Creating a New Company Website (1 Viewer)

[Somebody]

[SIZE=medium]I recently started working with a small commercial real estate firm in NYC and want to completely redo the website. If you were going to create your company’s website from scratch, what would your ideal corporate website look like? What sections would it have to have (services offered, contact us, etc…)? How do would integrate social media into the website? We primarily use LinkedIn and want to expand how we use networking thru there and our website, if possible. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]With regards to web developers and long term maintenance, what questions would you ask potential web developers before you decide who to hire? Who would you expect to maintain and administer the website after it’s created? We are a small company and don’t have an IT department so it would be ideal if maintenance was fairly easy for your average person to handle and does not require regular specialized IT help. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]The website for a commercial real estate company should generate a good amount of contacts from potential clients inquiring about one of our services or listings, and overall this is the primary goal for our new website. We need to significantly improve our new visitor rate. How can we maximize how we show up in Google searches?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=medium]I am sure I am not asking all of the questions I should be, so please add anything else I should be thinking about. Thanks for your help.[/SIZE]

 

[[icon]]

Make sure to have a who's hottest tab and update it daily. :mansion:

 

[[icon]]

Seriously though... look into godaddy's website builder... or wordpress/joomla to make it simple for anyone who's not regularly drooling on their keyboard to update.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

Also, look into doing the HTML, CSS, and possibly JQuery and JavaScript exercises at codecademy. By the end, you'll be on the right path toward being able to create and maintain pretty much any kind of website you want to.

 

[danielmclark]

What Maurile said. You really have only two options: build/maintain the site yourself or hire someone else to do it (the days of getting your neighbor's kid to make you a free website that looks modern and professional are pretty much over). The more features you need, the more expensive it will be to hire someone, and if you try to cut corners and go cheap, you will regret it. On the other hand, you could teach yourself HTML, CSS, JQuery and Javascript (and I'd add PHP to that list) and do it yourself. It will take time and dedication, but you won't be at the mercy of a developer.

You can learn HTML and CSS in a weekend. The rest, you can tackle in a month or two if you try.

And if you hit a wall with some advanced functionality that you can't handle on your own, then you can hire out for that one task.

 

[jamny]

Go to a site like templatemonster and find a good wordpress template.

 

[[icon]]

If you're not adding actual functionality to the site (ie database driven inventory queries, etc) and you're basically looking for an online info/brochure with a contact us form, then any simple template builder or wordpress type setup would work fine.

IF you need complex stuff like a dynamic directory of properties, or other actual functionality, you will want to outsource it.

 

[Somebody]

I don't think we will need complex functionality, except to perhaps link contacts from visitors to our CRM system. We do want good graphics and pictures, although I am not sure how much value a web developer brings to that vs. doing it ourselves. We also want to significantly increase the visit rate to the website, particularly thru search engines, and I am not sure how to set up the website to help with that. We were thinking about spending approximately $10k if we hire a developer.

A basic commercial real estate firm's website will consist of a home page with good graphics and links to pages for - description of services, overall description of the company, bios for brokers and others, testimonials from clients, listings, and contact us. If it's a big firm that is in the news there will be a press/news section. We won't have that section. We are planning on having a blog. Some have a careers page, which we will also include. Integrating social media, particularly LinkedIn, is also important to us. The larger companies often have research and case studies, which are usually downloadable PDF files. We are too small and don't have people dedicated to doing research studies so I doubt we will have an area for that, at least initially.

Thanks for all your suggestions so far. This is good stuff and I am already learning more about this process.

 

[[icon]]

That is all very easy to do. Adobe Dreamweaver is excellent WYSIWYG HTML editor assuming you have someone who can build the graphics. AT the very least it would be a great piece of software for someone to easily edit text content or add/remove types of entries.

For $10k you could do pretty well in the freelancer market. Here is an example of a site I built for a buddy. Nothing crazy... Contact form... Some pop ups with image galleries, coupons, radio spots, etc. I did this site as part of a branding package (logo, biz cards/flyers, vehicle graphics, shirts for his workers, website) and swapped for less than $10k of work (redid tile shower in master bath, built paver stone patio in back yard, ongoing maintenance on yard, etc.

Not sure what CRM you're using but it's very simple to import contacts into an iContact or Constant Contact database via a form like that one, with a confirmation email coming in each time you get a new sign up.

