Starting a website usings templates

[carin]

Hi
I am a newbie here and starting to get into the swing of using the forum which I think is great.
On my previous posts (2) I have breifly mentioned I am starting a sandwich shop soon so I would like to put a website up aswell so that customers can find me on google sooner rather than later.
Im looking to start with maybe a reasonably basic but nice looking website, just to show information really, not a website to order from. Not yet anyway.
I have looked a monster template.com which they do have hundreds on there aimed at restaurants but not a sandwich website template at all. So still searching..
Can anyone tell me what their opinions are of using template websites, do they look okay for say a new little business like mine or even if anyone could recommend where to find what I am looking for ie "a nice sandwich shop website"
Any advice will be appreciated.
Carin

 

[RoyalArran]

I have a template built website via Fasthosts - it works fine, is simple to use... but it does have limitations if you want to do anything fancy.

Their customer service is not that good at times but generally speaking over the 4 years I have been with them the site has performed well.

The only thing is I have to use it in IE; the way it is set up it won't let you use Chrome of Firefox, which is a pain.

 

[tnet]

I took some time to check websites of your competitors. They're nothing really.
So I would suggest you to find some nice and simple wordpress theme and you're ready to go. Checkout themeforest.net. It doesn't has to be exactly the theme for sandwich shop, you can chose from some general themes that represents your business well.

In my opinion most important pages/features to include into websites of this type are:
* List of products and prices.
* Overtime you should add separate page for each of the items on the menu, with pictures, descriptions etc.
* About your shop
* Where are you located
* Allow people to subscribe to the newsletter.
* Big teaser( slideshow) on homepage that shows products you'll like to promote

Etc etc.

If you have trouble setting up the website, you can always ask for help on this forum...

 

[Deleted member 27344]

Nothing wrong with using a template as long as you're not pretending that you designed/ developed it.

 

[carin]

thanks everyone and tnet. I am going to have a look at wordpress, I dont know my way round it yet or much about it really, hopefully its straight forward and easy to use but I will take a look and see if anything will work for me.
Any other template suggestions will still be very much appreciated.
Thanks
Carin

 

[AdrianF]

another thing to include is opening times and if you deliver

getting on GooglePlaces can be helpful. Indeed once you get going Google Analytics and any number of other things will help you see how much traffic you get

dont forget to have a Facebook page too, lots of people can follow you and it can link to website

For the record, my domain names are registered with 123Reg (you get free email forwarding to gmail etc so have a proper email address for next to nothing). Proper hosting is with 5QuidHost but Vidahost are good too - I use Joomla for development but would not recommend it unless you have (i) skilled help to get started (ii) enough techy interest (iii) the need for a forum or hundereds of pages. SEOQuake is helpful if you are concerned about search engines

good luck

 

[brownkane]

1 and 1 do some easy to set up and run template websites, with free emails etc. If its just for information, then these are fine. If you want to add further apps at a later stage then you can upgrade. Their prices are good too. We have used Fasthosts before, but prefer 1 and 1. Also their domain registration charges are good too.

Debbie
oakmanoraccountancy.com

 

[carin]

Thanks Adrian
I would like to set up a website maybe using wordpress but I dont really understand what the difference is with other companies such as joomla, wordpress etc etc. As you can see not clued up on what they are.
I have looked at moonfruit, wix etc, but because many people keep mentioning wordpress I feel I should be going in that direction. Are there many websites selling wordpress templates or do you deal directly with wordpress themselves?? Confused!!
Carin

 

[ITsoldUK]

Thanks Adrian
I would like to set up a website maybe using wordpress but I dont really understand what the difference is with other companies such as joomla, wordpress etc etc. As you can see not clued up on what they are.
I have looked at moonfruit, wix etc, but because many people keep mentioning wordpress I feel I should be going in that direction. Are there many websites selling wordpress templates or do you deal directly with wordpress themselves?? Confused!!
Carin

http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress

For starters



Install wordpress, choose your theme, install activate, you're done...then add content.

 

[AdrianF]

carin - yes I know how you feel

only reason I ended up with Joomla was a client of mine offer to help me get started. Wordpress is apparently much easier if you want to get to grips with it - once a website is set up properly it should be very cheap to maintain (I spend £50 a year on domains and hosting running 4) but getting started can feel complicated

Not meaning to add to the confusion - Wordpress comes in 2 "flavours" one is a free hosted version the other is an install on your host's server (wordpress.com and wordpress.org - not sure which is which)

Most templates and extensions are free

Some associates of mine built this in a few hours in wordpress:

can't post URLs yet, but it is http then :// then yorkshiretrainers dot wordpress dot com

wikipedia is maybe a helpful place to start

 

[ITsoldUK]

In short...

For a small, brochure type website/blog more suited to less tech savy then wordpress is probably the best route.

For a scalable, function packed site that offers a whole host of interactive stuff then Joomla. Steeper learning curve but once master it really is future proof.

JMTC

 

[AdrianF]

In short...

For a small, brochure type website/blog more suited to less tech savy then wordpress is probably the best route.

For a scalable, function packed site that offers a whole host of interactive stuff then Joomla. Steeper learning curve but once master it really is future proof.

JMTC

in my experience Joomla has a learning cliff! not learning curve!! Took me weeks to get my head round the wierdness of things - but it sure is amazingly capable once you "get it". I recently built a dual language forum and it was pretty much plug and play - awesomely satisfying for a non techy like me

 

[Websitehandyman]

Personally for such a small niche I would use one page and perhaps look for a splash or landing page template highly focused on conforming to standards.

The last thing you need for SEO in the current Google madness is a site based on templates and having to spread thin content over pages. If you can get all your content on one page then do that and you'll gain the SEO benefit from it.

Choose something simple which shows your products and I suggest list the benefits of your services including details of ingredients used.

 

[DavidAshdown]

I found Wordpress quite confusing, although this was some time ago and don't know if they've changed.

I found Wix excellent, really user friendly with some nice looking templates which I have used to create sites for friends.

 

[ITsoldUK]

http://wordpress.org/ is where you download the software to install on your servers

http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress will help kick start your life with wordpress.