Hello,

My name is Mark, I work in the Army as a IT for Recruiting and Retention. My wife is a Lawyer that will be starting her own practice. We figured the most cost effective way for her to advertise at the same time reaching the population of clients she wants would be the web. Having said all of that, I am not to familiar with web hosting or even web site design...I mean I have used front page 2003 and also share point with my job, but only as a limited administrator. I have read many reviews about numerous web hosts and to be honest I feel numb at this point. One review says one thing, and another says a different thing. I know reviews in themselves are subjective, and for me it seems like the most important things for the web host I choose would be, Reliability, Customer Service, and also Ease of Access across the web. I have no clue if the web host has anything to do with how you are found by different search engines, but that is a big thing also. I am not talking about top spot on google, but first page search results would be a plus.

I have also looked at many software applications for the web design, from Frontpage to Expression...since most of the web host I have seen already offer a free web creation software I am not sure if I will even need to purchase something. So here are my questions, all replys and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

1. What is a good reliable web host?
2. Should I purchase web design software or go with the web design that comes with certain web hosts?
3. When designing what things are key to getting first page serch results from search engines?

Again any help is great. Thanks
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Sabre Claw

Most of us do our site coding by hand, using Notepad or the editor
portion of Dreamweaver (not the WYSIWYG interface).

You can pretty much use Google to find a free CSS template that
will give you the basic layout to start with. From there, it's a matter
of customizing it, and using your own graphics/photos/text.

You still would need to know things about CSS/HTML/XHTML and
maybe some PHP scripting.

So, it might even be worth hiring someone to take a template that
you picked out and customize it for you. You provide that freelance
programmer (or web designer) with the images and text that you want.

Here's an example of CSS templates:
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/css-templates/

Or here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

==========================

Now, about webhosting ...

You think of a domain name not yet taken and pick a webhost,
maybe a cheaper one like (www.cleverdot.com) that's only $30 per year.

They give you the account information and a control panel. You email the
account info to the person building your website. They create the website,
upload the files, troubleshoot, etc.

Then, it probably takes a couple of months before it starts to appear on Google.

The person making your website can include some simple interfaces for you to
change page text/content, or perhaps the site might be more of a blog,
like WordPress? or both a blog and a static website?

==========================

Lawyer Websites ...

Do a little research first to see if having a website for a lawyer is really
beneficial. Are there too many sites (getting lost in the search engines)?
What are the demographics? Is it really worth the effort? Would word-of-mouth
be more beneficial than a website?

You might end up paying someone $200-$300 for a website (one-time cost)
plus the $30 per year for hosting ... is it worth it?

Do some checking on this with other lawyers and determine the best approach.

Having a website isn't always a necessary thing.

==========================

If you're really determined to do this, and need more info ... PM me.

Thanks a ton for the information, I sent you a PM.

Hi Sabreclaw,

I'm new to these forums myself, but I live and breathe in the small business web arena. One thing to caution you about is that you get what you pay for with site design, ease of editing, flexibility and sanity with your hosting.

If you wish to build a solid foundation for your wife's web presence, then you should come up with a practical budget for site design, site maintenance, and hosting. The budget should match your level of skill and estimated time you can spend to get your site where you want it with respect to its appearance, its relevance to your wife's potential client base, and its search rankings for this base.

This is often where fledgling businesses wind up running into a dead end. They choose a site-template, customize it the best of their abilities, and then put it onto a bargain host. This process often takes 300% of the time that they expected it to, and winds up being fairly inflexible and outdated within a short period of time (6months - 1year).

Many skilled designers are loathe to maintain prefab templates. Also, your needs will have changed in a few months and you might want more interactivity or special features that the template can't support. This puts you back at square one having to have the site rebuilt from the ground up at much greater expense, and possibly putting you at a technical disadvantage to your colleagues.

So back to the budget. It's too hard to say what you should expect to get a living site that is easy to add to and fits your business like a glove, but there are some excellent services out there that can provide these capabilities. This is not meant to be an advertisement, and as fair disclaimer I do provide some of these services and have a close knit group of colleagues that I respect and rely upon. This is just a recommendation to do your own research first for a respectable website designer, perhaps a hosted content management solution, and website host that caters specifically to small businesses or individuals.

I really like 1and1 as a host. Stay away from GoDaddy - they don't offer advanced features and their interface is a nightmare.

As for an editor, I can heartily recommend Coda (cheap and worth it) for Mac – or TextMate, if you prefer, though Coda has integrated FTP! – and for Windows, the free PSPad which has a billion features including integrated FTP. These are raw code editors, not WYSIWYG.

Of course, my honest advice would be to find a web developer with a good portfolio and standards-based design practices. (If you like, I can tell you if a particular designer is good or full of crap.) There is so much to know about web design, it's hard to be professional without experience.

One last thought - while I would go with 1and1, if you find a good designer, they may prefer a particular set of technologies to work with, so allowing them to weigh in on the host is a good idea!

I prefer Wire Nine.

Hey, the original post sounds just like my story. My wife's not a lawyer, but a photographer. She quit her job at the newspaper last fall and struck out on her own. I built her website using Dreamweaver and about a million Google searches to find out why it wouldn't work. A previous post said it would take 300% of the time you planned. That's about right, if not more. But for me it was worth it. In fact, I'm now planning on starting a freelance web design business. I'm not fooling myself, though. I know it's going to be a long road ahead to get a handle on things.

Anyway, The single greatest source of getting higher search engine rankings was to register her site with as many free directories as I could find. I Googled "photographer directory" or something and registered on a dozen or so. This does two things. 1) people can find the site while browsing the directory, and 2) search engines now have a reliable link to your site from multiple independent sources. I'm sure there are a bunch of similar directories for lawyers out there.

My wife's only source of advertising has been her website ($29/year host) and word of mouth, and she's booked solid through summer for weddings. All of that happened in roughly six months time. Now I'm rushing to get a shopping cart built to fill all the orders. Good luck.