# Websites



## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

looks good. I like your layout. I used Microsoft Office Live for my Website. They reserved the right to advertise on it, but they haven't put anything up yet. http://beachesbeehaven.com

-Nathanael


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## Bizzybee (Jan 29, 2006)

Bravenet will do a good job of keeping your inbox full too...... Still, nice job you did there!!

They're waiting for you to hit the big time beaches!!


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## berkshire bee (Jan 28, 2007)

beaches, I noticed you too use only essential oils. I only mention this because I read it from one of the essential oil suppliers, but their site said that using citric essential oils causes photo-sensitivity of the skin.


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

I like the formats you two used. Eye catching and informative. The recipe idea on Barry's page is a nice touch, gives the reader something up front- always a good way to start business.

I designed my site a little less than a decade ago with Microsoft front page. It's a relatively easy format to work in once you get past the headaches and cursing at all the glitches, problems and lack of support common in using any Microsoft Program that isn't popular enough to garner the makers support.

Ours is of value to keep our customers informed and interested and although in the 1st. couple of years we sold little directly (few want to pay the shipping on honey) last year saw around $10,000 in sales. We print our web address on everything we do, labels, flyers, newspaper advertising, informational sheets. Next year we are having it put on our truck. We only pay 10-15 bucks a month for a dedicated site so it is cheap advertising for us. Not high traffic, a couple thousand people a month in the busy season, still does pretty well because most are focused visitors. My biggest problem is keeping the site updated. 

The biggest positive addition was adding Cutepro-FTP which is linked to Front page and automacically uploads any changes to our site. Front page has given us tons of problems with extensions and hours on the phone with our service every once in a while when we try to do something fancy. The Tech says he sees the problems we have with anyone using the program any many we have never worked out. If anyone is reccomending a better design program others would be well follow.


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## AllFloridaBee (Sep 25, 2007)

Personally, I like Adobe Dreamweaver. It's a production web development program, so there's a learning curve, but it's solid. Lynda.com has great online video training for a monthly charge.

I use godaddy.com for my hosting. I think they charge ~4.00 a month for a monthly plan. Linux or Windows. They have some kind of browser based design (website tonight, i think? ), so maybe you don't need a design program. Plenty of open source software addons to implement many different functions (at least on Linux hosting). Certainly not the greatest host out there, but decent.


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Joel - wow that is a very impressive site. 
And Richard your site is very well done. I was surprised that the video loaded so quickly!
I didn't use any software program, it is already on the site. I registered the name with go daddy then used the free site for hosting which included the template and program to just type in what you want to say.
Have you ever used the Google Analytics? My daughter told me about it and I put it up yesterday, very powerful, totally free, shows you where all your visitors are from and so forth


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## michituck (Nov 21, 2007)

Here's our's that I made and got running finally.
This one is just for candles not our bees though.

http://cooperscandles.com/


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## AllFloridaBee (Sep 25, 2007)

David, Your site is a good start. I wonder why you have the ads if you're paying that price. Is that an annual fee? I think you can register a domain with godaddy for $6.95/yr and pay ~30/yr for hosting that won't have ads. The site builder that go daddy offers will do you right until you get proficient with a more robust program.

Google analytics rocks!! just amazing info and I've only scratched the surface with its capabilities.

The videos i embed in the page are Flash FLV's produced at a low bitrate, so they should load pretty fast.


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Thanks Richard. Actually I don't pay anything for the hosting. It is totally free. But I am seriously thinking about paying for a site just to get rid of the ads.

Yes the Google Analytics is really amazing, and totally free. 80% of my visits have come from BeeSource. And visits from Philipines, Slovenia, Australia, Croatia, Turkey, Vietnam.


