Web page set-up

On 3/06/2009, at 7:16 PM, Paul Atroshenko wrote:

> Hi Glorious Fountains of Web Wisdom!
>
> A friend of a friend of mine (who lives in Thailand and is NOT rich)
> wants to have a web page or two to advertise a small, home run
> business. The kind of websites I have put up for myself and for
> another friend would be far too expensive for the individual
> concerned.
>
> Is there a way that she could use something like Facebook or MySpace
> to host a page or two for free, or for a nominal amount? The
> business would be purely local, on their Thai island, and the page
> would be kept very simple. There would be no need for complicated
> interactivity.
>
> This (Facebook etc.) is an area of the web which I have avoided till
> now, so I would appreciate any advice from tidibits members.

Despite there being a tendency, when ones favourite tool is a hammer,
to see everything as a nail, I'd suggest a system such as Wordpress.
Your friend can register a blog at wordpress.com (note: that's their
hosting service; the resource site for installing the CMS on your own
site is wordpress.org), and then take advantage of a lot of free third-
party functionality, as well as plenty of third-party design
templates. His address would be (hisname).wordpress.com; not ideal,
but at that price (to whit, nothing), it's rather difficult to beat.

Cheers
Steve

On Jun 3, 2009, at 3:16 AM, Paul Atroshenko wrote:

> Hi Glorious Fountains of Web Wisdom!
>
> A friend of a friend of mine (who lives in Thailand and is NOT rich)
> wants to have a web page or two to advertise a small, home run
> business. The kind of websites I have put up for myself and for
> another friend would be far too expensive for the individual
> concerned.
>
> Is there a way that she could use something like Facebook or MySpace
> to host a page or two for free, or for a nominal amount? The
> business would be purely local, on their Thai island, and the page
> would be kept very simple. There would be no need for complicated
> interactivity.
>
> This (Facebook etc.) is an area of the web which I have avoided till
> now, so I would appreciate any advice from tidibits members.

Would Google Sites work for what you want to do?

http://sites.google.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD-4FRTzxkI

Bill

Having used both Wordpress and Typepad I much prefer Typepad

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 3:16 AM, Paul Atroshenko <patroshhotmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a way that she could use something like Facebook or MySpace to host a page or two for free, or for a nominal amount? The business would be purely local, on their Thai island, and the page would be kept very simple. There would be no need for complicated interactivity.

Tonya used Google Sites for Tristan's school's Web site recently.

http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html

cheers... -Adam

Paul said:

<snip!>... friend of mine (who lives in Thailand and is NOT rich) wants to have a web page or two to advertise a small, home run business. Is there a way that she could use something like Facebook or MySpace to host a page or two for free, or for a nominal amount? <snip!>

Yes, Paul, Facebook could potentially work for him, but since you say that the focus would be “purely local,” it might make far more sense to skip the world-wide-ness of a social media site and instead build the site using either WordPress or blogger.com. I like the usability factor of blogger better, but WordPress seems to have far more templates available, and be far more extensible/customizable. And they’re both free.
--
Mary Shafer

There are ways around this: Your friend can get a domain name for under $10 per year, and make it a forward to (hisname).wordpress.com.

Most even allow you to "mask" the real URL. It's not as smooth as a real web hosting, but it works pretty good. These will also include email forwarding too, so your friend could get a an email account like business(domainname).com, and forward that to his gmail account.

BTW, what do you mean "not rich"? The range of non-rich incomes in Thailand can vary from a few dollars per day to something close to what you expect here in the U.S.

Can your friend afford $2 to $5/month for a server? Is he somewhat technical? You can find web hosting services for under $5/month that support PHP. That means he can use something like Joomla as a content management system. These will usually include a set of email accounts, and a few other freebees thrown in.

Take a look at <http://webhostinggeeks.com/> to get an idea of price ranges.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

On Jun 3, 2009, at 3:16 AM, Paul Atroshenko wrote:

> Hi Glorious Fountains of Web Wisdom!
>
> A friend of a friend of mine (who lives in Thailand and is NOT
> rich) wants to have a web page or two to advertise a small, home
> run business. The kind of websites I have put up for myself and for
> another friend would be far too expensive for the individual
> concerned.
>
> Is there a way that she could use something like Facebook or
> MySpace to host a page or two for free, or for a nominal amount?
> The business would be purely local, on their Thai island, and the
> page would be kept very simple. There would be no need for
> complicated interactivity.

In addition to a basic web presence, I'd suggest setting up a well
designed blog using Wordpress, Blogger (this might be a good choice
in that Google owns it and regularly spiders it), Typepad, etc. and
regularly post on it. A Facebook or MySpace page would be an adjunct
that could help add audience, get prospects/customers involved, etc.
I'd also suggest tweeting regularly on Twitter.

Thailand known for market penetration and frequent usage of mobile
phones and online mobile, so they should think about what they can do
on that end (which is why Twitter can be good - say if they have a
restaurant, they can tweet special offers for the day or week, etc.;
a doctor can offer health tips)

Again, if it's a restaurant, they can do a promo where people take
pictures while they are there and post them on Facebook, with a free
meal for a winner.

We can make some more suggestions if you can give some details.

Marilyn

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Steve McCabe <bigstevestevemccabe.net> wrote:

> Despite there being a tendency, when ones favourite tool is a hammer,
> to see everything as a nail, I'd suggest a system such as Wordpress.
> Your friend can register a blog at wordpress.com (note: that's their
> hosting service; the resource site for installing the CMS on your own
> site is wordpress.org), and then take advantage of a lot of free third-
> party functionality, as well as plenty of third-party design
> templates. His address would be (hisname).wordpress.com; not ideal,
> but at that price (to whit, nothing), it's rather difficult to beat.

A wiki platform would be great too. There are many available; I chose
Wikidot both for personal and private professional sites. It's great
and setting up nice looking pages is quick and easy:
<http://www.wikidot.com/>.

-Thomas

What a magnificent forum!

Thank you one and all for your suggestions. I have cut and pasted your comments onto a Word document and sent it off to my friend, who will then pass it on to her friend.

Paul

Two others not previously mentioned:

http://byethost.com -- free web hosting for small sites, you build
the HTML (standard paradigm) but they supply a long list of standard
web hosting tools.

http://weebly.com -- free hosting with a set of somewhat WYSIWYG
tools to build the site -- generates atrociously nonstandard HTML
(and so I won't personally recommend it) but it seems to be popular
with non-technical users.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org