# Site builder



## SpacemanFL (Jul 1, 2005)

Has anyone tried Homestead.com?


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## jdr8271 (Jun 16, 2005)

Not personally, but they seem pricey for what they are giving you. I use ewisp. They are a quarter the price of the comprable homestead account. I have been hosted on this company for a month, and so far no down time. http://www.ewisp.net/hosting/

Before ewisp, I used terrasite.com who was horrible. They were down constantly. Ewisp is the best hosting service I've used.


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## SpacemanFL (Jul 1, 2005)

I don't know HTML. Can you use them with simple tools?


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## jdr8271 (Jun 16, 2005)

It comes with a program called "site builder", but I wouldnt reccomend using a program like that. If you don't know html, you should buy front page, and make your website with that program. Ultimately however you should learn html for the best results.


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

It's pretty simple to learn enough to work with. You might try finding a page with a layout you like and editing it a lot until you get what you want; it's often easier to make something when you have a base to work with.

I wouldn't suggest Frontpage personally, unless you intend to manually clean up the horrible mess it'll make of your html.


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## SpacemanFL (Jul 1, 2005)

I guess what I am looling for is an easy way to get an ecommerce site up and running.


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## angryred (Jul 12, 2005)

Hi Spaceman, if you don't know how to programme you do worse than find a pre-built e-commerce editor. There are loads available to try out on tucows - www.tucows.com - they'll provide template and you just need to edit the content/catalogue. Frontpgae, Dreamweaver et al are very expensive for what you get and do create alarmingly weird html. Coffeecup and AceHtml are software providers of html editors - the coffee cup html editor has a WYSIWYG function and they also have lots of ecommerce templates which you could look. I guess one of the issues is how big a range of products you're going to sell and how much you need to automate updating the catalogue. Also think abotu how you're going to manage payment, are you going to track orders, shipping etc?

I've built lots of ecommerce sites - some completely from scratch, others amending templates. These days I can't see a argument for building your own unless its really small scale or your needs are so bespoke they won't be covered by something out there. As for my t-shirt site, I've taken the cowards way out and am running a spreadshirt shop.

Hope that helps


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## jdr8271 (Jun 16, 2005)

you can free templates to use. do a search on google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=free+html+templates

You could easily customize a free template to work with the paypal shoo\pping cart.


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

You could also try zencart or OSommerce as full shopping cart systems, but you'll really need to know or be willing to learn some html and php to customzie those extensively.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

You may also want to consider hiring someone who has experience building effective ecommerce websites so that it is done "right".

You can sometimes hurt yourself by "doing it yourself" if the site you've designed looks unprofessional to customers.

If you can learn HTML, that would be your best bet. After learning HTML, you would then need to learn about what makes a good site design and what makes a bad site design.

There are also sites that offer premade templates that can be of use, but most shopping cart programs come with some sort of templating system or basic themes that you can use to get up and running.


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## graffix (Nov 21, 2005)

i use shopfactory 6 and it's so simple and easy for beginners 

i know it's expensive but try it for free it's 30 days trail if you like it buy it 

however when you complete the design of your own you can't publish but you can preview it 

here's the link 

[edit: delinked exe file. Please only link to the main shopfactory website]

give it a try 

i am trying to find a good web hosting for my website to up and running 

www.ipowerweb.com isn't that good had hard times with customer services 
anybody knows any good web hosting? i heard www.godaddy.com's good but pricey 

i have registered the domain name with www.register.com for a year


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

If shopfactory just puts out plain HTML files, then you should be able to upload the files to ANY webhost.

If shopfactory makes some sort of proprietary file format, then you may want to contact the makers of shopfactory to see if they have a recommended list of hosts that support their format.

My suggestion would be to either hire someone to create the site for you and learn a bit of HTML at the same time so you can make small edits (or if you are a do-it-yourselfer...design the site yourself in regular HTML so it works with any host).


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## idiodine (Jan 13, 2006)

Definitly try Sothink HTML Editor. It is the best program I have found. You can either code the website in HTML or you can graphically design it (you see what the website looks like as you move stuff around) . I have used this for all of my websites. It's very easy to use and is free. Hope that helps!


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