Blu domain website?

Okay I need a website... I dont like the cheapo website tonight builders

because 1. they look crappy, or at least I cant manage to make it look good

and 2. i cant figure it out

 

I suck at website design....

 

I really like the bludomain sites and can budget right now for $200.00 and

maybe more in early 2008...Are they easy to do? I like how they look and I am

tired of searching... I need to get one and move on. Also, once I get the site

set up, where do I need to go to get traffic directed to my site, or do I not?

I already have the domain name registered. Thanks to all of you for all of

your support this year. Pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together and

I am getting that "Aha" moment.

Web design is a business by it own, if you know nothing about why you want to setup your site by yourself. It will take you a lot of time to get it running and nobody knows how it will look. A website has to show competence etc, it brings the "first impression" about your business to the customer, and if it has that homegrown look the user will not get the idea that you are a pro.

 

<br><br>And at traffic: Optimizing for search engines is a business by its own too, and flash is for that purpose not the best idea, its not readable by the robots.<br><br>

 

So my advice is to get this work done by a pro. <br><br>Regards<br><br>Martin

Hi Amy, I recently went for a bludomain site, I like it.... the interface for designing and

modifying the site is quite simple, you can change some aspects to make your site a little

different, however it will of course strongly resemble anyone elses site that used the same

template.

A big advantage is being able to change things later without having to ring your web

designer everytime.....

Have a look at my site,

http://www.sassstudios.com

though it uses a template that cost more than $200, you can have a look at what I have

done with it vs. the template example on blu's site - called 'ella'.

As for getting traffic directed to your site....thats the million dollar question everyone

would like to know the answer to!

Do a search on Search Engine Optomisation, see what you can do with what you find.....of

course having a flash site like mine probably doesn't help, but there are other things you

can try.... let me know if you come up with any good tricks!

 

Good luck,

 

Ben.

Ben, Nice site with great images........

Nice site Ben, i like it.

Amy, lucky you! I didn't realize BluDomain was offering $200 templates. Must be fairly new. For a beginning site, I would think one or two galleries would get you by for awhile. As for driving traffic to your site, keywords and text can be added to the splash page which is html, and can be indexed by the search engine robots and spiders. Another good thing is to put your website on everything that might get seen. I would suggest putting a paragraph with your whole name and location on that splash page along with words people might use in a search like photographer, wedding, portrait, you get the point. Good luck to you!

 

Ben - Beautiful!

<i>...keywords and text can be added to the splash page which is html...</i><br><br>

 

keywords only in the desription dont help, if they arent found in the content.

They're beautiful, if you can afford it.

But if your budget for the template alone preferrably stays under the 100 dollars,

check out this website:

 

http://www.templatemonster.com/category/art-photography/

 

Good luck.

 

From then all you got to do is find, through an internet market place, someone who is

good at programming Flash. Could be a student or an enthusiastic amateur. Who does the

job for 50 to 100 dollars.

 

That's how I do it.

 

Good luck!

Amy:

 

I built my first site using a template from template monster, and it was very daunting because flash and html are no piece of cake for the novice. Since then (html and flash tutorials under my belt), have a site that is a combination of flash, html and php, search engines like it, clients like it, and it is easy to maintain.

 

Any web space provider will do the trick after you get your site designed. I use ipowerweb.com. $90 a year, lots of features and support.

 

If you are interested, drop me a line and let me know how many pages you are thinking of, how many galleries, colour scheme, etc, and I can whip up a site template for you. All you need to do is supply the images and text and meta tag info.

 

Larry

Thanks for the offer Larry, I purchased a Blu template last week...

Amy try moonfruit.com in UK, great web building site, with good tools too, i have just started one on it too http://tfweddingphotography.moonfruit.com/ Terry.

<p>Here it is 2009 and still Blu Domain is horrible with virtually NO customer service. They duck and dodge by not posting anywhere any phone number or customer support number at all and take forever to respond to emails! pusrchased the luke and looks great but has so many bugs in it it's pretty much a waste of time. I feel like you get what you pay for $400 down the drain with BluDomain! Any business of any sort without a phone number is cause to be very dubious! I mean here we are as photographers, wedding or whatever sort, and I guarantee if you want business you got a phone number up!</p>

<p>Definitely some customer service issues, but worth the wait.. <a href="http://www.julianarthur.org">www.julianarthur.org</a><br>

Julian Arthur</p>