Starting a website- what's involved, costs?

[Monkey]

This isn't for me but I'm trying to help out. Basically what is needed to get something started.

Price for a domain name yearly?
Price for using vbulletin yearly?
how much to get the site up and running?
how do you go about getting partnerhips (like having blu-ray.com have a link to the site, and said site having a link to blu-ray.com /advertisers.) Not necessarily blu-ray.com but just an example, etc.

I'm sure there is more as well that I'm not thinking of.

Or if you think there are other sources I should be checking let me know.

[Uniquely]

You can spend as little/zero..... or as much as you want.... depending upon what features you want. There are tons of websites that will allow you to have complete forums and many other features for free.

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by Monkey

This isn't for me but I'm trying to help out. Basically what is needed to get something started.

Price for a domain name yearly?
Price for using vbulletin yearly?
how much to get the site up and running?
how do you go about getting partnerhips (like having blu-ray.com have a link to the site, and said site having a link to blu-ray.com /advertisers.) Not necessarily blu-ray.com but just an example, etc.

I'm sure there is more as well that I'm not thinking of.

Or if you think there are other sources I should be checking let me know.

Domain price: usually about $10 per year.
vBulletin: I believe it varies, but I want to say it's about $100 for a year or $200 for a lifetime license.
How much to get the site up and running? That's debatable. Are you going to do any of it yourself? Will you have any input? I do HTML and CSS programming, so for me that part is free. You will need to have a domain host, which is generally in the neighborhood of $15 per month, if you have vBulletin type features along with it. You could probably find $9.99 per month domain hosting if it's really basic and has only one or two e-mail addresses. I have a source that does it for that. There will be an initialization fee, usually like $20 or $30 or buck or so to get your domain's nameservers switched from the registrar to the domain host.

That is all the hard costs. After that it's up to you. You can always add things like more storage space, features, and so on and so on...

PM or e-mail if you want more info. I do web design as a side job to create a little more cash flow.

Here are a couple recent ones:

http://maxmusclesantacruz.com/ -- Local supplement store. Designed from scratch, including all graphics and code
http://angels.brettroby.com/ -- son's baseball site that I designed from scratch (I'm manager of the team)
http://santacruztelevision.com/ -- Local television shop owned by my cousin. I didn't do the layout of this site, but I took it from a singular home page that had only one page (which was originally made using an HTML table...which I converted to CSS) and made it into what you see here as far as functionality and stuff.

[Monkey]

Cool, thank you both much appreciated. I can't really answer the questions as I'm just finding out info for another person. This is a good start.

Good work on those site, very nice looking!

[toef]

Originally Posted by brettallica

Domain price: usually about $10 per year.

It's weird that domain prices popped up in the thread today, because I wanted to punch Yahoo (the entire company, I guess) in the face earlier.

Years ago I signed up for a few domains using Yahoo, and I think it was $1.99 at the time. Of course I didn't expect that to last, and it didn't. Year 2 was $8.95, which is fine. Year 2 was $12.95, which was still somewhat ok, but there are many cheaper options.

Now, effective July 2008, or so, they bumped the price all the way up to $34.95.

I assume they did it for two reasons:

1) They figure people won't care, and figure the extra cost is worth avoiding the hassle of transferring it to another provider.

2) They figure people sign up for websites all the time as jokes (and forward the URLs to an exist website, like ThankYouPalin.com) and will forget they even own the domains, so it will be auto-renewed without them knowing, for a nice $35.

As for the OP, RobinandTami summed it up best. The price can range from close to $0 (there's no way to get a free domain, that I know of, but you can get them for a couple dollars), all the way up to a truckload of money. I would suggest starting low; you'll end up getting lower bandwidth, and hosting space per month, but until you really need it, there's no reason to be paying for more than you need/use. Once the site starts generating traffic, you can easily switch over to a new host, or upgrade your package within your current host.

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by toefer

Now, effective July 2008, or so, they bumped the price all the way up to $34.95.

That is f-ing absurd. I did some basic flash work for someone's site recently, and found out they built their site originally using the Yahoo! Site Builder -- and that Yahoo! was hosting their domain. The HTML for the site is so bloated with inline CSS that I almost broke my computer in frustration while trying to implement the new work I'd done. It got that way because of their stupid web-based configurator GUI, from what I gathered anyway; there's no reason for it to be as mangled as it was.

I can only imagine how much of a premium they're paying for that garbage.

/rant

I hate Yahoo!

[jkwest]

I maintain my own site...it needs some work, but, it gets its point across....
http://www.officialjkwest.com

Only costs me about $14 a year including email..

can you guys give me any tips to clean it up? GoDaddy automatically screws up the coding, so, I can't figure out how to get rid of the top crap and the /par's

[JimShaw]

I build my own web site at
www.BeautifulConcreteFloors.com

It is hosted at www.bluehost.com

A domain name costs me $10.00 a year
To host the site costs me:
1) 6.95 a month for a three agreement
2) 7.95 a month for two years
3) or as I do, 8.95 a month for a year



.

