Creating a website

[Jeff Cook]

Hello everyone. I am without a website and wanted to know which website builder you use. I am not home savvy so I need something that is easy but professional. I would like to link some of my Vimeo videos on the site as well. Any ideas? Or should I continue without one? Thanks in advance.

[Robert Benda]

Wordpress is the start and finish. It makes it pretty easy, and you can change your theme anytime you want. Makes blogging/writing content easy to keep your website fresh and do better with SEO.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Jeff

Most hosts will offer you a free website builder too as part of your hosting plan. Despite the fact we are based in Australia, I have always hosted my sites with Pow Web in LA and they also give you a free site builder. I however have always used Namo Web Editor ..it's simple and easy to use but not free!!

If you are not really a super duper salesman (like me!) Keep your site clean and simple and provide your brides with lots of information so instead of looking at a video and then having to contact you for more information which will then involve you selling them your services, try to make it so they can make a decision to book you before they contact you. Probably 99% of my enquiries are not "tell me more" but "I want to book you!" I go to the extent of having a simple online calendar that shows if I'm booked or not. If you are not too good on the sales side then a full information site will do all the selling for you and you just need to take bookings for brides who already have decided to go with you!

Chris

[Tim Lewis]

I use Rapidweaver for my sites. It is Mac only though.

There are also options like Joomla and Wordpress. As Robert said, Wordpress is quite easy. You can tend to end up with "cookie-cutter" sites on Wordpress, but they have done a lot of work with themes to ensure even the "cookie-cutter is nice. Joomla requires more active knowledge of websites and web coding, but has a huge range of extensions and can be used for very large sites very well.

If you are not comfortable with the under the hood types of things on the web, like HTML and CSS, the site builder options like Chris suggests, or Wordpress are good because they take away a lot of the tedious work from creating a site and allow you to focus on your core business activities.

I can write a website from scratch in HTML and CSS, but I don't bother. Rapidweaver saves me heaps of time and has enough control when I want to get down and dirty with the code.

You don't need to be a web developer to be a videographer / cinematographer so go with something that doesn't take you away from the real work.

The main thing in business is to keep the main thing the main thing!

[Noa Put]

+1 for wordpress, they have long passed being a simple bloggingplatform, it's easy to have a professional looking website and if you are not afraid to look under the hood it's also customizable, though mostly not necessary.

[Roger Van Duyn]

I have a Yahoo Small Business website. Wordpress is included as one of the free options, and that's used for my site.

[Paul Mailath]

+2 for wordpress

you can buy some pretty nice templates for wordpress to get you started - try templatemonster.com

just as important as creating the website, wordpress will be easy to maintain & change. If you're computer savy there are lots of other choices but this will get you off to a running start.

[Noa Put]

Template monster seems quite expensive? You can get equally good templates at themeforest but for much less money, when you choose a template it's important to check out the theme author, I only choose themes from established authors that have created several themes and who regularly update their excisting themes to remove any bugs users encounter, also it's important they have a helpdesk forum where they answer all questions you might have, the good ones always have. With so many different browsers and platforms it"s also important to be sure your theme displays well everywhere meaning they need to be responsive, many clients look at your website on tablets or phones so those need to display your website good as well.

[Darren Levine]

Wordpress is pretty flexible due to the sheer size of the plugin library, but that's the only one im familiar with.

if you're looking for a place to put info up about you and your work/etc... i created and myself use mediahalo for just that purpose: http://www.mediahalo.com/people/dlevine/

[Jeff Cook]

Thanks a lot. I will look into Wordpress. How do I secure a domain name if the service is free? I appreciate your suggestions.

[Jeff Cook]

I just checked Wordpress out and it looks as if you pay $18 a year for a blog site. If I signed up would I still be able to post videos and have a list of what I offer clients? Sorry for sounding dumb, but this is new to me.

[Tim Lewis]

Wordpress allows a free blog for users. It is limited and there are advertisements on it. The Premium service ($99 per year) removes these restrictions and also allows the use of a custom domain name. This means your blog is not myvideoblog.wordpress.com, but myvideowebsite.com or whatever you choose. This separates it from just a free site.

I am not sure where your $18/year came from? Is this an option you have found for just the domain name?

You can host all your videos somewhere else like Vimeo and imbed them in your wordpress site, or as Darren says mediahalo.

I got frustrated with Wordpress after a few months and deleted my blog but I maintain an account for the purpose of the Gravatar service.

[Chris Harding]

Hi Jeff

Just be careful of a blog that anyone can post to otherwise you end up with people with nothing better to do than put adverse comments on your blog just for the fun of it and that can easily be seen by prospective brides. If you are hosting on YT or similar also disable comments otherwise you get the same little idiots who will comment stuff like "the bride is butt ugly" (again just cos they have nothing better to do!) and that can easily be seen by brides and not good for your reputation!!

I would personally stay away from anything where the general morons of the world can post on unless you are prepared to check it daily for derogatory comments!

Chris

[George Kilroy]

Originally Posted by Chris Harding

I would personally stay away from anything where the general morons of the world can post on unless you are prepared to check it daily for derogatory comments!

Chris

Hi Chris, I assume your not including DVinfo in that category. (ctm)

[Chris Harding]

Hi George

We are all good guys here! I am talking about the little morons who post comments on bridal clips on YouTube mainly when I didn't use to disable comments. For that reason my website doesn't have a blog either because some nutter will post something stupid on it. DVInfo members are mature and professional people nothing like the weirdo's that troll the web looking to spoil someone's day. Chris Hurd makes sure of that!!

Blogs sadly allow anyone to post bad comments as well as good ones which doesn't do our business any good so they don't feature at all on my web sites.

Hope life in France is agreeing with you?

Chris