Hey all you pros out there:

I'm looking to start up a website for self-publicity and product selling but have no experience with web design. All I basically want is a place where I can sell my videos (capacity for credit card ordering), display video clips, and display digital landscape photos with a fair degree of resolution. My photos are all 5 and 8.2 mega-pixel images and my video is all mini DV shot with an XL-1s. I figure I can use photoshop and Vegas to down-convert my media, if needed. I also don't want to deal with a bunch of HTML code or something foreign like that. I'd rather just drag & drop, cut & paste, etc. images and files. By the way, the computer I use is a Sony VGC-RC310G.

Anyway, I was wondering what software product would be good for my situation. I guess I'm looking for something in the $50 - $300 range. I looked around Amazon a bit and thought something like Microsoft Expression might work but I don't really know. I don't want to be too limited with my website and I want to have a lot of customization over its layout. Anyway, if anybody out there has some experience with this, any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm getting closer to finishing an hour long wildlife documentary that I've been working on for three years and want to try to sell it for at least publicity, since I think my chances of breaking even are not statistically realistic.

Thank you,
Tristan Howard

Look at www.networksolutions.com, they have several inexpensive monthly hosting packages that include a very easy, non-technical application for DIY website design and most if not all of the functionality you require there. Good luck,

Thank you. I didn't know there were places like network solutions out there. This should help me quite a bit. I just hope the annual purchase price isn't too expensive.

GoDaddy.com has a Website Tonight program based on a number of templates that appears to be easy to use. Since they are a hosting outfit as well, you could probably get a package deal.
Their tech support is pretty good too.
Hope this helps.
Ken

The website design and setup isn't really that hard. I agree with the above posters - look around and see what is offered by different hosting companies like GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc etc.

Do you have your merchant account info set up? You're going to need that for the credit card processing.

I don't have my merchant account info set up. I wanted to finish my documentary before I start paying a monthly fee for a website. But, I was looking at using the paypal system through network solutions.

I know its may be a slightly old thread but I have found http://www.oswd.org/ an invaluable resource for some time. It has a wealth of information on building websites not to mention a truly huge library of plug in web designs.