I see many of you have your own cake .com website. How do you do that? And is there a cost? I'm just beginning to branch out and want a website. I want the address to be .com, and have already chosen one that isn't taken. I have done a little research and see there is a yearly fee. I don't want to jump in then learn later you can get it elsewhere free. Is the yearly fee something that is inevitable? Any help to get my website started is appreciated.

Thanks,
Amy

There are many places you can get a free webpage but it won't be just a .com. It think that ones like geocites or microsoft will have something like www. mycakes/microsoftoffice. com or something to that effect. I know that YAHOO offers .coms at a really affordable monthly fee around $12 and a one time sign up fee. THey give you tools to help you build it if you dont know HTML or just don't want to use it.

I have been trying to learn more about it too and hopefully someone else can come around and help us both out!

I'm trying to figure out the same thing myself. Thanks for starting this thread. I can't wait to see what everyone else has to say!

I really want it to be .com for ease of remembering the site for my clients. I saw some of the free ones that also advertise that company's site. So maybe you have to pay if you are only considering .com?

I know that vista print.com(without spaces) offers websites. Unfortunately, I can't tell you if it's .com, or the price. I just ordered business cards from there, and right now you can try a website free for one month. My friend is a web designer, so I will email him to find out what he says, and I'll post it as soon as I hear from him. Hopefully someone can help in the meantime.

I use webpiston for my hosting and its a .com I pay 19.99 a month they are wonderful. one way to get around paying so much is if you register with a free site and then purchase a domain name from go daddy and they can redirect it to your free site. It sounds hard but it sure isnt.

You can have your website hosted for free at any of those free sites, but you are going to have to pay for a domain name if you want a .com. You can usually get it for around $10 a year or so. Go to www.godaddy.com and look around. You will have to do a search to make sure your domain name is available, and if it's not, they will make some suggestions on what you could use instead. Then, you just have to pay for that name. Then, if you don't want to pay to have your site hosted there, you can make a free webpage and have this name that you registered 'point' to that wedsite. So that way, your customers don't have to type in missprettycakes.website.happyland.longaddress. net or something crazy like that... they can just type missprettycakes. com and it will go straight to your site at missprettycakes.website.happyland.longaddress. net. Personally I am a .net because the .com version was taken. I WISH I had gotten the .com because for some reason it's easier for people to remember. I don't know why. It's on the interNET, why is .net so confusing? hahaha. Goos luck all!

Also, you can get hosting from GoDaddy for under $75 a year. I pay like $72 I believe. It's worth it.

PSurrette, great minds think alike, eh?

HA HA I think so Melvira! I could change to a less expensive hosting with go daddy but I would have to rebuild my site again and I dont have time for that.

Melvira, I took "a walk" around your website - very creative - love your writings! You don't have anything posted about pricing. I see some sites at per serving prices. You think it's better not to say anything about pricing, and just have them fill out the order form? Then you get back to them with a quote?

I think I'm going with godaddy too.

Thanks.

I like Yahoo. I have used their Webhosting for years and built many websites with the Yahoo Sitebuilder. See www.morgansdairybar.com. I built that site for them. The price is great and you can do so many things with it and you don't have to be HTML literate!

I agree. Yahoo is super easy. I love it.

Hi Amybunce,

If you dont want annoying popups and third-party ads on your site, you are going to have to pay for your hosting/domain name.

Ive tried a few different hosting sites over the years and Im currently using InMotion Hosting: www.inmotionhosting.com

The cheapest plan they offer (that has a web site builder included) is $4 month and $8 yearly fee for domain name registration. If you opt for a business account (which lets you have shopping carts, etc), it is $7 month and the domain name registration is free. I havent used the web site builder on the $4 plan, but the site builder on the business class is pretty slick. You can include blogs, image galleries, forums, and as many pages as you want.

Here is a site I just built for our Home Owners Association.

www.ashtonoaksPOA.org

Carol

Thanks, Carol and everyone else for the info and suggestions. I just finished building my site on godaddy.com. It's vey basic - my first time building a site. I did go with one I have to pay for to get the dot com and for the other benefits. I just hit "Publish" and it says it will be up in 24-48 hours.

www.amyshappycakes.com

Thanks for all the help, CC friends!

Amy
Add your web address to your Forum Info profile and you'll have a "www" button at the end of all your posts.

Ok, I'm html retarded! I got a domain one godaddy.com, and they are hosting my site. It says to download a FTP client, which I did. But the client thing won't connect to my server>? Any suggestions??

I just wanted to remind everyone to submit your website to search engines. If you don't, when someone searches for yoursite.com through a search engine, it won't show up.

Example: If you type amyshappycakes.com directly into the address bar it will go directly to your site. But, if you google amyshappycakes.com or even amyshappycakes, google won't find your site unless you've submitted it.

DO NOT pay for this service, there are plenty of free services out there. I suggest making an e-mail address just for website submission because some places will sell your e-mail. You can also go directly to google, yahoo, etc. and submit your website directly but the free services usually do the job.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions. I do web design for friends & live vicariously through you all. I would love to be able to decorate like you ladies!

Twentyfingers, thanks for the info. I had already googled myself and knew it didn't pop up and I needed to learn what to do. I went to submitexpress.com and filled it out, but now it says:

Please cut and paste this section on top of your HTML page in a text editor. You should replace the section from <HTML> to </HEAD>.

I have no idea what that means.

Amy

I believe what it means is to replace the section I've circled in this image with the code they have provided. If I remember correctly, my husband said it is this section of a website's code that search engines scan to match keywords to websites.

If I'm wrong, don't stone me... it's my hubby who is a nerd.

http://cakecreationsbyjulia.com/images/banners/ccweb.JPG

I tried to add the image but it was HUGE! When I resized it, you couldn't see the area I was talking about. I posted it on my website. If you click the link you'll see what I'm talking about.

I purchased my domain at GoDaddy. However, I bought a macbook last year and it has been awesome! I have a mac application that I get to modify my site on, and I host it through apple for $100 a year (and that includes about 3 to 4 other sites I have built).

thanks twentyfingers! I need to do the same thing...help us!

Juleebug is correct. Depending on what your building your site in, your software might have the same function built into it. The metatags are different than submitting though, you need to do both. Did you figure out how to do it?

Blondiez ~
When I google blondiez.com, the page that google links to is an error page. Maybe your home page isn't set correctly? Your site is very cute though, love the theme!

Juleebug...can your hubby help me??!! I just finished my website through godaddy.com
Then my friend said to go to google webmaster tools to put it in the google database. BUt when I did this it said to verify(kind of like your html example). But my website isn't html, it's the WYSIWYG format. So I have no idea where to put the meta tag to verify I am the owner of the website.
Any advise would be SO Helpful!! Thanks!

Julia's husband has invaded the forum.

Please PM your website address to Julia or post it in line here.

If you want something TRULY simple to put together...go to CityMax.com. I've been using them for about 3 years now and they are great!

You get the domain, email and a bunch of other stuff like WYSIWYG page building tools...they are sooo easy to use, and it's only $20/month.

I'm actually trying to teach myself HTML, CSS and Javascript so I can have more control over certain design aspects of my site. If you're ambitious like me, check out these books:

Creating a Web Site: The Missing Manual
JavaScript: The Missing Manual

I hope this helps

Amy -- your website looked great!

And to the lady who sent the immotion website info, thanks! Your home webpage looked great!