I am starting up a new business which is fairly similar to Tom’s in the services to be provided. Our main focus at the moment is the design and installation of networks, particularly wi-fi. We have a website and are using Wordpress for our templates and such. My partner and I are not super keen on using Wordpress, but we just aren’t really aware of any suitable alternatives.
I am aware that Tom’s business actually offers this as a service, but being a brand new business, it’s not likely something that we can afford at this stage.
Our web hosting provider uses C Panel if that is of any use to anyone.
Can anyone shed some light for us? Please feel free to ask clarifying questions if need be. Thanks in advance.
P.S. I am still getting through Tom’s Business Talks Vids on Youtube (and absolutely loving them!) and not sure if there is one around this topic or not but if there isn’t one, I think it would be beneficial
Cheers @Chris_sctech, we have considered using Wix, but the unknown factor makes it harder to part ways with the cash lol. If it is getting recommendations, then will likely be an option which is strongly considered.
Do you have any other hints or tips that you could share? It could be on Wordpress specifically or even more generally about building a decent website.
I would find a web developer that you can build a relationship with and explain your situation. You will be in a good spot to refer clients to them if you don’t do web design yourself. You could also find a college student that has nothing on their resume and work with them.
I second Tom’s advice on not using Wix. It’s a closed platform. Wordpress can be used to create from simple to large website.
You could consider a single page scrolling website to cover the basics of services and contact details, and then expand from there.
Another thought is that a website is not a replacement for face-to-face networking but a website can be a great resource to provide information for existing clients and where potential clients can check you out.
Not sure if you want to go in this direction, but I’ve used a static website generator called Hugo in the past when I wanted a break from WordPress. It’s all open source and uses simple Markdown files for content.
Sounds like a good plan, just need to find a web developer lol
We had some experience with this type of thing with our logo and it didn’t go so well… we paid her for her time but we were never really impressed by it. I mean I know you get what you pay for and she was certainly nice enough, but she didn’t really have what we were looking for. So not super keen to go down that path again.
We started with the scrolling page type thing as a placeholder which explained what we do. We have now amended it, separating the information into a few more logical and easily digestible pages. It is of course a work in progress and probably will be on an ongoing basis, but we just aren’t satisfied with what we have been able to produce so far - don’t get me wrong, we are happy with what we have - we just know there is a lot more work to do.
I will have to check it out, but we do like the fact that website is “pretty” for lack of a better word. I just don’t think a static website will be able to provide what we are after.
As a start up, you can pretty much count on any money you “make” going right back in to the business. I’m 5 years in and I do support myself at this point, but a lot more money than I expected is going back in to the business.
@extramile_mike the college student that we used was actually found on airtasker - not sure what the talent pool is like in comparison to fiverr but I assume it is quite similar.
As for money into the business, yeah I assume that will be the case. We really started it to be a hobby and make some cash on the side, but the more our full-time job with a government organisation goes away from Digital Forensics (which is what our unit is actually titled) and towards tech support, the more we want to make a real go of our business and do it properly.
We understand that it will be a bit if a slog at the start, but we also want to make sure that we build it on good foundations.
Perch - the really little content management system, https://grabaperch.com/ it’s a great little CMS alternative that I think is much better than Wordpress and is very secure. There is a 1x $69 flat fee that includes all future updates but it has some great extensions and a very large support community. I have used it on a dozen websites already as I have some clients that want to update their website with content but no design so this fits perfectly for them. Works with HTML sites great.
Another I have used is CouchCMS which has a free and a flat fee option as well. It works well but I prefer Perch over it due to its extensibility.
Unfortunately, I don’t like Wordpress much its has so many holes and will always be a target just like Microsoft Windows is. It has such a large market share and will always be the #1 CMS platform for hackers. I do use Wordpress still on some sites as some clients want the full flexibility it offers and when I do use it I lock it down with BPS Pro, https://affiliates.ait-pro.com/po/.
WordPress is absolutely brilliant, I’m running my own site on it, and I have pushed a few different clients that way and it been great for them too. If you are looking into it, there are many different websites that offer templates at a good price. I have used https://themeforest.net/ and they have a lot of varied priced themes.
