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Website Development, What Do You Use?


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I use Weebly and GoDaddy, and like them both for ease of use. Each has good tech support, tho GoDaddy is exceptional-live person, on the phone, 24/7, patient, and competent.  

 

My Weebly site is Two Steps Forwardhttp://www.twostepsforward.net/ I will probably discontinue it since I have learned the basics of site generation and am using GoDaddy for ceramics now. I put the link here because there is a good bit of ceramics still on the Weebly site, including some great stuff-in  my opinion--on the NHIA Anagama first firing and a little blog piece that mentions the esteemed John Baymore ("I Love My Timer", in Clay Path). Two Steps Forward shares some of my journey back into clay, after a 30 year detour via addiction/mental health services. I especially like the Ceramics part because I chronicled building my studio from scratch, in my house, after retiring and realizing I needed a reason to get up in the morning. CAD forums and the ceramists I have met in NH have been of vital support to me and I am most grateful.

 

Lee U Ceramics at GoDAddy is just under construction and needs a lot of work, but I'm getting to it. http://www.leeuceramics.com/  And I know I need to add measurements, descriptions, and, when a i have enough, good enough, a shopping cart. And better photos. And...and...

 

Feedback on either site, or both, is most welcome.

 

Post Script: if you look at my studio set up in 2SF, please know I have since ditched the little mask and purchased a good respirator! 

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I've been using Homestead for the past past few years, but after checking out other online builders I will be switching to Weebly soon. Homestead has gotten pricey so I'm ditching them. Their builder is easy to use, though. Before Homestead I used GoDaddy, but their builder got so buggy that it would take me several tries to get small changes to my site to take hold. Simple things like font changes wouldn't work. It's been a few years, though, so hopefully it's better now. I think Weebly has a really nice combination of features and simplicity.

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Marcia,

 

Can you link the article that GoDaddy is talking about? Cause any website can be found by google through links or by user submission to google. If you haven't submitted your site I suggest anyone here do it. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6259634?hl=en

 

Sounds like some marketing fluff to me. 

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I thought so too. But it was a phone call after I had called the customer support for getting repeated attempt to reverify my account. I was told I had til the end of the year to subscribe to the SEO that Google would recognize.And the SEO is marked in red as working.

 

I will say my hits are double..at 2000+ for this month of far.

Marcia

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Joseph...it's called "money, honey".  I suspect most browsers will go this route sooner than later, and therefor most website generators will charge to capitalize on it. The good news, as Marcia notes, is that dedicated SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be quite productive. One may even purchase a "remote receptionist" to answer your business "phone"...just think, your very own mini-call center.  As for the SSL license (Secure Sockets Layer) I imagine a healthy business might prefer to have one, given the ease of access when there is only minimal security in place. I'll take my chances and trust Norton, for now.

 

Regarding site hits, I find it fascinating - and a little scary - that since I have not promoted my site at all-just put the link here and on my personal Facebook page only once, I get hits from China and Russia, and all over the place. Any day now I expect the last $54.83 to be drained from my bank account and to receive six dating proposals from very handsome military men claiming to be looking for a good Christian woman. 

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I may be the odd man out but since I'm not selling on the web-my site is just for customer info and to help return customers with color issues when ordering from me.Thats why I have a web site as once a customer called me and wanted more of what she said was the color of the universe.I snapped and put up a web site with dumbed down color samples.

Hits per month I could cry less about

Since my Pottery Name is a weird one you have to know the name to find it.

The site does help to drive my customers to my show locations  even though I have not done a New show in many decades.

 

Since I retired from Boeing a few years ago I could less about SEO packages

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That is the most bizarre thing I have ever heard. What are they calling subscribing to SEO? Do they give you information about your site analytics or something? 

 

Is it this: https://www.godaddy.com/online-marketing/seo-services

No. They called me. Same caller id as I use for customer service. Just said Google was going to start requiring this as a security measure.I do get hits from all over the world..Korea, places in South America, Norway, etc.

