My friends and I are students, and have just put together a small production company, Oakmane Media, that is currently working on short films and is hoping to expand to features in the future. We've just come out with a couple of shorts and we realize that it would probably be a good Idea to get a website for the company. I have some experience writing code, but not for web design, and it would probably be tough to get a fully functional website going from scratch. Do you guys have any suggestions on a relatively cheap way to get a simple website for our team?
Best way to get a website for our films.
- Thread starter Cstein15
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I'm not too sure if I'd go with Wordpress, actually. Despite it's simplicity in some areas, it's also very complicated in others, at least, if you want a more advanced website from it.
I'd consider one of the strongest, paid, but inexpensive builders. In recent years, Wix and Squarespace both have proven to build some very nice websites - websites that look well enough on their own as professional entities - as long as you pay to remove the banners and whatnot from their respective free versions.
You could also consider something like Adobe Muse, that's actually what I use for my website. It's a bit more detailed, and takes more time to learn - especially if you aren't already familiar with Adobe products. But, for someone who can barely code like myself, I've been able to construct a really solid, nice looking site with it. (But it did help that I had professional training in the Adobe suite for two years.)
I'd suggest going the former route suggested - something along the lines of Squarespace or Wix.
I'd consider one of the strongest, paid, but inexpensive builders. In recent years, Wix and Squarespace both have proven to build some very nice websites - websites that look well enough on their own as professional entities - as long as you pay to remove the banners and whatnot from their respective free versions.
You could also consider something like Adobe Muse, that's actually what I use for my website. It's a bit more detailed, and takes more time to learn - especially if you aren't already familiar with Adobe products. But, for someone who can barely code like myself, I've been able to construct a really solid, nice looking site with it. (But it did help that I had professional training in the Adobe suite for two years.)
I'd suggest going the former route suggested - something along the lines of Squarespace or Wix.
Wordpress is used by many.
Virtually every web hosting company also offers packages to help you design a website easily.
The website building packages offered by the hosting companies are easy to use.
If you have a bit more cash, some also offer website building services that are reasonably priced - I don't know how good the resulting site is though.
Do you actually need a site though? Personally I would concentrate on the film making. Sites are nice to have but for the non-professional, they're not essential.
Virtually every web hosting company also offers packages to help you design a website easily.
The website building packages offered by the hosting companies are easy to use.
If you have a bit more cash, some also offer website building services that are reasonably priced - I don't know how good the resulting site is though.
Do you actually need a site though? Personally I would concentrate on the film making. Sites are nice to have but for the non-professional, they're not essential.
If you want to pay for it, hire someone. Otherwise, yeah wordpress or something along those lines is the best free(ish) option.
I'd go to Wordpress, Wix, or Squarespace before this, though. The "builders" that hosts like GoDaddy and 1&1 provide are a stretch to even call... well, operational. I once had a client that forced me to design his website in GoDaddy's - I ended up making everything in Adobe and importing it in, and the site still looked 1/10 as nice as I wanted it to have been, or I could have made. But the client was blissful in their ignorance, and insisted I use Go Daddy's 1990's website "builder."
I feel like using a builder from a host is the modern day equivalent of using AOL Mail.
Get your website www.oakmanemedia.com at godaddy and have them point it to a free wordpress page you set up. It'll look like this: www.wordpress.oakmanemedia.com
It doesn't get cheaper or easier than this. To get traffic at wordpress, make sure you use tags.
Good luck.
It doesn't get cheaper or easier than this. To get traffic at wordpress, make sure you use tags.
Good luck.
I personally don't like wix as the code they produce is a mess, which makes it hard to customize and bad for SEO. Wordpress is better, but it's primarily a blogging platform that has had other stuff shoehorned in to make it work as a general content management platform. If you can find a theme you like and don't want to customize it too much it's fairly easy to use.
My personal choice would be Squarespace. It was built from the ground up as a website builder, and done so with both developers & designers in mind, so it's very customizable. Even if you just want to use it as-is I feel the interface is better optimized for the general user. It's not free, but it's cheap - and personally I think it's worth the cost compared to the free alternatives.
Maybe not essential, but that doesn't mean they aren't a good idea. The single greatest SEO-optimization you can do is to produce good content, and lots of it. It's not something you can do easily short term - the sooner you start building a site, and the longer you add content to it, the better it will show up in search engines. If you're looking to build a long-term personal brand around yourself or your team it's definitely worth getting something started.
My personal choice would be Squarespace. It was built from the ground up as a website builder, and done so with both developers & designers in mind, so it's very customizable. Even if you just want to use it as-is I feel the interface is better optimized for the general user. It's not free, but it's cheap - and personally I think it's worth the cost compared to the free alternatives.
Maybe not essential, but that doesn't mean they aren't a good idea. The single greatest SEO-optimization you can do is to produce good content, and lots of it. It's not something you can do easily short term - the sooner you start building a site, and the longer you add content to it, the better it will show up in search engines. If you're looking to build a long-term personal brand around yourself or your team it's definitely worth getting something started.
After my Wordpress site was causing a few too many issues, and then eventually just crashed completely, I moved to Squarespace.
It's not as customisable a I'd like, but it's pretty straightforward/intuitive/easy and you get a nice, professional looking website for pretty cheap and really easily.
Great for newbies.
It's not as customisable a I'd like, but it's pretty straightforward/intuitive/easy and you get a nice, professional looking website for pretty cheap and really easily.
Great for newbies.
I suggest you need first StudyGeek to find programmer people they have knowledge about what you want to do.
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Really? I'm north of 1 million views and wp has never crashed.
It didn't crash because of views - my hosting server just crashed (or something). I don't know, I'm not really a web guy, but pretty much everything on the server (~6 or so add-on and subdomains) just returned blank white screens when I tried navigating to them.
I called the web company and they said 'can't help you' so I moved off to Squarespace.
Been treating me well so far - as I say, not as customisable as I would like, and it's more expensive than some hosting companies; but you get a pretty decent looking website (it's better than a stock standard Wordpress theme). That being said, the Squarespace site I have set up looks and works pretty similarly to the Wordpress one I had anyway.
blank white screen is usually indicative of a PHP error. If it just happened all of a sudden, without your having changed anything I'd guess the host updated php versions breaking your site. How nice of them to basically say "too bad, screw you" when you sought assistance.