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## mistergil (May 24, 2007)

We are dabbling in web sites as well. The wife is in charge and is using a Content Management System (CMS) called "Drupal". This system is open source and of course being the tightwads that we are, free. It utilizes modules for assorted functions. We registered the domain name with "Dynadot" for around 10$ a year. The web host is "Rochen" and the starter plan allows 25 sub-domains for $7.95 a month. Rochen has excellent technical support, can't be beat. Top of the line equipment with very little downtime and they don't oversell like a lot of them do; based in the UK with US equipment in TX. We are very impressed. I sell some porcelain here at this site which she has just finished:
http://owps.lynaenet.net/
She is starting a bee site here as well but it's just being started so not much yet: 
http://almostheavenhoney.lynaenet.net/

We checked out the different payment methods available and decided on the Google secured "checkout" system. Very slick and simple to use and setup, cheap as well, 2% +20cents per transaction. All you need is an account for Google to deposit the funds into and they take care of everything else. We're using an account dedicated solely to this to prevent problems.This will be our method for honey later on as well.


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

mistergil said:


> We are dabbling in web sites as well. The wife is in charge and is using a Content Management System (CMS) called "Drupal". This system is open source and of course being the tightwads that we are, free. It utilizes modules for assorted functions. We registered the domain name with "Dynadot" for around 10$ a year. The web host is "Rochen" and the starter plan allows 25 sub-domains for $7.95 a month. Rochen has excellent technical support, can't be beat. Top of the line equipment with very little downtime and they don't oversell like a lot of them do; based in the UK with US equipment in TX. We are very impressed. I sell some porcelain here at this site which she has just finished:
> http://owps.lynaenet.net/
> She is starting a bee site here as well but it's just being started so not much yet:
> http://almostheavenhoney.lynaenet.net/
> ...


mistergil, The links you provided seem to be broken, my server encountered problems when I clicked on them.


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## mistergil (May 24, 2007)

The wife was doing some maint. Should be all better. Thanks for the heads up though.


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## berkshire bee (Jan 28, 2007)

*my compliments to your wife*

Mistergil, I just checked out your site. It's very nice. I like the background. It looks good but doesn't take your attention away. Photos are nice and clear, well written text, and everything came up quickly. good job! berkshire


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## mistergil (May 24, 2007)

Thanks for the feedback. She's doing a pretty good job with it, I don't have the patience for it.


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

mistergil said:


> The wife was doing some maint. Should be all better. Thanks for the heads up though.


Ahhh... Thanks. Just took a peek, sweet background on the porcelain site. I like your beekeeping site, very sharp! Congrats to you and your wife!

-Nathanael


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## mistergil (May 24, 2007)

Thanks again. Her head is swelling rapidly, I think I can save her though.


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## AllFloridaBee (Sep 25, 2007)

I've used open source CMS and LMS (learning managment systems) with great success. The availability of modules and designers to do all kinds of cool little and not so little things is great! I use drupal, but find it rather slow on shared hosting boxes. The price is right though. Moodle is great for learning management systems.
All of these systems do require a patient persona to get the scripting to work.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

do they make Dreamweaver for a Mac?


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Yes they do. It's what I use.

- barry


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

how much did you pay for it if I may ask?


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## shughes (Jan 17, 2007)

Looks great and I have also enjoyed viewing other member pages in this thread. 

i have tried some of the various html editors mentioned but like working with a simple text editor (vi) instead. its a little bit more of a learning curve up front but gives you total control down to the pixel as well as you get a very good understanding of your site's structure. i find that the major search engines also favor the XHTML strict standards.


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## drobbins (Jun 1, 2005)

Chef,

Dreamweaver is high end software
$400
you can get a free trial to try it out
download it, build your website real fast, then you're done and it's free
plus you have totally unmaintainable code
(not really, dreamweavers code is at least human readable)
shughes is right, learn to write html with a text editor, it's more work but it's free

http://www.adobe.landingpage1.com/dreamweaver/designs/?sdid=BPZFA&s_kwcid=dreamweaver|972405449

Dave


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## Hobie (Jun 1, 2006)

BerkeyDavid - don't ask me how this happens, but I looked at your website, and now it has hijacked others. I tried to click on "cooperscandles"... and I got your website. I went back to doing work, tried to get a PennDOT site, instead got your site. Help!