Marcia

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I still live in the web development world, and although I understand the ease of Weebly, I am sticking with WordPress as my CMS (Content Management System) even though many still view WP as a blogging platform. Classify this as another case where the cobbler's children have no shoes, but my personal site is terribly out of date.  At any rate, I have several domains (including my personal domain, paulchenoweth.com) hosted on a hostmonster.com account very inexpensively and find page and content management pretty easy to do in WordPress. I use Google Analytics for traffic and SEO purposes.  PayPal plugs into WordPress with very little trouble.

 

I do need to write more...but somehow that hasn't been the priority that it should.

 

-Paul

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I am like Paul. I use wordpress. I mostly blog on my website though, mostly just a bunch of random test and pots that I have developed over time. It is more for my own history than to bring in customers. Eventually I plan to actually use it to promote sales and gather newsletter emails, but that is probably a while out. I finally ordered a stamp and decided how I am going to brand and label pots etc. So much work and I don't even have a product to sell yet. Life is hard, but full of joy. 

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I got the call from godaddy today about signing up for the SEO service plan. Talk about high pressure! Thought at one point he was going to try and sell me a timeshare along with it. I ended up telling them point blank I was not signing up over the phone that I needed to do my own due diligence and he got very ummm pissy I guess is the term and said when my site gets pasted with a big red X I would be sorry I didn't sign up today. Godaddy has always been really great and I'm kind of disappointed in the high pressure tactics they are employing. How was I to know they were even REALLY calling from godaddy? I never pay for anything from a call I receive for anything I always take the info then go to whatever place I need to verify and pay there, paying over the phone is dangerous. I might have to sign up for it in the end but it's a bit more complicated for me having 5 domains, that's $300 a year, or oh wait $150 if I do something called a UCC which is a bargain at only $150 a year according to the salesman, provided I qualify, in his terminology. When I got the call I didn't know enough to even know what questions to ask but have been researching online and will make my decision once I know what I really need, when and why.

 

Google seems to be changing what SSL is for, it used to only be used for entering credit card data and contact data for sales, in fact server companies required you to ONLY use it on your shopping cart pages. My websites use the PayPal shopping cart portal so no one ever enters data on my site but it automatically switches them over to the PayPal server to submit their sale. Etsy of course uses the etsy payment portal. Google seems to want to change it to be a tracking method. Switching over isn't as simple as just paying the fee either you need to switch all of your website(s) pages, images, links etc over to use it which some say is a heck of a task to do.

 

I plan to do more research and then call godaddy next week and go from there.

 

T

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I have read 0 evidence from google that they are actually giving negative ranking to websites without https, they released back in 2014 at a big conference that they wanted people to start using SSL on every single website. However fast forward to 2016 and chrome still hasn't enabled their default "this page isn't secure icon" that they have had implemented in chrome for nearly 2 years now. I still see a white page icon(in front of the address) for almost every domain that isn't https:// and they actually have an icon developed in chrome that has a white page with a red x to show you that your not on an encrypted website, but they have yet to implement it.

 

I think this is like I said above, just a marketing ploy. There is no way google is going to label every website on the planet without an SSL with a big red X. Sure, google might give a slight bit more ranking juice to a website that has an SSL certificate, but only if that website has better content, more relevant backlinks, older domain, a reliable track history of not buying link ads, etc etc.

 

GoDaddy is just employing an aggressive marketing poop strategy to scare people who don't have any idea what is going on. I wouldn't sign up from anything from them, if you want real SEO, join a real group and get a real company to do it. I recommend https://moz.com/used to be called SEOmoz years ago. I used their software for over 6 years to do SEO for small clients in niche markets. They also have recommended companies from big to small to help you with it if your really interested in paying someone for this service instead of learning about it yourself.

 

The whole spill about google and SSL's is a joke. There are huge commercial websites that their primary domain isn't an SSL. I could do research and list tons. Do you think they don't have in house SEO experts doing everything they can, and if it was as simple as an SSL to give huge boost they wouldn't do it? Here are a few major ones that are still not doing it:

 

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.cnn.com

 

Also from the real experts(not some spammy phone caller who is reading off a script and telling you about big red X's) read this page about it : https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl

 

Here are a few quotes from the above link:

 

 

On one hand, Google has confirmed the ranking boost of HTTPS. On the other hand, with over 200 ranking, it's likely you'll find the effect of any ranking influence to remain quiet small.
In fact, a recent study by Search Metrics showed no detectable advantage to sites using HTTPS.
In fact, don't expect HTTPS to act as a silver bullet. If rankings are your only concern, there are likely dozens of things you can do that will have a bigger impact

 

 

I hope this solves this matter for a lot of you. I really dislike aggressive predator marketing. 

