Entrepreneurship & Small Business

Website for a event business - first time ever

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  • Jul 4th, 2015 5:35 pm
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Sr. Member
Dec 22, 2011
737 posts
1098 upvotes
dazz wrote: Website by one of the best hosting providers: Siteground: $9/m
themeforest template: $50
Installation by using a Fever installation service: $5
Wordpress customization @ Fiver $5-50

That's it. Gone are days when general folks pay 5K for a site. only dumb people do it these days.
and If i put your words in a picture... this is what you get in the end..

[IMG]https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot ... e=55700D01[/IMG]
:D
Deal Addict
Dec 21, 2012
2058 posts
334 upvotes
Toronto, ON
flexgrip wrote: If you are a small business and you are looking for a web presence, a custom solution is a WASTE OF MONEY.

Wordpress + Template = DONE. Spending money on a custom service will likely give you the same visual results + make it more difficult to manage when compared to a Wordpress site.

Let me guess...the people pushing custom sites on this thread PMed you regarding there services.

As for hosts, it all depends on how critical your site needs to be up. For most small businesses a cheap $<10 / month hosting solution is fine. Stablehost and Hawkhost are popular shared hosing providers on Webhostingtalk.
anyone here with personal experience with Hawkhost or Stablehost or 000webhost?
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Dec 10, 2004
7571 posts
3145 upvotes
Canada
redalot wrote: and If i put your words in a picture... this is what you get in the end..

[IMG]https://scontent-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot ... e=55700D01[/IMG]
Huh?? Why?! In fact, you will see A TON of web designers buying templates off themeforest and then just installing them and doing a bit of customization. It's super easy to install the wordpress on your site. It is Super easy to install a template and It takes maybe a 4-5 hours for most folks to get a hang of a template and do everything on your own, without having to pay anyone every time you need to make a change. For small businesses this is the best way
Member
Sep 29, 2014
286 posts
7 upvotes
Brampton, ON
so a bit of an update... i registered with bluehost and made my website myself.. i downloaded a free theme just to test the waters.. put in my text and titles but its so crap lol. like i installed woocommerce but it takes up so many tabs... so i have a question about plugins... i want my home page of my website to have a calendar similar to this --> http://www.loyalistcollege.com/ is there a plugin that i need to install or does it come with the theme??? thx
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Nov 18, 2002
7041 posts
652 upvotes
BC Interior
flyeaglesfly wrote: so a bit of an update... i registered with bluehost and made my website myself.. i downloaded a free theme just to test the waters.. put in my text and titles but its so crap lol. like i installed woocommerce but it takes up so many tabs... so i have a question about plugins... i want my home page of my website to have a calendar similar to this --> http://www.loyalistcollege.com/ is there a plugin that i need to install or does it come with the theme??? thx
Look through the theme and plugins selection on themeforest. Keep in mind it's best you find a theme that supports calendars within the theme itself rather than taking your chances on retrofitting a 3rd party plugin into a theme not authored by the same guy. Neither wordpress nor authors guarantee any compatibility between their themes and 3rd party plugins. This is particularly true when it comes to javascript heavy plugins.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Nov 18, 2002
7041 posts
652 upvotes
BC Interior
dazz wrote: Huh?? Why?! In fact, you will see A TON of web designers buying templates off themeforest and then just installing them and doing a bit of customization. It's super easy to install the wordpress on your site. It is Super easy to install a template and It takes maybe a 4-5 hours for most folks to get a hang of a template and do everything on your own, without having to pay anyone every time you need to make a change. For small businesses this is the best way
Using a canned theme is perfectly fine if you're ok with adjusting your branding and marketing collateral to fit into someone else's generic vision and template. It's also fine if you're ok to share the same template with hundreds or thousands of other buyers around the world. While in some instances it maybe 'super easy' to install there is no generic template that will 100% fit your needs. The problems arise when you come to make changes, need support and most folks using themes are completely illiterate when it comes to even the most basic customizations. Most themes do not offer easily accessible customizations beyond very basic CSS controls which implies your business owner will now be spending ours trying to figure out how to change the colour of his side bar or widget (this thread is a perfect demo of this :) Sorry, OP) rather than going out to drum up business. It's an endless spiral I've seen countless times. People looking to save a few bucks pouring months into a template only to abandon it and seek help. If you tally up the time investment it's usually in the thousands if not tens of thousands.
Newbie
Jul 27, 2013
12 posts
Windsor
Send me pm with your email address and I'll help you out a bit. I can spare a few hours of my time to save you a lot of time and hassle and get your business pointed in the right direction.
Member
Sep 29, 2014
286 posts
7 upvotes
Brampton, ON
AndrewA914 wrote: Send me pm with your email address and I'll help you out a bit. I can spare a few hours of my time to save you a lot of time and hassle and get your business pointed in the right direction.
pm sent thanks
Member
Sep 29, 2014
286 posts
7 upvotes
Brampton, ON
ichpen wrote: Using a canned theme is perfectly fine if you're ok with adjusting your branding and marketing collateral to fit into someone else's generic vision and template. It's also fine if you're ok to share the same template with hundreds or thousands of other buyers around the world. While in some instances it maybe 'super easy' to install there is no generic template that will 100% fit your needs. The problems arise when you come to make changes, need support and most folks using themes are completely illiterate when it comes to even the most basic customizations. Most themes do not offer easily accessible customizations beyond very basic CSS controls which implies your business owner will now be spending ours trying to figure out how to change the colour of his side bar or widget (this thread is a perfect demo of this :) Sorry, OP) rather than going out to drum up business. It's an endless spiral I've seen countless times. People looking to save a few bucks pouring months into a template only to abandon it and seek help. If you tally up the time investment it's usually in the thousands if not tens of thousands.
u know u r probably right... but again to kinda i think itll cause me a bit of problems later on... but this wont be such a complicated business... i think i will be able to manage off a expensive theme
Member
Sep 29, 2014
286 posts
7 upvotes
Brampton, ON
so i managed to find a theme ---> http://themeforest.net/item/eventica-ev ... s/10102155

when i go there there is demo 1, 2, 3... what the hell is all these.. i go to the all 3 and I cannot find any differences!!! demo 2 has the events calendar PRO demo instead of demo 1 which has events calendar demo... whats the big difference.. im not gonna be doing thousands of sales off the bat i just need something that works seamlessly.. I went to demo 1 and loved how u go to the shopping cart.. it seemed great...

demo 3 has like woocommerce tickets demo.. again i thought woocommerce was free?

so once i go with demo 1 i am thinking of getting it customized on the cheap.. it takes to much time for me... I need two laptops to do it!! one to look at youtube videos one to be on dashboard and execute the changes... so im thinking of going with this guy---> https://www.fiverr.com/tdcaron/create-a ... ress-theme

he seems pretty reasonable.. and its only 5 bucks seems like.. so how do i find out how many gigs my website is??

thanks again and sorry for the dum questions..
Newbie
Jun 6, 2015
8 posts
Edmonton, AB
One thing you are grossly missing here. Designing a website is not a big deal, in fact you can use free wordpress theme to customize your wesbsite if you do not want any more to be fancy. But real struggle will be to have some technical knowledge about the online sales system since you will be taking online orders and you need to know how to fix problem in case some issue arise about payment processing or any other technical issue during some event where you have to sell lots of merchandise but your website becomes down. Your real focus should be optimizing your website and be SEO friendly so many people be able to find your website. You can do it or your own but then you have to spend time and energy in learning all the nitty and gritty or building and optimizing website. Now the question will be, do you have time and inclination to learn all these things and how much value do you put in your time doing all this rather than getting it done professionally.

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