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## AllFloridaBee (Sep 25, 2007)

hobie, what browser are you using?

I just tried in firefox, and had no problems at all.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

trying to get a little informal (cheap) site set up here. my primary goals are to keep it simple and to first provide a bit of information for my farmer's market crowd and secondly in selling a few spring nucs. haven't really explored the pollination thing here yet but I guess that would be the next kind of page to add???? 

what is everyone' feelins about what you should or should not put on a site. for us dial up guys I would presume the pictures and video could be a problem? personal information yea or nay? any guidlines?

there are several really fine sites here... Joel, what can I say but nice... and All Florida, wow. 

thanks to everyone for sharing...


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

*Free e-book*

I've got a free e-book from Microsoft Office Life that was really informative about setting up a web site. Here's the link to the download: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive/FX102480931033.aspx 

Good luck!

-Nathanael


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

Hobie said:


> BerkeyDavid - don't ask me how this happens, but I looked at your website, and now it has hijacked others. I tried to click on "cooperscandles"... and I got your website. I went back to doing work, tried to get a PennDOT site, instead got your site. Help!


Hobie
Is it still doing it? I have no clue what it is. I have been out of town last week no internet.

I am not an expert on this, I just know how to type a little bit Maybe some expert can help here.


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## Hobie (Jun 1, 2006)

David - No, it seems to have gone away. I get this on occasion here at work... last time it was some NFL souvenir site. I used to assume it was unscrupulous businesses doing this, but now I wonder if it's something in the company computer system. Sorry for the false alarm!


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

another question... when you place links to other sites is there any protocol about asking? for example if I link to this site would it be proper etiquette to get Barry ok or do you just do it and take my punishment later? where is mizz manners when you really need her?


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## shughes (Jan 17, 2007)

tecumseh, its generally considered a compliment (not to mention a higher google rank) to link to another website so usually I just link it for personal sites. that's also the whole goal of the World Wide Web....linking resources together.

in terms of protocol, if you use a image link then you would want to add the alt tag to describe the image for text browsers like elinks. also, adding width and height attributes help speed up the page load for graphical browsers. for example:

<a href="http://www.hugheshoney.com/"><img id="logo" src="/images/logo.png" alt="Hughes Honey" width="210" height="41"/></a>


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

thank ya' shughes.


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## Chef Isaac (Jul 26, 2004)

I would love to build a web site. When I was in culinary school, I used to create web sites for Chefs using Dreamweaver but I havent done it for about 7 years and I am affraid I have forgotten. 

What is everyone else using to make a site? I am looking for something simple.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

I have been using a template (they must have had several hundred) provided by my internet provided. my first two concerns were I wanted something simple and not expensive either in buck or maintance).


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## BerkeyDavid (Jan 29, 2004)

same here, no software to buy, just use their template


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## shughes (Jan 17, 2007)

as you are developing your html source, i highly recommend validating the code:

http://validator.w3.org/

valid html/xhtml code is not only cleaner but also preferred by the search engines which ultimately translates into more visits to your website.


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## Troutsqueezer (May 17, 2005)

I started with the Microsoft web utilities and ran thru a few other no/low cost web design programs. They are good for putting up your first web sites and getting to know the system. However:

It's akin to when you first started harvesting honey and after a while crush-and-strain just didn't cut it anymore so you finally cut loose with those bucks and bought that motorized extractor. As time goes by and you keep messing with your website, in order to get more control over your web pages in terms of design and function, eventually it's best to take the leap and buy Dreamweaver. The learning curve is steeper than your basic programs to be sure, but the payoff is worth it. If you run into trouble, there's a lot of folks here who can help you.


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