Hey yall I was wondering what type of process you went thru to make your website. Did you go thru go-daddy, vista print, or like an individual person? Whats the best way? I have been trying to get a site up 4 a wile but im not sure whats the cheapest/best way. So please share ur experience and if possible the costs too and how long it took. THX sooo much MarkMexicano

Ok, kiddo, if you're gonna try to talk southern, ya gotta know how to spell it!

ya'll .... contraction that stands for "You will" with a southern accent.
y'all .... contraction that stands for "you all"

Just teasin' ya! Us real rednecks don't really care how it's "spelt"!

There are a number of free websites out there, with easy to plug in templates that can have you up and running inside of 20 minutes.

I used Register.com. My initial website was up live in 2 hours, and that included all the narrative and photos, for a total of 5 pages. A handful of days later, I upgraded to the 20-page version for only $15/month.

I would recommend you write all of your narrative first, before you start on the website. It's easy to edit and fine tune the message. THen you can just cut-n-paste it into place on your website.

www.rentacoder.com - They built my current site which basically has 'under construction' with contact information and some pictures. You don't pay until you're happy and all of the coders are rated. check it out! I can give you more information if you're interested.

Yahoo's webhosting. Very easy to set up yourself and $12.95/month after your free trial...

Registered the name at godaddy.com very inexpensive ($20 for 2 years) because it's not one of the high end names, would be even cheaper with a .net or some other dot.

My co-worker is hosting the site, so that's free, if you have a friend with their own server, maybe you can do a cake/trade type thingy.

Coding, free, I'm a computer programmer so I just coded it myself, which is probably why it sucks so bad. The best way to go is with one of those free webbuilder programs. I just can't seem to figure out how to use them

I'm not sure what level of a website you're looking at, but a lot of folks use Blogger or Wordpress with some surprising success. I use Blogger myself and a friend of mine bought me my domain name as an early Christmas gift which I can redirect my baking blogsite to (and will be soon). I like the blogging format and you can make lots of tweaks to the template with some basic HTML code edits to create more of a website feel. There are hundreds of templates and tutorials out there on how to use it and it is very easy. Best of all, Blogger and Wordpress are free to get started and incredibly customizable so it grows with your needs. Even if you don't think it's for you, I strongly recommend checking several sites out that use the format (check out Sweetopia for one...hers is great!). Good luck!

I use Wordpess for my website, it's really flexible and it doesn't always have to look like a blog (although mines does look like a blog). I have a designer, she's affordable and she was able to help me maintain everything. Her name is Gisele Jaquenod, she did Cake Journal, Sweetopia and Lorraine Mckay's site.

To get my domain, I used Tiger Tech. The monthly payment depends on which plan you get--but it is affordable as well.

I created my logo and gave it to a graphic designer who sets up websites. I have full control of loading/unloading and changing any info on it.

He was great. It depends on how much info you want on your website. My is pretty basic but it does the job.

Good luck,

i went through vistaprint for everything b/c i wanted the design on my business cards/flyers/banners/website etc. to be the same and this was the cheapest way to do it. i never pay for anything except shipping on my marketing materials. the website ($10/month) was easy to set up and edit. i recently changed the name of my business so i have the original domain name through vistaprint and one through godaddy and the old URL "points" to the new URL. there are some things i'd change about vistaprints email capabilities, but it def. gets the job done. i now have my own logo (that a graphic designer did as a favor for me...gotta love talented friends!) that i'm working into my previous design! good luck