New Website Creation Help/Suggestions

[Ian Davlin The Looth Group]

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of wordpress, but it would be hard for me to deal with the limitations of something like Square etc.

The WordPress ecosystem is overrun with a million options, which is great, but makes it overwhelming at first. Its pretty easy to get a one page place holder website up and then fill it out from there. Also, I’ve been doing wordpress pretty much non stop since the start of this website project, so you would have me to bounce ideas off of etc.

As far as managed hosting goes, I had decent luck with Dreamhost.

Because of this website, I had to figure out AWS. It can get really cheap to host simple websites on AWS. Just a guess, but if you were willing to commit to 3 years, it could probably be under a buck a month for a simple website with mostly local traffic. It’s unmanaged though, so you’d have to be willing to hack into the mainframe on occasion. All of the information to do so is around on the internet.

[Bryan Parris Parris Guitars]

I’ve built a lot of websites and my preference is WordPress. You’ll need to purchase hosting (you can get that through Godaddy if you want, but there are cheaper options. I use Bluehost) I use Cpanel accounts and install wordpress. Then I go to a site like themeforest and find a theme I like…since the ones built into wordpress are kinda lame. Get some good photography and you can make most any theme look good. I used a theme called Divi for my site at parrisguitars.com

Hope this helps!

[David Ross David Ross Musical Instruments]

I’m using WordPress to manage my websites content, and Dreamhost as my hosting service. I’ve had good luck with them for the past 3 years since starting my business. Since you’re in New York State, you may want to consider getting in touch with your local SBDC if you haven’t already, not only for this but in general as well. They can likely guide you through the website process and additionally, a few years ago they had a grant that allowed a company to build my website for free. All I had to do was provide them materials and they did all of the complicated back end stuff. You can check my site out here if you like: https://davidrossmusicalinstruments.com

[Nick Jones Jones'n Music]

A little late to chime in here, but if you’re still shopping around for a site builder, I’d highly recommend Squarespace. Its extremely easy, the results are good, and they have add on modules for any ecommerce you may wish to implement. Also, pretty much every podcast on earth runs promos for them, so finding coupons to save a few bucks is pretty easy.

I used WordPress for years for a number of sites and switched to Squarespace for my new brand site. Couldn’t have been easier.

Best of luck!

[Chip Tait – Brooklyn Fretworks]

I’m also on the WordPress via Bluehost avenue. Mine is super simple, and I was able to get help from a WP guru for a very reasonable hourly fee. I think mine looks pretty clean, and it has (free) client scheduling, and galleries. Reach out if you’d like my WP guru’s contact info.

[Holger]

I used to create landing pages and websites professionally, and my recommendation is always to go for a hosted service rather than WordPress. You may be able to save a bit of money doing WordPress, but it can be a pain to work with and maintain, and often just looks amateurish.

Rather start with something like Squarespace: You don’t need to worry about infrastructure, and the design limitations imposed by their templates protects you from yourself. You could also look at the Canva website builder. I don’t have experience with it myself, but I’ve heard good things.