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help with a site

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timberdog:
Can anyone help with the following:

A friend of mine is about to set up a Breakers Yard for Landy bits and i offerd to try to build him a web site for bits that are breaking..

IT aint got to be fancey just basic and like the free Fourms space you can get anyone got any good links for one  nice and easy as well also he must be able to controll the site after i have built it up for him passwrod wise..


God help me what have i done...lol

suzota:
www.freewebspace.com
they do a basic site complete with allready designed menues and frames.

Budgie:
I've done a couple of sites now and if you can get your hands on Microsoft Frontpage to build the site on your PC then getting someone to host the site for you with it's own URL will only cost about £30 for a years hosting and two years URL registration.

My own site has some Flash movies, animated GIFs, java etc but you dont have to go that deep. The other one I did for Duncan Brown, another Mud Clubber, is more simple. Just basic text, photos and a few hyperlinks. The most complicated part is the booking form but even that is basicly made for you, you just add the headings and as many text boxes as you want.

I know there are other web design programmes like Dreamweaver but MS Frontpage is easy enough. It will let you put it all onto the screen so you can set it out how you want it and you don't really need to know HTML code, although it helps when you go for the more complicated stuff.  :wink:

Bob696:
Timberdog.

Dont be tempted by 'Free' webpage hosting and free wisywig packages they use. Your m8s page will be full of popups and will have a URL that nobody can remember. It will also look CHEAP and create the wrong impression.

Most ISPs offer some limited webspace (usualy about 5M) which is plenty big enough for the site you describe. Also many offer free web hosting of .co.uk domain names now (or charge about £1 a month). Some offer CGI support but not all (CGI is needed for forms n such).

Dont be tempted to put a list of stock on the website unless you want go down the route of databases and PHP/ASP. Nothing pees customers off more than finding what they want only to find out that you dont actualy have it after all. Keeping an uptodate stocklistonline in html format will be a major pain in the neck for who ever takes it on.

Your m8 may want to onsider changing ISP to get these goodies. One recomendation for an ISP I would make is Force9. 250M of webspace, CGI support and php support. If your m8 does go for f9 then put me down as a referer (happydragons) and I get 50p a month off my bill ;-)

On one point I have to disagree with Budgie. Dont use FrontPage if you want your site to be good. With it being an MS product it is geared up for other MS products. This leads to inclusion of scripts that only IE can use and you will lose the Firefox/aol market. If you do use frontpage you will have to do extensive testing with other browsers and operating systems to make sure everything works (you really should do this anyway but much more so with frontpage) and also avoid using those tacky page transitions.
The industry standard for web development is Dreamweaver at the moment. Version 4 will do everything you want and you can find legit copies of it for a couple of quid now. I found a charity about a year ago that collected old software (donations form companies that were upgradin)  licenses and sold them on

The long and the short of it is that, in my opinion, if you cant do a good job of it then it isnt worth doing at all.

As an alternative your m8 might want to consider registering with http://www.247spares.co.uk/
I *think* you just register the sort of cars you are breaking. Somebody asks them for a spare from that car and they send you an email. I have used them. I spent a day driving round the west midlands looking for a PAS pump for an astra (1.7Td) with no joy. Fired them an email and had 3 phone calls from breakers in 10 mins :-)

Sider:
Try mambo http://www.mamboserver.com/ .

Easy to setup, and with a bit of tinkering, it may deliver just what you are looking for.

If you want to see an example, look at our gaming clan's portal website. http://www.thewaterrats.com/

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