 

Edit: also just a side note, I know a lot of you like GoDaddy, but I think they are probably the worst domain company on the planet. I used them for years for clients and eventually abandoned ship due to massive amounts of issues. It seems they might have solved a lot of those problems since most of you like them, but man o man, they were so bad back in the day when they were running all those adds on TV. I personally prefer namecheap.com 

 

I almost want to open a godaddy website just so i can record this call and send it to the major SEO people so they can have a field day with it on their blogs.

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Thanks Joseph that does answer some questions and until I get the dreaded big red X I am not going to pay all the extra money for something I'm not sure I even need nor that it appears in the research I have done will make that big a difference for my little sites.

 

T

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Ok, so I have a question for all you all, has anyone used the Square Space to create a webpage?  I have had a couple of people recommend it as being easy, having all the bells and whistles as well as being easy to use. 

 

And what about WIX?

 

Roberta

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Just gotta say...I have had no such issues...NONE...with GoDaddy and have had excellent customer service and tech support. I seriously doubt that the phone call was from the company, so I am concerned, adding in other criticisms of the company, that all the hubbub about SSL may not capture the full facts of GoDaddy's practices. I am keeping in mind as well that Google is not GoDaddy, unless they bought them when I wasn't looking.

 

I find it difficult not to let negative feedback on something influence my decisions. Yet, it bothers me to think that a company or service could be maligned, and then avoided "just" because the feedback spreads, in the absence of personally taking the time/effort to check it out. (Thanks Joseph, for those quotes/links-that helps.)  

 

For me it is about finding a balance. I'm inclined to take positive reviews to the bank, but maybe too quickly dismiss a company based on a few bad-news reviews. If there are a lot of bad reviews, of course, I take them off my list of possible resources.

 

I really appreciate all the feedback and frank information from other people's experiences, but want to use caution before I switch companies based on a public discussion board. I say this with regard to any company's business practices and operations...it's not like they can respond here in their own defense/explanation.

 

Sort of off-topic, but not totally: I recently had a multi-month terrible experience/interaction with Getty Images, Inc. I am an "image tamer" for a professional photographer and had to deal with Getty over a badly botched contract amendment. The company's business culture, staffing, practices, and policies, have changed so drastically in the past few years that it is virtually a different beast, morphing from a contributor-friendly, transparent, accessible, company/process to an opaque anti-customer monster. To make it worse, they have bought up ALL of the decent major competition world-wide, so there are no same-quality alternatives for the photographer. They now hold the keys to the entire kingdom and if they want to banish someone, he/she is locked out at the gates. Oops, I guess I am guilty of spreading negative feedback!! Yes...so be it!  

 

My point, I guess, is that Internet business facilitation and web-based commerce can be a very hostile environment for the customer; we are essentially held hostage to these practices, and I think it is just getting worse.  Rant for the day.

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LeeU - I agree with you on some levels as to what you were saying. I have been with godaddy since the 90s and have always had excellent experiences with them. I was very put off by the salesman on the phone since his attitude was so vastly different than I am used to from godaddy. I almost wonder if they haven't subbed out this sales pitch or something.

 

I have 5 domains feeding into 2 hosted websites with them and have no plans to leave. I DO plan to call next week now that I know a bit more on the subject. For me to add the SEO package will have to be a multi step process since its more complicated than most. I plan to start that when I call and then get everything lined up when and if I find I need to do the switch.

 

Would I recommend godaddy to a friend or family member? YES with no reservations. I still think everyone should do their own due diligence of course.

 

T

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Maybe go daddy sold their subscriber list as national geographic has done for years. You get the 3rd party calling to pester you about national geo products and the like-when you push back they admit to just being an affiliate for them as they are not really directly involved-just a sales deal.

Bit like american express sells the list so  you get buried in junk mail right after you join up with them.

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