The problem is, MOST coders are ####ty designers... and MOST good designers aren't great coders. You're going to want either someone who is good at both (not super common), or a designer to create the branding/images... then provide everything to a developer to code/build the site.

Search engine optimization is getting increasingly difficult / next to impossible. Google has their algorithms polished to the point where a lot of the old tricks (gateway pages and such) simply don't work. Link popularity (pages that link to your site) and favorability (how often visitors actually click on your listing on search results) are significant factors. That said google's adwords program allows you to pay for top of results listings. Some search terms are cheap... some are not. You can target regionally as well to keep costs down if you work in a very tight geographic range.

 

[Maelstrom]

I personally believe you will have a much higher quality website if you hire a professional to handle it. At a $10k budget, you are probably looking a freelance or a very small firm, and likely will still get a WordPress website (which is fine for your needs). A professional is going to know things about setting up a website that you won't, and will be able to make recommendations on what is / isn't professional, will know what looks good, etc.

You may want to split your budget into 2 piles, one for a designer, and one for a developer, because so far in my experience there are very few people who do both well. For instance, I do web development, but for design I either recommend templates or to bring in a designer. I used to try to do design, but the amount of time it would take me to get something I thought was ok wasn't worth what I would need to charge for that time, and wouldn't be as good as having an actual designer do the work.

A designer would handle the look and feel, layout, user interaction and the navigation structure of the website. Your deliverables from the designer would be a design (or set of designs), often times delivered in a Photoshop file (or files). Probably 2-3 templates, such as a home page, interior page, and contact form. Maybe a 2 blog templates (aggregate posts, single post) but likely you could do with 1, and use the "interior" template for single blog posts as well. This step can avoided by purchasing a template, but you obviously then are basically getting the design, but not the personalized service of it being customized to your site. I like themeforest.net*. Also, you would still need to choose appropriate images, write content, so you may still want to use a designer even if you decide to purchase a template.

A developer would handle the technical work of taking the design and getting it live on the Internet. If it is a raw design (i.e. not a template) they would create the code (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to create the site. I still recommend they build it within WordPress so you can update it later on. They would also assist you with getting hosting setup, even purchasing a domain name if you don't have one (for domain names, I recommend NameCheap.com*, currently on sale). I don't currently have a good recommendation for hosting (NameCheap offers it, but I've never used their hosting services) but you will need a hosting company to host your website. If you aren't getting a ton of traffic, shared hosting is ok and you shouldn't pay more than $10 to maybe $20 per month. A developer should also setup analytics (Google Analytics are free, and work just fine for most people.)

A couple words about WordPress, and why I tend to recommend it in many cases. First, it is very simple to get a website up and running. There are a ton of themes, for relatively inexpensive (even free, but I recommend paying for one as the pay ones are leaps/bounds above free ones in features), and there are also a ton of plugins. This is where you want to make sure that both your designer and developer have some experience with WordPress, because otherwise you could end up building custom functionality that could easily be integrated by using a plugin. For instance, your contact form for people to feed into your CRM system, depending on the CRM system, there is probably already a plugin for WordPress ready to go. If all you need is a basic contact form, they have those as well. (Btw, if you are looking for a CRM, Nutshell.com is an up and coming competitor to Salesforce, definitely think they are doing good things.)

That's enough on the technical side of building a site. I'll post another post with a little more info on the "what it should contain/how to SEO/etc" side.

*affiliate link, I do get a commission if you use the link to purchase, if so, thanks, but those would be my reco regardless, and are the services I use myself.

 

[[icon]]

Maelstrom and I should tag team on this... I'm a passable basic developer (cheat with dreamweaver and cut/paste code) but a better designer (another recent project, a first draft of logo and user interface/design for an iOS app I'm working on).

 

[Maelstrom]

I agree with some of the things Icon said, but not the part about doing the coding yourself. Many things go into a high quality site, and the quality of the code is one of them. It affects how fast it loads (which Google now looks at for SEO) as well as how well it displaying in different browsers (which affects how many people can actually view your site). Also, a good developer will know what HTML tags to use in your page to optimize it for search engines (a small factor, but still a factor).

For SEO, don't don't don't buy into some pitch that someone can SEO you to the top. The things that work in SEO are relatively basic and you can do it yourself (and should to maintain control over your image). Two areas to work on, things under your control (internal) and things outside your control (external). So what do you do?

