I would strongly recommend staying away from any type of site for which you need a plugin (i.e. Flash). Flash is nearing its end and you are essentially excluding a huge number of users (mobile) by limiting your site to desktop users. Check out the statistics for mobile users. Soon desktop will be the minority. It would be worth it to invest some money into a nice website. Most consumers look at websites first more than anything now. I would check out a WordPress site (free) or look into having a college student do a JavaScript site for you.
Avoid plugins at all cost to reach the most users.
Agreed with AnnieCahill.
Flash is officially dead for mobile already.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5-updated/19226
Stay away from Flash. More and more people are browsing the internet on the road.
I use Go Daddy, pretty cheap and the website tonight was really easy for me to use to build my site.
I also went with Go Daddy and paid the yearly price of $56.00. I tried web.com and did not like the lack of page choice. If you want to check my page, it's in my sig line.
Hi Lynn, I paid the $56 I think in Oct and it will expire in Oct. I asked for it not to be recurring in case my business doesn't work out. Hope that answers you question. And thanks for your compliment. I really like it a lot. But you can also pay monthly but I'm not sure if it locks in where you have to pay for the whole year but in monthly increments or if you can pay month to month. Hope that makes sense. Good luck 
Hi! I realize this might be too late, but thought I'd share anyway. I use vistaprint...it's $10/month and you get a email adress with the website. It also gives you a .com address (if that matters to you), and is really user friendly. It also alows you up to 5 tabs and you just pay more if you want more! HTH
You will only end up spending alot more money in the long run, and you will be so upset and disappointed.
That is rather a open ended question. I am also a SQL Database Architect, and a .NET Developer. I designed and coded our website, and also registered all of our domain names.
Owning your own domain name is a great way to go, that way no matter the host, your website address and all your email addresses will never change. But using some of the "cheap" companies that do it for you, like Go Daddy, is never a good idea. You can easily go to www.networksolutions.com and register your own domain name. That way, your domain name will belong to you. If you let a company like GD do this step, they register it in their name. You will not own your domain name. That will be a huge disappointment when you go to move it, the domain name will not belong to you.
As far as a host, there are many very good ones. I use Flare Hosting from New York to host all of mine. I own approx 50 domain names currently. They fully support many languages, databases and technologies. Which brings me to the most important aspect of a website. What you want your site to do, will depend on the language you need to use. There are many languages and technologies available.
Here is something to think about: What do you want your website to do for you? How much of the website do you want automated? How will you modify the content? If you do not know how to write code, then you will hire someone, or have a database backend that stored the content and display it depending on the date or length of time. Sites look very unprofessional when there are advertisements that are out of date. I store all of my site content in a database so that my wife or myself can log into the admin side anytime and add or modify the content. My wife is not a website developer, so I chose to use a large message box just like this one you types your comment in, to add or modify the site content.
Use your domain name email address, all the domains at my host come with unlimited email addresses. Have a wonderful, descriptive domain name, and then using one of the free site email addresses is just plain tacky and unprofessional. So take the time to setup all the addresses under your own domain name. You can forward all the email from your free site address to your domain name address. Then notify the sender of your new address. You can even automate that step to send an auto reply with your new address domain name address.
The language / technology used to create your site, depends on what you want your site to do. Even if you only want a static site, think of the future. It will be much less money in the long run to modify the site to do what you want to do in the future.
Oh, one of our company cake sites is: www.SanDiego-AllOccasionCakes.com
Hope this helps you in making the correct decision about your website.
Beth & Andrew
Cake Artists
You will only end up spending alot more money in the long run, and you will be so upset and disappointed.
That is rather a open ended question. I am also a SQL Database Architect, and a .NET Developer. I designed and coded our website, and also registered all of our domain names.
Owning your own domain name is a great way to go, that way no matter the host, your website address and all your email addresses will never change. But using some of the "cheap" companies that do it for you, like Go Daddy, is never a good idea. You can easily go to www.networksolutions.com and register your own domain name. That way, your domain name will belong to you. If you let a company like GD do this step, they register it in their name. You will not own your domain name. That will be a huge disappointment when you go to move it, the domain name will not belong to you.
I think you're missing the point. Most of us are not computer literate enough to do what you're talking about on our own. I personally can use any program out there, but as far as anything else, I know just enough to be dangerous. You're also talking to hobby bakers, home bakers, etc., who are operating on a shoestring as it is and don't have the available funds to have it done for them. The only option is to go the cheapest and easiest way possible to get the name and product out there. Ideal? No. Doable? Yes.
I think you're missing the point. Most of us are not computer literate enough to do what you're talking about on our own. I personally can use any program out there, but as far as anything else, I know just enough to be dangerous. You're also talking to hobby bakers, home bakers, etc., who are operating on a shoestring as it is and don't have the available funds to have it done for them. The only option is to go the cheapest and easiest way possible to get the name and product out there. Ideal? No. Doable? Yes.[/quote]
I agree with you on this point. I think I will be going more towards a site that I can do myself, as inexpensively as I can at this time. As the business grows then maybe looking at upgrading.
I use Weebly.com
It's free and took me very little time to figure out. I own my domain address but am not computer literate enough to create a site from scratch. So when people go to my domain address, it automatically forwards them to my Weebly site. It's the best I can do for my small business and the small amount of time I have to dedicate to a website right now.
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