How to create an actually good website?
Anybody have experience or advice on how to create a website? I have two ideas in mind that I would like to have one for:
1) A forum (similar to WSO) for a niche video game community I am part of with little online presence other than Reddit.
2) A professional website for my small real estate business that would be very simple, basically just 1 page with a description of the company, contact info, photos and listings of current properties / spaces for rent.
What is the best way to do this? Are there any good 3rd party companies that specialize in this, and if so what are their typical costs and timeline like (both for initial design/build of the website and ongoing costs)? Do I need I need to hire multiple people - like a coder and a graphic designer? I don’t have any real IT/coding experience, but I would definitely be willing to learn the basics at least for ongoing site maintenance/administration after its made, even if its not realistic to learn enough to do actual design/creation of the website myself on a quality level similar to WSO or other professional business websites.
Hoping WallStreetOasis.com might have some suggestions since I really like the set up, aesthetic, and functionality of WSO a lot more than probably 90%+ of forums I've used. Any other advice greatly appreciated!
Well 1 and 2 are drastically different things. I don't know shit about making a forum similar to WSO, but I know that it's way more complicated than #2. #2 you can literally hire someone for a couple hundred bucks and they'll spit one out for you. I've done it multiple times with Wix Pro, and if you're only looking for a simple one page website than you really can't go wrong there. With Wix you don't even need to know coding, the UI is super friendly and after a while you'll get the hang of it if you're deadset on doing it yourself. But if you're looking to make a forum I would suggest reaching out to someone who knows what they're doing, makes the process a whole lot easier.
1) A forum (similar to WSO) for a niche video game community I am part of with little online presence other than Reddit.
There's prepackaged software available for forums. WSO is a custom build on Drupal IIRC. WSO has been around for a while though and a lot of the new/good software available was not around then. I would use that to start as costs will be very low. Look @ Xenforo etc.
2) A professional website for my small real estate business that would be very simple, basically just 1 page with a description of the company, contact info, photos and listings of current properties / spaces for rent
Wix. I have full time dev resources and still use Wix for our firm site b/c it's brainless and anyone can edit it + takes 20 min. :)
Seconding this. For simple sites Wix is all you need, no reason to make more headache than needed. Programming well takes time and Wix does it more cheaply and faster.
Word of mouth, I hired someone to build my website. Not ultra complicated, but ya know, there were complicated aspects to it. Paid him several grand and he did a great job. He also has an eye for design, which helps. You get a nerd who is just good at coding or building websites and he may make a pretty ugly website, even if it works really well. My guy did a great job on design.
1) This is entirely scope dependent. For example I would bet that WSO has at minimum 500K in web development costs in it.
2) www.squarespace.com
I have experience in web development. The way I would approach this is getting to grips in python with a package called Flask and then maybe do a short crash course on SQL for the back-end development of your website.
I know nothing about dev so this may be a dumb question. But say I have an SQL database (and an excel one with the same info if that matters) with a bunch of addresses/establishments, and then data about them (neighborhood, open and close time, what they offer etc.). Could I just connect a site like wix or squarespace to that and it will show the data and be able to filter it? Or will I need to do a bunch of coding and build out an entire web application which would be way out of my league?
Squarespace. If you have the time and want to do it from teeny tiny bits use those HTML web builders for mac.
I had zero experience in website development but created my own during lockdown with Wix. They do have decent templates for Property listings but I don't know much about the forum side of things, I don't recall seeing much on that but wasn't looking for it so that is not to say its not there.
Thank you all for the very helpful replies thus far. Seems like Wix and Squarespace are a no brainer for #2.
For #1, I should also add that I want to include a blog feature with the forum to attract traffic and provide for thorough, easily searchable write ups of the most popular topics. Are there any particular recommendations for the Blog + Forum combo?
As mentioned by m_1 the form software packages will work for that as well. You just need to include a blog segment. Pretty straight forward,there are also blog editing systems that will allow you to no code the design of the blog posts. Don't know what they are called, will ask my developer.
look into wordpress
I have created multiple websites, mostly Homestead one with Wix. None of them look very nice, as I know next to nothing about technology and building websites. However, my goal was not to create great looking websites. My goal was to create websites that rank high in search engine results. Despite knowing very little about technology, I have a pretty good idea of what is important for SEO.
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