1. Google will find your site. Post a link on Twitter to it, or from here even. There is no need to submit it anywhere, Google is very good about finding websites. That doesn't mean you will rank high.
2. (Internal) Post good content. And regular. Post new, good content on a regular basis and Google will reward it.
3. (Internal) Share your content. Don't spam it, but post it to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Craft compelling headlines that make people want to click on the link.
4. (External) Encourage others to share your content. If your content is good enough, others should also want to share it and will post links to it. That will grow your backlinks (links from outside your website) which need to grow naturally over time. This is not a short-term project, it is an on-going one. This can affect up to 50% or more of the rank of your site. The words they use are important, so if you have the ability to suggest link text, do so (i.e. compelling headlines, as often headlines are used as the link text).
5. (Internal) Monitor your analytics and see how long people are spending on your site. Google tracks how quickly someone comes back to the search engine from a clicked link. Quick bounce backs = lower quality in Google's eyes.
6. (Internal) Make sure your site loads fast and users can navigate it easily. Check this regularly (there is a page speed measurement in Google Analytics) as things could change over time as you add things to the site.

I know there are more "internal" than "external" things, those are just off the top of my head. But Internal vs. External is about a 50-50 split on how Google looks at it.

Also, because you are a relatively local company, you should look at setting up a Google Places account to help you show up in searches locally. Maybe setup a Google Plus page for your business as well, Google is doing some interesting stuff with authorship which can help boost your search engine ranking as well if you become a respected author (by publishing quality content).

As for social, you probably shouldn't just put a ton of share buttons on your pages. Only put it on pages that really should be shared (blog posts, maybe home page) and only use networks you are active on (i.e. do you have a Facebook page, Twitter account, I saw you mentioned LinkedIn). I would focus on those you are willing to spend time on. (I know I mentioned Google Plus, but generally only worth being active there for those with a technical audience.) As anything, test it and see. If no one uses a share button, get rid it to reduce the clutter. Feel free to have links in the footer or header off to your different network pages, but again, I only recommend that if you are active on the network in question.

Lastly, make sure you have a conversion funnel in place. All of your blog posts, informational pages should either have a way for users to contact you immediately, or should have an immediate link to a form they can fill out to contact you (or to be put into your CRM system funnel). You can track your conversions by setting up a funnel to track in Google Analytics (I think it's called Goals), and see how many people follow through from initial visit -> form -> thank you page (for example).

 

[fantasycurse42]

PM Eminence... He would prob be good at this.

 

[Maelstrom]

Maelstrom and I should tag team on this... I'm a passable basic developer (cheat with dreamweaver and cut/paste code) but a better designer (another recent project, a first draft of logo and user interface/design for an iOS app I'm working on).

It would depend on timing really. I am currently swamped at work and have a number of side/freelance projects either launching or about to launch. But if the timing works, I'd be happy to help in a dev capacity (if nothing else, I'd be happy to help vet candidates as well).

 

[Somebody]

This is great! Thanks again for your help.

How important do you think it is for the designer and/or the developer to have experience building websites in my industry (commercial real estate)?

 

[Maelstrom]

This is great! Thanks again for your help.

How important do you think it is for the designer and/or the developer to have experience building websites in my industry (commercial real estate)?

I think that is a very minor concern. If you can find someone, that is great, but most designers/developers will draw the industry knowledge they need from the client (you) and trust that you know the industry well enough to communicate with them about it. They can then translate that internally into how they build the website.

They should definitely be asking questions about the industry if they don't know it. That would be my red-flag, do they just charge forward, "yup, I can build you a great website, leave it to me." Or do they involve you in the process. For instance, do you want to prequalify your leads? What kind of content would work best for your blog? (i.e. I would guess you'll want to write about some of the properties you have for sale, or that you are looking to purchase, etc, but I wouldn't know until asking).

 

[Mr. Yuk]

 

[chauncey]

.

 

[[icon]]

This is great! Thanks again for your help.

How important do you think it is for the designer and/or the developer to have experience building websites in my industry (commercial real estate)?

I think that is a very minor concern. If you can find someone, that is great, but most designers/developers will draw the industry knowledge they need from the client (you) and trust that you know the industry well enough to communicate with them about it. They can then translate that internally into how they build the website.

They should definitely be asking questions about the industry if they don't know it. That would be my red-flag, do they just charge forward, "yup, I can build you a great website, leave it to me." Or do they involve you in the process. For instance, do you want to prequalify your leads? What kind of content would work best for your blog? (i.e. I would guess you'll want to write about some of the properties you have for sale, or that you are looking to purchase, etc, but I wouldn't know until asking).

