To be completely honest? WordPress. It will cost you around $70 to buy a theme that looks 80% of the way there and all you have to do is change the placeholder images and text. And the same goes for plugins, for this kind of a "basic" project every single plugin you need is going to be free. I don't know it's worth spending your own time trying to create something custom or mess around with website builders because i…
Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
11–17 of 17 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#12Just have him put it on Wix or Squarespace or Square business or such.
Don't mess with WordPress either. Not worth the complexity for a simple business page.
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#13To be completely honest? WordPress. It will cost you around $70 to buy a theme that looks 80% of the way there and all you have to do is change the placeholder images and text. And the same goes for plugins, for this kind of a "basic" project every single plugin you need is going to be free. I don't know it's worth spending your own time trying to create something custom or mess around with website builders because i…
Thanks so much! Based on recommendations I'm between Wordpress and Wix right now. Wix seems to be slightly more user-friendly, which my plumber friend will really appreciate, but maybe these premium Wordpress themes are the ticket.
Your plumber doesn't need a blog, just a business page. Wix excels at that. WordPress is terrible at it, even with a custom theme, because the underlying engine is designed around blogs.
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#14Don't DIY it. Whatever you do today will be hard to maintain in two years. You don't want to be the person he always calls for helps for updates. Just have him put it on Wix or Squarespace or Square business or such. Don't mess with WordPress either. Not worth the complexity for a simple business page.
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#15Don't DIY it. Whatever you do today will be hard to maintain in two years. You don't want to be the person he always calls for helps for updates. Just have him put it on Wix or Squarespace or Square business or such. Don't mess with WordPress either. Not worth the complexity for a simple business page.
This is good advice - to clarify, when I said "DIY" I meant "DIY for him" haha. Wix has gotten a few votes here, sounds like that's the way to go. Thank you!
What these services do that Wordpress does NOT do is abstract away the whole stack and manage all of it for the user. Your plumber pays a tiny monthly fee ($10-$20) and all he ever has to worry about is look and feel, as in he chooses a theme, adds some text and images and contact info... and done. He'll never have to worry about hosting or updates or plug-ins or "post vs page" or hierarchies of nav menus or "invalidating a cache" or "updating the database" or any of the other low-level stuff that Wordpress still makes painfully obvious.
Nothing against Wordpress, it's a powerful FOSS solution and what gave me my start in web dev, it's just no longer the best tool for the job. I've migrated several clients from Wordpress to Wix and they are MUCH happier. Wordpress will inevitably incur maintenance costs a year or two after deployment, and they'll either have to ask you back to help or hire another dev then. Even hosted on Wordpress.com with a lot of the power features disabled, it's still way too low-level compared to the actual page builder services.
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#16For a free option, The new Google sites is not bad [1]. [1] https://sites.google.com/
IMHO Google is the LAST company you'd want to trust with a simple small-business site. They will often release something and never update it again, and offer zero support for any issues you might run into.
If you can't even pay them for it, they have zero incentive to improve it.
Re: Ask HN: How to make a simple business website?
#17For a free option, The new Google sites is not bad [1]. [1] https://sites.google.com/
Google sites is a great service, that started about 20 years ago. It won't get killed.