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Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

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Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#1

Post by neltnerb »

I'm a single founder of a high-tech (but not web-based) company. However, I don't really have the thousands of dollars it would take to get a website designer to put together a site for me.

I absolutely respect that it's worth the money, the money just doesn't exist. So, I need to find a stopgap so that my company has something out on the web which makes us look professional enough that when I reach out to customers we don't look like total amateurs.

Can anyone help me navigate this mild morass? Should I just use Bootstrap and get something minimal up? Or is there some other solution that takes a little more time but would look a lot better?

What I'm trying to find is whatever will get me to a site that, not including creating the content, will take me less than 10 hours to get to a clean and modern state for someone who has used Linux exclusively for over a decade, and knows basic programming, but is busy enough to want to really just follow a tutorial (that actually works).

I don't care about things like the new trend of scrolling graphics windows or whatever that sin of nature is, or probably most other modern features. I'm looking to make a site closer to DuPont in style than a web startup. The one thing that would be a really "nice to have" is a news feed that I can update via the web to keep the content updated more often.

Re: Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#4

Post by neltnerb »

Jsarokin wrote: post #2

I'd say your best bet is to check out some of the high quality themes at http://themeforest.net -- if you don't want to deal with html / css the wordpress themes are really easy to setup and look amazing.

Thanks so much for the advice! My primary concern with Wordpress is that it has been around long enough that it could actually be harder to set up because of out of date tutorials, and that I've been told it's got a lot of security issues. I also have a vague horrible memory of trying to install it in 2006 or 2007 and it being a disaster to customize... but I don't want to hold that against it in 2014. On the other hand, I've been told that because it's a blogging platform (is it really?) it's easier to update content through the web interface, and that makes it get higher rankings on Google (for now).

I don't know enough to evaluate any of these claims or worries; do you think that they're still true? I certainly absolutely positively have no problem paying for a high quality theme, I'm much more worried about creating a mess on my server that will take dozens of hours of attention to clean up.

Re: Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#5

Post by mashmac2 »

neltnerb wrote: post #4
Jsarokin wrote: post #2

I'd say your best bet is to check out some of the high quality themes at http://themeforest.net -- if you don't want to deal with html / css the wordpress themes are really easy to setup and look amazing.

Thanks so much for the advice! My primary concern with Wordpress is that it has been around long enough that it could actually be harder to set up because of out of date tutorials, and that I've been told it's got a lot of security issues. I also have a vague horrible memory of trying to install it in 2006 or 2007 and it being a disaster to customize... but I don't want to hold that against it in 2014. On the other h…

These days, Wordpress is quite secure for most uses - especially a simple corporate site. Here's how I'd go about it-

1. Buy theme from themeforest or similar. 2. Buy a shared hosting account from webfaction or similar (less than $10/month) 3. Use their one-click Wordpress installer to install Wordpress 4. Install theme in Wordpress install.

This keeps it off your server in case of issue, doesn't really cost much at all, and offers some great hosting support if you run into issues (http://docs.webfaction.com/software/wordpress/index.html) that's current.

Re: Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#6

Post by nairteashop »

neltnerb wrote: post #4
Jsarokin wrote: post #2

I'd say your best bet is to check out some of the high quality themes at http://themeforest.net -- if you don't want to deal with html / css the wordpress themes are really easy to setup and look amazing.

Thanks so much for the advice! My primary concern with Wordpress is that it has been around long enough that it could actually be harder to set up because of out of date tutorials, and that I've been told it's got a lot of security issues. I also have a vague horrible memory of trying to install it in 2006 or 2007 and it being a disaster to customize... but I don't want to hold that against it in 2014. On the other h…

Wordpress is actually not that hard to setup these days, but maybe a better approach is to start with hosted WP (e.g. wpengine) just to get the site up and running asap, and then later transition out into your own WP install when you have the time/resources.

There are a ton of websites built on WP (https://wordpress.org/showcase/), so it's not just a blogging-only platform.

For what you're trying to do, I'd definitely bet on a hosted CMS + a nice theme. You'll get a pretty website that's easy to manage, and it will cost very little in terms of time and money.

Re: Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#7

Post by neltnerb »

soneca wrote: post #3

Find a suitable free template here: http://startbootstrap.com/template-categories/all/ Find some suitable stock photo here: http://www.imcreator.com/free Upload it here: https://pages.github.com Professional looking website in a couple of hours.

Oh, thank god. These look great. This one looks amazing:

http://themeforest.net/item/enfold-responsive-multipurpose-t...

is this kind of drag and drop page layout common nowadays? I feel like I'm going to have to buy you all a beer.

I've got my own webserver, so my inclination is to try to install it there because it's there... it sounds like it might be much more sane to host it elsewhere though? Is there a benefit to something like "webfaction" as suggested elsewhere versus the github hosting? I'd never heard of github hosting websites before, but I definitely trust the brand and definitely like the idea of versioned website updates.

Re: Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best?

#10

Post by ishener »

Jsarokin wrote: post #2

I'd say your best bet is to check out some of the high quality themes at http://themeforest.net -- if you don't want to deal with html / css the wordpress themes are really easy to setup and look amazing.

+1 for wordpress & themeforest. This really is the high-way to get a good-looking site with a simple CMS. No designer or programmer needed.
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