Exactly.

From the designers perspective, the only industry I've worked with that required special handling/knowledge was the medical field. There are a lot of versioning/release restrictions that direct how things have to be laid out, produced and shown. To my knowledge there are no such restrictions in commercial real estate, however as Maelstrom indicated, the client and industry research provides valuable input.

One of the most critical stages of any project is "discovery". Sitting down with the client and getting into their head. What do they think they want. what do they REALLY want. What do they need. What are their competitors doing right? What are their competitors doing wrong. Independent research and client discussion is what determines the direction. Not doing your due diligence here can leave you heading down the wrong path and wasting valuable time.

A good team should have milestones in place.

- rough mockups for look/feel

- wire frames to show various pages and flow

- single page coded build out (photoshop doesn't always translate exactly to browser... Having a designer who also has development knowledge is huge timesaver here)

Etc....

 

[[icon]]

adding:

One possible benefit of someone having experience in an industry is certain functionality may already be somewhat developed so they may only need to adapt it to your project, saving some time. If they've already built a site that included a sweet engine/backend for a blog with some real-estate specific features.... For example. This could save a little time and money.

The DOWNSIDE is sometimes folks get lazy and may simply go through the project on auto pilot. You might end up with a cookie cutter site that might have been perfect for a competition, but not for you... Whereas someone different might have fresh perspective and unique approaches to the project that could result in a "better mousetrap".

 

[jamny]

PM Eminence... He would prob be good at this.

and he'll do it for half the company profit in the coming year. 50/50...win/win!

 

[Somebody]

Does anything in particular need to be done during the design and/or development process to make the website work well for mobile devices?

 

[jamny]

Does anything in particular need to be done during the design and/or development process to make the website work well for mobile devices?

Look into Responsive Web Design

 

[Somebody]

Does anything in particular need to be done during the design and/or development process to make the website work well for mobile devices?

Look into Responsive Web Design

I will talk to the designer and developer about utilizing this. Are there other things to talk to designers and developers about regarding optimizing how the website works on mobile devices? I am pretty sure we will be hiring someone and not doing it ourselves so I want to make sure whoever we hire will create a website that is easy to use and looks good on smartphones. A lot of our clients will be accessing the site via a mobile device.

 

[Maelstrom]

Does anything in particular need to be done during the design and/or development process to make the website work well for mobile devices?

Look into Responsive Web Design

I will talk to the designer and developer about utilizing this. Are there other things to talk to designers and developers about regarding optimizing how the website works on mobile devices? I am pretty sure we will be hiring someone and not doing it ourselves so I want to make sure whoever we hire will create a website that is easy to use and looks good on smartphones. A lot of our clients will be accessing the site via a mobile device.

Expanding on what Jammy said, Responsive Web Design is the practice of building a website in such a way that the content and the images resize proportionally and the page layout reflows as the screen gets smaller. It is not just making a mobile version, it is a practice that makes a web site that is as functional on a tablet or phone as it is on a desktop computer. You can "test" responsive web sites by resizing your browser window and seeing how the page responds.

For an example, look at jimmyjohns.com at desktop size, and then look at it on a phone or resize your browser to be about 320 - 480 pixels wide. In specific, look at how the header changes at different widths, until it is basically completely removed on mobile. Similarly, the theater and Instagram featured images go away on mobile, and get smaller on tablet sizes. Notice that the theater images resize within their section.

Leep in mind when thinking about mobile that all of your actions be touch sized - that means the targets should be at least 44px by 44px so they are not frustrating for touch users. Items for touch should not be so tight that it is easy to mistap a link, etc.

Also for mobile development, if possible (may not be in your budget, but it's worth asking about) you want to make sure that you are not loading unnecessary information (images, etc) so that the mobile web will be faster and will respect user's data plan limitations.

Your guys may consider using a framework to help in building the site, like Foundation, Bootstrap or Pure. They will make it a bit easier to setup a responsive website (they are things to ask about, you don't have to fully understand them except to know that a web designers/devs that use them will "generally" be more efficient.)

 

[Sarnoff]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

 

[Maelstrom]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

WordPress (and the templates) are your friend. There are a TON of templates that will give you exactly that, with very little hassle getting it installed. You can disable the blog part of WordPress pretty easily.