[Uniquely]

Originally Posted by jkwest

I maintain my own site...it needs some work, but, it gets its point across....
http://www.officialjkwest.com

Only costs me about $14 a year including email..

can you guys give me any tips to clean it up? GoDaddy automatically screws up the coding, so, I can't figure out how to get rid of the top crap and the /par's

You're one sick puppy!

[phlydude]

I use a hosting service called IX Web Hosting - for a personal site and a 200 GB limit per month, the price was nice for 2 years

Go Daddy is where I register my domains - they run sales from time to time, check it out

[jkwest]

Originally Posted by robinandtami

You're one sick puppy!

Is that a compliment?

[jw]

Originally Posted by JimShaw

I build my own web site at
www.BeautifulConcreteFloors.com

It is hosted at www.bluehost.com

A domain name costs me $10.00 a year
To host the site costs me:
1) 6.95 a month for a three agreement
2) 7.95 a month for two years
3) or as I do, 8.95 a month for a year



.

man that garage should have been painted first...


and thats pretty cool

[JimShaw]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

man that garage should have been painted first...


and thats pretty cool

That was a 10 year old boy's bedroom. He is bound by wheelchair for the rest of his life and his parents asked me to do an automotive theme in his room. I tried to do a race track coming into the winning checkerboard area, his bathroom.

The green and grey colors were polyurethanes and black and white epoxies were used in the checkerboard bathroom. The grout between the grey and green was a raven black.

You can see the finished room at
http://www.bestfloorsrus.com/Bedroom.htm



.

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by jkwest

can you guys give me any tips to clean it up? GoDaddy automatically screws up the coding, so, I can't figure out how to get rid of the top crap and the /par's

I could probably fix that. You would have to let me have access to your FTP site, though. Maybe set up a temporary password for me to get in, then switch it back when we're done. Shoot me an e-mail and we'll talk.

[brettallica]

@ JimShaw

I like that triangle/pyramid thing you've got on your home page. Nice work there! I've never seen anything quite like it. I may adapt something similar in future projects. If nothing else it'll be an inspiration and I'll keep that in my head.

I'm not sure if you realized this, but if the viewer's internet browser window gets too small, you lose the triangle look and the background images start to break to the next line.

Also, nice "hidden text" in there.

[JimShaw]

Originally Posted by brettallica

@ JimShaw

I like that triangle/pyramid thing you've got on your home page. Nice work there! I've never seen anything quite like it. I may adapt something similar in future projects. If nothing else it'll be an inspiration and I'll keep that in my head.

I'm not sure if you realized this, but if the viewer's internet browser window gets too small, you lose the triangle look and the background images start to break to the next line.

No I did not realize it. I will make the triangle a little highter and the width smaller. That should help.

Thanks for the thought. I do my web site as a hobby and not being a pro, I never really sure how it looks outside my own computer.

You could see the hidden text? Not very hidden.


Thanks

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by JimShaw

No I did not realize it. I will make the triangle a little highter and the width smaller. That should help.

Thanks for the thought. I do my web site as a hobby and not being a pro, I never really sure how it looks outside my own computer.

You could see the hidden text? Not very hidden.


Thanks

Apple-A or ctrl-A highlights the text that you have hidden. It can't be seen unless you do that or view the page's source. You're still safe (although the jig is up here on Blu-ray.com).

Anyway, just some ideas regarding your "outside my own computer" comment: be sure to test your designs across as many browsers as you can to ensure that the look you're trying to achieve is actually seen the same way by all viewers. I've got a few Macs and a few PCs, each with varying operating systems; and each one of those computers has all the most common internet browsers installed. I often go through five or six different browsers (between each of the systems and their various browser versions) before I go live with something. Sometimes I just can't figure out why something looks one way on one browser and totally different on another. I tend to have the most issues with PC Internet Explorer 6, and to a lesser extent Safari on any Mac running 10.3 or earlier.

[JimShaw]

Originally Posted by brettallica

Apple-A or ctrl-A highlights the text that you have hidden. It can't be seen unless you do that or view the page's source. You're still safe (although the jig is up here on Blu-ray.com).

Anyway, just some ideas regarding your "outside my own computer" comment: be sure to test your designs across as many browsers as you can to ensure that the look you're trying to achieve is actually seen the same way by all viewers. I've got a few Macs and a few PCs, each with varying operating systems; and each one of those computers has all the most common internet browsers installed. I often go through five or six different browsers (between each of the systems and their various browser versions) before I go live with something. Sometimes I just can't figure out why something looks one way on one browser and totally different on another. I tend to have the most issues with PC Internet Explorer 6, and to a lesser extent Safari on any Mac running 10.3 or earlier.

I thank you for all your help.

I am actually working on the front page now trying to make it better.

Thanks.


.

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by JimShaw

I thank you for all your help.

I am actually working on the front page now trying to make it better.

Thanks.


.

Of course. No problem. Let me know if you have any questions or feel like you need some tips -- although I will say you're doing well so far!

[Monkey]

Wow JKwest


Everybody thanks for the input and ideas!! You all