Need advice from the pros

[tinajarrett]

I am new to the forum and new to web design. First of all I am not going to even try to say I know anything about web design. I will leave that art to those of you on this forum that know what you are doing. Here is my problem, I own a small housekeeping business. I recently re-branded the business so I have a new name and logo and am trying to create a new website. With the old business I created and hosted a free site thru Microsoft office. It was a simple drag and drop/upload type of creation. VERY easy and I managed to make it look VERY professional. They no longer offer free hosting or any hosting. So I have purchased a new domain name. I currently have it hosted by Hostgator. However, they have HORRIBLE site building programs. I have NO idea what I am doing. So my domain has been hosted by them for several months and I have yet to publish anything to the web. I have no problem switching hosting services, I would prefer free hosting but low-cost is fine. I'm paying about $9 per month for hostgator now. I don't have a lot of traffic or files to store so basic service is sufficient.

Here are my questions:

Is there any program that offers simple site creation and templates?
Can I create a website using some type of program and then publish it thru Hostgator?


I'm pretty new to all the terms and processes. I am in no way able to write code or anything like that. I want something simple like what is offered by most free hosting sites but a little more detailed. I want to add a blog later for example. Also I've heard that pointing my domain to different hosts loses my search engine results so I would like to avoid that if possible.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I really can't afford to hire anyone to design a site for me and I'm pretty creative with an idea of what I want the end product to look like so I am trying to do this myself. Thanks in advance!

 

[CaldwellYSR]

It was a simple drag and drop/upload type of creation. VERY easy and I managed to make it look VERY professional.

Liar...

Is there any program that offers simple site creation and templates?
Can I create a website using some type of program and then publish it thru Hostgator?

No

I am in no way able to write code or anything like that.

Then hire a professional who does this for a living

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Here's my recommendation. If you want a website you should get a professional to design it. These drag and drop programs you're talking about put out bad code and they flat out don't work. With a professional you'll have a site that works on all the modern browsers, usually including Internet Explorer back to version 7 or 8 depending on the professional in question. The site will work on all browser sizes, probably even mobile if you want that. The site you get out of these crappy programs will be inflexible, won't work on all browsers, will break on browser resizing, will probably break on mobile. It's just bad.

 

[Phreaddee]

Matthew is right,

and I too find it very hard to believe you could have made a professional looking website in MS office. (thats a bit of an oxymoron).

If you do not want to go down the route of hiring a developer to make a site for you, you are left with very little options.

out of all the "point and click" web creators out there I guess the pick of the bunch would be squarespace, but I still wouldn't go with it myself.

If you had a reasonable budget, all assets and copy ready to go, and had a clear picture in your mind as to how the site needs to look then you could get a developer to build it for you for a fairly low cost, however anyone who says that they'll build the whole lot for under $250 is either a newbie who hasn't a lot of experience and doesn't understand how long it actually takes to build (and this will give you even more headaches), a rubbish designer (even more headaches) or an idiot. (who will probably not even finish the job and just take your money...)