You might be able to get away with one of the free templates, but I second my recommendation from earlier in the thread - it's well worth about $50 to purchase a template, the amount of functionality it usually includes makes it a pretty ridiculous deal. My recommendation is ThemeForest (it's what I use when looking for a new template, that is my affiliate link so I'll get a small commission if you use it, or you can just go to themeforest.net directly). Obviously a template will only take you so far, but for the needs you describe, it'll probably get her 95%, if not all the way, done.

Saw the part about maybe using WordPress hosting - personally, I'd get hosting through NameCheap (cough, affiliate link again) or HostGator or someone like that, and then just use the One Click installer to get WordPress installed. Once it is installed, everything else will likely be done through the WordPress admin, with the exception maybe of uploading your theme (they give pretty good instructions on that as well).

 

[[icon]]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

 

[Sarnoff]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

Stupid question, but, if we're only building the site once and don't need to change the pages, do we only pay the 1 month of GoDaddy's sitebuilder, or would she have to keep paying it to keep the site up? I think her domain is registered with GoDaddy. (It currently doesn't point anywhere, she just wanted to reserve the name).

She's thinking she can create HTML pages somewhere, then upload them to Google Drive or something to serve them for nothing. I don't think the amount of traffic she'll be getting is going to be more than a couple hundred views a year.

 

[Maelstrom]

Mini-rant:

I will say that I cannot recommend or support anything by GoDaddy. I actively steer people away from them.

They are not a good company, and I will stand by that opinion. They were in bed with the creators of SOPA/PIPA, if you remember all the hubbub about two years ago about that. They are the kings of bait/switch and loss-leader programs. Sure, they get you in with a cheap domain name, or low cost website builder. But a lot of their services are way MORE expensive than the competition, and they are the ones you won't need until after you are invested into a platform. I'd say smart, except they have specifically sold services that had absolutely nothing to do with a client's needs, costing them $$ that were completely unnecessary. In doing so, they blatantly lied and misrepresented their services. Add in that the website itself is slow and confusing to use (on purpose, IMO, to trick people into purchasing things they don't need).

In addition, for a long time (haven't really looked lately), they so overloaded their low-priced web hosting servers that any site hosted on GoDaddy was significantly slower than similar services from other companies. (Other companies did the same, but not to the same level of poor performance.) How about they used to purchase domain names people were searching for so that if you came back a day later to purchase the name, all of a sudden you had to purchase it through auction for $100s of dollar more.

Anyways, don't take my word for it: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=why+not+use+godaddy

--- end rant ---

As for affiliate links, I always try to mark/note them as such and I am very clear that these are companies that I do business with personally. I mentioned HostGator above, but didn't share my affiliate link because I don't care for their services anymore, and am considering moving the sites I have hosted there to somewhere else (very possibly Namecheap, although looking at a few other options as well). I spend a lot of time keeping up with current trends online, and don't feel bad including an affiliate link that might in the end drop my hosting costs by a small bit and will also help people find good companies.

 

[Maelstrom]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

Stupid question, but, if we're only building the site once and don't need to change the pages, do we only pay the 1 month of GoDaddy's sitebuilder, or would she have to keep paying it to keep the site up? I think her domain is registered with GoDaddy. (It currently doesn't point anywhere, she just wanted to reserve the name).

She's thinking she can create HTML pages somewhere, then upload them to Google Drive or something to serve them for nothing. I don't think the amount of traffic she'll be getting is going to be more than a couple hundred views a year.

Hosting is so incredibly cheap she should just do that. You can get hosting for something in the neighborhood of $5/month for shared hosting.

But...if she really wants to avoid any costs, take a look at hosting files on GitHub. Basically, you can create an account there and use GitHub pages to create a basic site. She could then forward her domain to the GitHub pages and be up and running.

http://pages.github.com/

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/using-github-pages-to-host-your-website

https://github.com/blog/272-github-pages

 

[Sarnoff]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

Stupid question, but, if we're only building the site once and don't need to change the pages, do we only pay the 1 month of GoDaddy's sitebuilder, or would she have to keep paying it to keep the site up? I think her domain is registered with GoDaddy. (It currently doesn't point anywhere, she just wanted to reserve the name).

She's thinking she can create HTML pages somewhere, then upload them to Google Drive or something to serve them for nothing. I don't think the amount of traffic she'll be getting is going to be more than a couple hundred views a year.

