com</b></i>

You'll notice under the 'Garments for Sale' section, that I've linked directly to my Mall departments.

Fingers crossed that this works.
Thanks for the inspiration!!

Lin

 

Lin,
This looks great! Now I'm inspired to try something similar.

I'll put this on my list of retirement projects (40 days and counting...)

Lizzie

 

Yes, I've been inspired by Senti too - I want to have an archive section on miscellaneous extra history and label matters (the stuff that might be extraneous to the resource listing, but still interesting) - I might condense something from the department store thoughts for a feature.

I just think it does help to have some additional pages kind of explaining what ideas and acquisition preferences lie behind the simple Mall listings. Plus a magazine-style format for presenting the clothes (like a newsletter, but googleable). Also, it will be *marginally* less dangerous to link to my Ebay ME page.

I'm going to have to wrestle with the html stuff, though - I've learnt as I've gone along and I'm *terrible* at tables. Hopefully I'll have time to go thru Debs' workshop soon.

40 days! Must be wierd to have such a huge change so close - I can never imagine big changes (work, city/country moves) before they happen...

L

 

It is weird! Especially since I've been teaching since I was 21. And today I'm 50! Now THAT'S weird!

With my newsletters I've been doing a "designer of the month" feature, and this would be a great place to store those.

I'd be interested in hearing what other's are doing with their websites.
L

 

Is it your birthday Lizzie?!?!?! Or are you just saying "in modern days, I am 50" ?!?!?!

Maureen has links to her mall items and her ebay items on hers.

I am going to put a short gallery of my collection on mine. I just have to design it!

 

Lin, regarding your http://noirboudoir.com address.

Is that different from a www address?

Janine

 

Nope Janine, it seems you can take or leave the www part. I've typed in both and they're taken as the same domain.

Don't know why... I think it must be because when I registered the name, I just typed in the name, assuming they'd add the www - which they theoretically did, but I don't need it. If that makes sense.

It's actually a pretty good deal all in all to get that domain name in with the package - I'd held off from buying the .com version (having already got the co.uk one) because most UK companies were charging £20-30 for the worldwide '.com' extensions. You get loads of subdomains to fiddle with too.

It's an even better deal if you buy 3 years hosting at once, but I couldn't stretch to that.

I don't want to be too evangelistic, though - there's a few issues with the inflexibility of the templates, and in what order you can access pages to edit them. But their online basic WYSIWYG editor seems pretty good.

Hopefully I'll have more time to work on it soon - still got 80% brain on another project right now. But this site building thing is great - we're going to have lots of links to exchange!

Lin

 

I'm finally checking back in here....

Lin, I'm glad you like Bravenet. Your site looks nice, and I think it serves well as a gateway to your VC store.

Bravenet isn't bad for domain registrations, but www.RegisterFly.com is even cheaper. Most of the .com domains are $9.95.

I first registered my domains at RegisterFly, but I'm switching them over to Bravenet, which is a few dollars more (I think $14.95), just so I have everything in one place. I'm trying to simplify things.

I still need to get my e-mail set up as [email protected]. I haven't yet looked into that with Bravenet.


Laura

 

Right now, my domains "point" right to the mall until I get a website whipped up.