Web site help

[ben9732]

Here is the story. My wife had a local company (next building) set up an informational site for her Salon. In fact 3 months ago a rep came over to get payment for the next years service, which Les took care of. This week Les went to look at the site and it's down. Then called next door and no response. Yep, you guessed it, they vacated the office space. :crazy: She has tried tracking down the owner but can't.

So after talking to her it turns out that she has no information on the ownership of the domain name, which she uses in the phone book, at websites like Knots, ads, ....everything. After checking Whois, the domain name has not been renewed and will be past it's waiting period for renewal in a few days, so it looks like we can grab it. It was setup through GoDaddy and they concurred to just buy it as it expires next week Friday.

So does anyone have advice of what to do here? I've never played with website design (no forum, just info), but if you need an engineering spreadsheet with macros, graphs and images, or a Powerpoint presentation with automation, I'm your man.

Is this something I can play with on my own after getting set up probably with GoDaddy? Any good technical sites or books to read?

[quadman]

Here is the story. My wife had a local company (next building) set up an informational site for her Salon. In fact 3 months ago a rep came over to get payment for the next years service, which Les took care of. This week Les went to look at the site and it's down. Then called next door and no response. Yep, you guessed it, they vacated the office space. :crazy: She has tried tracking down the owner but can't.

So after talking to her it turns out that she has no information on the ownership of the domain name, which she uses in the phone book, at websites like Knots, ads, ....everything. After checking Whois, the domain name has not been renewed and will be past it's waiting period for renewal in a few days, so it looks like we can grab it. It was setup through GoDaddy and they concurred to just buy it as it expires next week Friday.

So does anyone have advice of what to do here? I've never played with website design (no forum, just info), but if you need an engineering spreadsheet with macros, graphs and images, or a Powerpoint presentation with automation, I'm your man.

Is this something I can play with on my own after getting set up probably with GoDaddy? Any good technical sites or books to read?

I may be on a dial up.... but have your wife give me a call and I will have her something temporary up licketysplit. I've done several temporary sites that I could probably unlock to show you and of course, my current site:
www.indycustomwindowanddoor.com which I built myself with the help of the hosting site's web builder software. I did add the streaming marquee at the bottom myself though.

Here is one I was "playing around" with that actually has an incredible web builder (much better than the one I used on mine), but they are way, WAY too expensive on their hosting plans. So, once the trial period is over, this site will just disappear. http://www.webbuildersolution.com/we...1007/index.htm A shame really, because I REALLY like the web builder.

Don't use Godaddy's web builder. You have to pay for it before you use it. There are tons of totally FREE web builder sites out there that will host, market etc for what I feel are some pretty reasonable rates.

I still owe you my thoughts on your HVAC thing. I've got them ready, just haven't put them down on paper yet. I've been kind of busy with work and the "Honey Do" list at home lately. Sorry about that....

Anyway, let me know if I can help my friend.

[ben9732]

John,

No problem with the HVAC thing. I've been playing with what to do for a few years and not in any hurry.

Thanks for offering to help on this as well. Having Les give you a call is not going to help. She is not that computer literate. And HEY, I'm half owner of the corp! Although I know better to get in her way.

Anytime best to give you a call?

Jack

[madpoet]

I can also give you some advice, I do a lot of website work. Let me know if you need help.

[quadman]

John,

No problem with the HVAC thing. I've been playing with what to do for a few years and not in any hurry.

Thanks for offering to help on this as well. Having Les give you a call is not going to help. She is not that computer literate. And HEY, I'm half owner of the corp! Although I know better to get in her way.

Anytime best to give you a call?

Jack

Anytime is fine Jack. My schedule varies so much I never really know when I'm going to be free. If I'm tied up with a customer or potential customer, you'll just roll into voice mail.

And, FWIW.... on the second website link, I thought I had "fixed" that last line of text at the bottom of the page so that it was in line with the paragraph. I must not have saved the fix/change. Oh well, I was just messing around with a different web builder.

[supereri]

Go out to the web archive and download all of the files and graphics. Then you can rehost the same website once you get up with godaddy. I use go daddy as well for my new website (http://www.guitar-bytes.com) and it's not too hard. I'd be happy to assist if you need.

[supereri]

What's the old domain name (PM me if you want and I'll try to check the web archive for you)? Also Godaddy might be able to restore the website once you sign up with them

[Rube Crowley]

Coffee Cup (not kidding) has some really good, reasonably priced web building and publishing software as well.

[engtaz]

Vert nice post Craige.

[quadman]

Here ya go Jack.... I threw this together last night. The pics aren't re-sized very well and the text is just there for a purpose of scale. Obviously many, MANY changes would need to be made. But I wanted to show you how little "effort" is really necessary with some of these web builders.

This took me a total of about three hours.

http://www.salonparexcellence.citymax.com/index.html

[SomeCiscoGuy]

Here ya go Jack.... I threw this together last night. The pics aren't re-sized very well and the text is just there for a purpose of scale. Obviously many, MANY changes would need to be made. But I wanted to show you how little "effort" is really necessary with some of these web builders.