Hosting is so incredibly cheap she should just do that. You can get hosting for something in the neighborhood of $5/month for shared hosting.

But...if she really wants to avoid any costs, take a look at hosting files on GitHub. Basically, you can create an account there and use GitHub pages to create a basic site. She could then forward her domain to the GitHub pages and be up and running.

http://pages.github.com/

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/using-github-pages-to-host-your-website

https://github.com/blog/272-github-pages

Thanks, I'll send her the link. At first glance, the github pages thing looks kinda complicated if she just wants to serve vanilla html. There's a lot of talk of creating projects and organizational pages/branches and command line interfaces. But maybe she'll get into it. I guess the days of easy web design & uploading .html files is over.

 

[[icon]]

As for affiliate links, I always try to mark/note them as such and I am very clear that these are companies that I do business with personally. I mentioned HostGator above, but didn't share my affiliate link because I don't care for their services anymore, and am considering moving the sites I have hosted there to somewhere else (very possibly Namecheap, although looking at a few other options as well). I spend a lot of time keeping up with current trends online, and don't feel bad including an affiliate link that might in the end drop my hosting costs by a small bit and will also help people find good companies.

To be clear I in no way fault ya for posting the links, and from what I know of you posting here I'm 100% confident anything you recommend is because of performance, not the couple bucks from affiliate action. It was just a general statement.

 

[Maelstrom]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

Stupid question, but, if we're only building the site once and don't need to change the pages, do we only pay the 1 month of GoDaddy's sitebuilder, or would she have to keep paying it to keep the site up? I think her domain is registered with GoDaddy. (It currently doesn't point anywhere, she just wanted to reserve the name).

She's thinking she can create HTML pages somewhere, then upload them to Google Drive or something to serve them for nothing. I don't think the amount of traffic she'll be getting is going to be more than a couple hundred views a year.

Hosting is so incredibly cheap she should just do that. You can get hosting for something in the neighborhood of $5/month for shared hosting.

But...if she really wants to avoid any costs, take a look at hosting files on GitHub. Basically, you can create an account there and use GitHub pages to create a basic site. She could then forward her domain to the GitHub pages and be up and running.

http://pages.github.com/

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/using-github-pages-to-host-your-website

https://github.com/blog/272-github-pages

Thanks, I'll send her the link. At first glance, the github pages thing looks kinda complicated if she just wants to serve vanilla html. There's a lot of talk of creating projects and organizational pages/branches and command line interfaces. But maybe she'll get into it. I guess the days of easy web design & uploading .html files is over.

GitHub can be fairly complicated, as at it's core it is not a hosting service for website, it is a service for storing version controlled source code in an online repository.

I still recommend just grabbing a basic hosting account. That + an FTP program (FileZilla = free and awesome) + html files = website. About as "simple" as you can get and still maintain control over the files, etc. And pretty cheap, about $75/year for hosting (~$60) and a domain name (<$15).

 

[Sarnoff]

My ladyfriend is looking for a bare-bones webpage just to establish some sort of web identity for her business. Really basic stuff, just a few pages with a company description, FAQ, and contact information. No interactivity other than a mailto: form and maybe a link to a PDF for downloading. That's it. No blog, no coding. She has a domain name already.

Is there a good, free editor that she can use create the HTML pages, which I can then upload with all the images to a host, that you guys would recommend? Is Wordpress good for this or does it require too much baggage to be hosted elsewhere?

Godaddy's site builder is very simple and can run you like $1/month or something crazy like that. Should be plenty for her. They provide hosting as part of the package as well.

IF you wish to use outside hosting, I personally use ICDsoft (I'm an affiliate but don't post the affiliate links so folks don't think I'm only recommending them to make a couple bucks. That said there are countless hosting providers... the vast majority are excellent. I like ICDsoft because of their service and hand-holding through various projects that were a bit above my paygrade.

Also when one of my websites hit traffic and processor use levels that necessitated a move to a dedicated server, they worked with me (nonprofit) and simply relocated me to a A new SSD shared server that "had a lot of open processor bandwidth". They did the migration free of charge with no upcharge on my monthly hosting. My site is actually now faster.

Stupid question, but, if we're only building the site once and don't need to change the pages, do we only pay the 1 month of GoDaddy's sitebuilder, or would she have to keep paying it to keep the site up? I think her domain is registered with GoDaddy. (It currently doesn't point anywhere, she just wanted to reserve the name).

