Web hosting and advertising

[mr. tegu]

What web hosting services have you tried? What do you like or not like? Wix is one that I have my eye on. They seem to have a lot of really good clean templates that also adjust to mobile devices as well.

On that same note, what are people's experiences with Google AdWords? Is it worth it or is your site visible in general search results? I never click ads so I am curious what experiences people have with those.

[DaveNull]

Squarespace 8 days a week and twice on Sunday.

This comes from someone who has managed their own web server, used a shared host, and now uses Squarespace. Go with domain registration through Hover. If you're doing email, go with hosted Exchange (Office365).

Wix seems to tailor their advertising to people that don't have any taste.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Pestilence

Then shut the **** up about templates.

Nope.

Do you know how to do postscript code to print out your documents?

Pretty much the same think.


A graphic designer doesn't have to know how to do code to design a visionary website. They're not web developers or builders per se. Not saying one can't be both.

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

Squarespace 8 days a week and twice on Sunday.

This comes from someone who has managed their own web server, used a shared host, and now uses Squarespace. Go with domain registration through Hover. If you're doing email, go with hosted Exchange (Office365).

Wix seems to tailor their advertising to people that don't have any taste.

What is the benefit of hosting through someone other than who you are building your site with? And what do you mean about email? All these sites give email addresses I believe.

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

It's also a great way to keep the cost down.

Mr.Tegu, check out Weebly. They'll allow you build your own site and then host it. You can see it live and in action on the web. Then, you can purchase the domain if you like it.

If you don't, you still have a free site that's ready to go.

Are all these sites pretty equal as far as commerce? I am starting to think I might need customer log in capabilities. It wouldn't be necessary as I can email documents but it seems much more professional if they can download PDFS immediately upon purchase instead of having to wait for an actual email.

[ModSocks]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Nope.

Do you know how to do postscript code to print out your documents?

Pretty much the same think.


A graphic designer doesn't have to know how to do code to design a visionary website. They're not web developers or builders per se. Not saying one can't be both.

Postscript?

What is this, the 80's?

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

Postscript?

What is this, the 80's?

She's a visionary, damnt!

[BucEyedPea]

Lol

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

What is the benefit of hosting through someone other than who you are building your site with? And what do you mean about email? All these sites give email addresses I believe.

Generally it's better to have someone other than you host, because otherwise you're becoming a sysadmin. Places like Squarespace are end-to-end so you do your layout on the server itself.

Now as far as email goes, most hosting providers will provide you with some basic IMAP/POP email. It will work, but you'll probably end up with a shitty web front end for mail instead of an experience you're used to if you've used Gmail or even Hotmail. Then there's the issue of SSL certificates for your mail. Before I migrated all my mail to Google I had a self signed cert which was better than nothing, but was still a huge pain in the ass.

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

Are all these sites pretty equal as far as commerce? I am starting to think I might need customer log in capabilities. It wouldn't be necessary as I can email documents but it seems much more professional if they can download PDFS immediately upon purchase instead of having to wait for an actual email.

Haven't used the e-commerce part of Squarespace but I've heard good things from people that have.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

Postscript?

What is this, the 80's?

This is ridiculous and misleading. They were introduced in the mid-80's. They're not gone despite other types of printers on the market. You must be a PC guy or don't work with Adobe products.

That's not the point though. Guess it went over your head.

Macs are widely used by publishing professionals and graphic artists who rely on Adobe programs, such as Adobe Illustrator, to ensure the best output quality. Illustrator, as well as Photoshop and Acrobat, are optimized for Adobe's own PostScript printing language. You can print graphical material with text made in these programs from non-PostScript printers, but at a potential loss of quality (including occasional dropped elements). For any business that prints a lot of graphics, a printer with a PostScript driver (or at least, PostScript emulation) is a big plus. PostScript has been a staple of the graphic arts since its inclusion with the Apple LaserWriter launched the desktop publishing revolution in the mid-80s.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410689,00.asp

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

This is ridiculous and misleading. They were introduced in the mid-80's. They're not gone despite other types of printers on the market. You must be a PC guy or don't work with Adobe products.

That's not the point though. Guess it went over your head.

And this has zero to do with websites.

You're out of your ****ing element, Donnie.

[ModSocks]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

This is ridiculous and misleading. They were introduced in the mid-80's. They're not gone despite other types of printers on the market. You must be a PC guy or don't work with Adobe products.

That's not the point though. Guess it went over your head.

Yes, but these days we have things called "Printer Drivers", i'm sure you've heard of them.

Modern printers and software make postscript rather irrelevant for most graphic designers. Besides, this is printing business talk, which is certainly nice knowledge for a designer, but is certainly far from required beyond standard formatting requirements.

Anyway, back on topic, i have no idea about the other site builders, Mr.Tegu. I've only used Weebly once and i had a good experience with it. Setting up a shopping cart that linked to a PayPal account took all of 5 minutes or so.

Adding a shopping cart option to specific product pages was a drag and drop feature iirc.

[mcaj22]

If any coder here has any good recommendations on tutorials, books on amazon, whatever on how to make customized CMS/Bootstrap templates feel free to PM me. I'm willing to learn as a hobby.

I tried youtube but the series usually randomly ends or isn't complete, it gets hard to follow Joe Schmo's WordPress Template Tutorial Series 1 thru 60 videos when he randomly stops at video 15 from five years ago.

[DRU]

I would recommend avoiding hosted platforms like Wix, Weebly, etc. They are limited to whatever they provide. Undoubtedly, you'll come up with something you'd like that they don't provide. Anything unique / custom you need that they don't offer, all you can do is submit a feature request and wait...and wait...and hope...and wait...and eventually give up and move to something else anyway.

I highly recommend finding a quality developer that can build your site for you on WordPress. If you need eCommerce then you can install WooCommerce into WordPress.

It's a tremendous platform to build on, and you will never be limited with what you can accomplish with it.

[Halfcan]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

So does Wix make you have .wix in the URL?

Would people find you on Google plus in similar ways they do Facebook as in just sort of by word of mouth and likes, etc?

I think you can change it- if you upgrade.

Yes Google is pretty close to FB but less spam and crap. Much higher quality of post and content.