This took me a total of about three hours.
http://www.salonparexcellence.citymax.com/index.html

The actual site creation only took John 30 minutes - the other 2.5hrs were spent waiting on his 56K Modem to transfer data. :boxer: (smile my friend!)

[quadman]

The actual site creation only took John 30 minutes - the other 2.5hrs were spent waiting on his 56K Modem to transfer data. :boxer: (smile my friend!)

:p

You don't know how close you are to the truth! :D

[ben9732]

Wow John,

First, you spent too much time on this for me.

Second, this honestly looks better then what Leslie spend $400 on last year.

Last, you never discount the tea, lemon and rosemary shampoo. Never. But I noticed you didn’t come up with a page about the bikini waxing. (Now I probably have more attention from other guys here. No, there won’t be any examples of Brazilian waxing.)


Supereri, I had checked the archives and there is nothing there. I did grab a skeleton of her information with a Google cache, but honestly I didn’t care that much for what the site looked like compared to others out there. The site was ShearInnovationsOnline. There are probably 100 salons with that name across the country and the better domain names were already taken. I think this guy, Foxx Enterprises hosted this site himself since all the graphics are dead. Some of the other companies he did are the same, while other are fine, so I think those may have been hosted elsewhere.

Having an informational website so far has been a disaster for Les. Years ago she signed up and paid a company for a site. They took the money and ran. Now this. And like I mentioned, she just paid Foxx two months ago for this year fees. At this point I would just like to start taking care of this for her, but never had any experience with web sites. Like I said, I can come up with great PowerPoint and other corporate presentations that have been given to my old customers like Ford, Chrysler and GM, and I write up and print all her brochures and pamphlets that are given out at the salon or wedding shows. So I hope this is just a learning curve into uncharted territory.

General question – is the web hosting software acceptable to use (what John has done with several sites is very good to me) or since I want to keep some ownership of the site because of my knee jerk reaction to the past , would I be better off getting software line Deamweaver, Expression or Coffee Cup as mentioned? I spend last night looking at some of these. But I tend to go overkill (aka TooManyToys).

I won’t be back much until next Tuesday as today is farming day and tonight to Monday night every waking minute is going to be hopefully the final painting and other details at Leslie’s salon. We started this three weeks ago and it just takes forever.

[quadman]

Wow John,

First, you spent too much time on this for me.

Naaa, it's no problem. I told you when we chatted on the phone that I was going to whip something up for you.

Second, this honestly looks better then what Leslie spend $400 on last year.

Good, tell her she only owes ME.... $250.

Last, you never discount the tea, lemon and rosemary shampoo. Never. But I noticed you didn’t come up with a page about the bikini waxing. (Now I probably have more attention from other guys here. No, there won’t be any examples of Brazilian waxing.)

Did you happen to click on the product and then use the zoom feature? I hope the owner of that pic doesn't take TOO close a look at it.... :p

General question – is the web hosting software acceptable to use (what John has done with several sites is very good to me) or since I want to keep some ownership of the site because of my knee jerk reaction to the past , would I be better off getting software line Deamweaver, Expression or Coffee Cup as mentioned? I spend last night looking at some of these. But I tend to go overkill (aka TooManyToys).

Jack.... I suppose it all depends on where your level of comfort is. Other than the possibility of selling a few products on line (which this site will allow up to five or six hundred products I believe), she is basically wanting just an "information only" type of site. Not a full blown e-store like Parts Express. She wants people to be able to:

1. Let those that haven't.... see her shop.
2. Let everyone know what she does. Especially if she specializes in something.
3. Provide address and phone number (I didn't put the address on there).
4. Maybe sell a few products to earn some extra $$$
5. Provide a contact avenue to the shop other than the telephone.

The thing I like about citymax, is with their pricing, they will host up to FIVE HUNDRED pages at no extra charge (many are like five pages with their "basic" packages). You have TOTAL artistic control over the web site (except there are restrictions against porn of course) and there are no fee's of any kind to make changes. They have hundreds of templates to choose from and at least twenty (or more) different kinds of pages that you can choose from to load into the site. You can have several email accounts through the site for each of your stylists like [email protected]. And, tons of features I haven't even begun to mention.

I don't remember the exact cost, but I believe if you pay for it up front, I think it's around $10-$12 per month hosting fee for a two year commitment. Right now, I pay by the month for my site and it's just under $15. Are other hosting sites cheaper? Sure.... but they don't have NEAR the features and freedom to make changes like this site does. At least, any that I've found anyway. The only thing, once you've got your site up and published, you can't simply take it with you somewhere else. It belongs to Citymax. You can choose to let it expire and go away and you are free to take your domain name of course. That's yours, you can take that any time you want. But, the site stays.

Or, you can buy the ubber expensive Dreamweaver and Adobe software and go through the incredible learning curve and do something yourself. Maybe even looking better that what I'm able to cobble together.... but I'd bet not by a whole lot. And you'd be spending ~$700 or more on the software. No, IMHO, sites like Citymax are perfect for web amateurs like you and me who just want a slick looking little informational site.

[melvin74]

I agree with Quadman.. I am a software developer at work and this would totally fit your needs. I use dreamweaver, visual studio etc and it would take me a little while if i was starting from scratch. I am impressed with the designer. Looks good!