She's thinking she can create HTML pages somewhere, then upload them to Google Drive or something to serve them for nothing. I don't think the amount of traffic she'll be getting is going to be more than a couple hundred views a year.

Hosting is so incredibly cheap she should just do that. You can get hosting for something in the neighborhood of $5/month for shared hosting.

But...if she really wants to avoid any costs, take a look at hosting files on GitHub. Basically, you can create an account there and use GitHub pages to create a basic site. She could then forward her domain to the GitHub pages and be up and running.

http://pages.github.com/

http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/using-github-pages-to-host-your-website

https://github.com/blog/272-github-pages

Thanks, I'll send her the link. At first glance, the github pages thing looks kinda complicated if she just wants to serve vanilla html. There's a lot of talk of creating projects and organizational pages/branches and command line interfaces. But maybe she'll get into it. I guess the days of easy web design & uploading .html files is over.

GitHub can be fairly complicated, as at it's core it is not a hosting service for website, it is a service for storing version controlled source code in an online repository.

I still recommend just grabbing a basic hosting account. That + an FTP program (FileZilla = free and awesome) + html files = website. About as "simple" as you can get and still maintain control over the files, etc. And pretty cheap, about $75/year for hosting (~$60) and a domain name (<$15).

Gotcha, thanks

If we go that route, any alternatives we should look at other than Word Press to create the actual HTML files with maximum flexibility and compatibility with possible hosts (if we did a cheap one that didn't support Word Press)?

Thanks again for the tips. Since I'm not sure of her expertise level it's all helpful.

 

[Keerock]

Maelstrom and I should tag team on this... I'm a passable basic developer (cheat with dreamweaver and cut/paste code) but a better designer (another recent project, a first draft of logo and user interface/design for an iOS app I'm working on).

It would depend on timing really. I am currently swamped at work and have a number of side/freelance projects either launching or about to launch. But if the timing works, I'd be happy to help in a dev capacity (if nothing else, I'd be happy to help vet candidates as well).

 

[Somebody]

How much would you guys estimate these websites cost to develop:

http://www.sinvin.com/

http://affinitycommercial.com/

Both are commercial real estate firms in NYC, although Sinvin is significantly bigger than Affinity and they are bigger than my company as well. Also wondering what your general thoughts are about the 2 websites.

 

[Maelstrom]

How much would you guys estimate these websites cost to develop:

http://www.sinvin.com/

http://affinitycommercial.com/

Both are commercial real estate firms in NYC, although Sinvin is significantly bigger than Affinity and they are bigger than my company as well. Also wondering what your general thoughts are about the 2 websites.

Real estate sites in general can be really tricky to estimate. I assume you have some sort of commercial version of the MLS like is used by regular real estate brokers? Both of those website have a listing of properties, and it's hard to know how much it costs to enable that listing without talking to the CMLS provider. That is assuming you want a property listing on the website. The provider may offer the ability to pull your listings out in easy to manipulate data, or they might not even have a good way to get it out at all. They may have fees associated with access to the data. But all in all, I assume you don't want to have to enter your properties twice, once in the MLS and another time in your website?

Enough about the MLS, it's still really hard to ballpark a cost. But I'll break it down like I would if I were estimating hours, and you can assign a dollar value to the hours (as a ballpark, a lot of freelancers probably charge $50-$80/hr, on up to $150+ for agencies. Agency prices are going to be higher also because it is going to take more hours (more people) to do a similar sized project. In theory, with a better quality result. I'll be estimating hours from a freelancer perspective, not agency.) Also, note, these are just my estimates, not what I think actually went into the site. Also, I tend to underestimate my hours, so keep that in mind. (You'd think if I know that, I could fix it, and maybe I will, but it never seems to fail.)

-----

Interestingly enough, both websites utilize WordPress, both look to be custom themes, not purchased off the shelf (no real way to know what the base was, it's pretty easy to customize a theme to the point where it is unrecognizable). Obviously these are rough ballpark estimates for those websites and any estimates you get for your website would need to be tailored to your needs specifically. Anyways, enough "disclaimers".

Sinvin: 250-360 hours, add another 40-50 minimum for setting it up to pull listings directly from the MLS. Sinvin looks like it was probably a bit more of a custom job. All parts of the website seem fully integrated with each other, including the listing pages, nothing seems out of place or different from one section to another. The Portfolio utilizes a nice lightbox feature, so users can quickly view multiple items without leaving the page and suffering multiple refreshes. The Listing section has a nice search feature, you can use the map or just check the area you are interested in, and drill down to a detail page quickly. Aesthetically, the Sinvin site does a good job, IMO, of saying "We know commercial real estate and are professional in our dealings." Built by www.hauckinteractive.com, whose own website is pretty sparse, but if you are interested in e-stalking (I mean finding out more about) the founder, his personal site is www.mandalatv.net.

Affinity: 150-200 hours. Utilizes phpMyRealty, which is an off-the-shelf package you can purchase to get a Real Estate website up and running relatively quickly. Most of the website looks to be based on a custom template for phpMyRealty, the news section is pretty much stock WorkPress. Which means for the admin of the website, you'll be logging into two different CMS back-end systems to make updates. While phpMyRealty says on their website they integrate with MLS, what that generally means is not a direct, live connection, but the ability to upload your leads via the back-end into their system. Still, better than entering them by hand. Personally, I have tried to work with phpMyRealty in the past and was not fond of it. That said, maybe it's gotten better since I last touched it. Aesthetically, this site left me feeling like it was more of a stock template based site, even though they tried to mask it with a custom theme. The layout and architecture just screamed template. Built by www.enhancedsolutions.com.

 

[Somebody]

We have a service called CoStar for NYC, which is sort of the commercial version of MLS in that its a database of commercial spaces in NYC. I am new to real estate so my knowledge of CoStar is still limited, and I am not in residential so I don't know much about MLS from an agent's perspective, so I am unsure of the technical aspects of connecting our website with CoStar. I am not sure if the subscription we have covers that but if it doesn't and it was important to have them connected then we would pay for it regardless of how much it cost to build our website. We represent tenants more than landlords and are a small company so it wouldn't be a big deal for us to have to enter our listings twice.

How can you tell who built those sites? If you were on my budget would you be happy with a final product like Affinity's website? I agree that Sinvin's seems more custom, which makes sense since they are a much larger company and have more resources to put into their website than Affinity or my company. I would be very happy if we can get a website as good as theirs but Affinity might be a more realistic target for our budget.

 

[Maelstrom]

How can you tell who built those sites? If you were on my budget would you be happy with a final product like Affinity's website? I agree that Sinvin's seems more custom, which makes sense since they are a much larger company and have more resources to put into their website than Affinity or my company. I would be very happy if we can get a website as good as theirs but Affinity might be a more realistic target for our budget.

I would be happy with something "like" Affinity, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend phpMyRealty. And I would think you could probably end up with a little bit more custom design, I think it is mostly the design, and not the layout, that makes it look like a theme to me. I haven't vetted it out at all, but WP Property looks like it might be a good Real Estate plugin for WordPress to look into. Plus a plugin like that should feel more integrated than phpMyRealty sites, it's their default icons and blasé listing detail pages that make me cringe

As for figuring out who built the sites, both of them were listed in the style.css file as the theme author for the website. Wasn't a URL, but a quick Google search gave me that (same search gave me the founder's site as well, I didn't have too go digging for that).

 

[Maelstrom]

We have a service called CoStar for NYC, which is sort of the commercial version of MLS in that its a database of commercial spaces in NYC. I am new to real estate so my knowledge of CoStar is still limited, and I am not in residential so I don't know much about MLS from an agent's perspective, so I am unsure of the technical aspects of connecting our website with CoStar. I am not sure if the subscription we have covers that but if it doesn't and it was important to have them connected then we would pay for it regardless of how much it cost to build our website. We represent tenants more than landlords and are a small company so it wouldn't be a big deal for us to have to enter our listings twice.

I looked up CoStar, and you have to negotiate with them directly to get access to CoStar Connect which is what gives you a data feed you can embed in your website. Price quotes I saw in forum thread was $300-$1000+ per month, and greatly negotiable depending on the regions needed and promotions going on at the time. It may definitely be something that you have someone in-house just enter them in your website, that would probably give you more control. Plus it is almost easy to tell who is just pulling in the data feed and displaying it versus who is actually tailoring the listings for your website specifically, you can definitely use that as a way to set yourself apart from other brokers.

 

[Mr.Pack]

 

[Bri]

Openrealty, hands down. Wonderful way of making it simple for newbies and yet creatively challenging for advanced users that want to customize it even further.

Nothing comes close.