What to do about our website

[silver]

Hi - as always this is a very basic question so please be kind!

 

The place I work in has a website which is not really liked - mostly due to things like headers, fancy stuff and the like. The content is fine. The hosting is by a company that has been slated and so we have some issues:

 

Firstly, I would like a new website, either written by myself (hah!) or someone else, perhaps in Joomla?

How likely is it that I could do this, given that I have the content of our current website to look at?

 

Failing that - how would I go about finding someone VERY cheap to produce a website for us?

 

How do I go about finding a host? And do I do this before the site has been produced or what? I had a look around and the hosting companies were asking for bandwidth and database size - how do I get this info and what else do I need?

I suppose what I am looking for is an idiots quide to creating a website and putting it somewhere it can be seen!

 

Grateful for any help - as always

[Mako]

How likely is it that I could do this, given that I have the content of our current website to look at?

 

Very likely! If the content is already in place then it should halve the time taken to create the site.

 

Failing that - how would I go about finding someone VERY cheap to produce a website for us?

 

Web developers and hosting can sometimes come in one package, but it probably won't be cheap. The cheapest solution is to find a host and create the site yourself. Given what I said above, this would probably be the best course of action. The web-developing contingent of Edugeekers should be able to give you recommended site hosts.

 

All schools in our area have hosting provided by the county council. Doesn't your LA offer something similar?

 

I had a look around and the hosting companies were asking for bandwidth and database size - how do I get this info and what else do I need?

 

If your site has a SQL database, this will be what they're asking about, and the approximate size of your site and volume of traffic you expect.

 

What kind of site does your school have now? Do you require SQL databases, movies and Flash components or is something more static required? More complex features will push you towards getting someone else to do it, but if nothing amazing is required it's definately something you could do yourself.

 

When I joined my school 2 years ago we were at the same situation of "The website is dated and no-one likes it", so I took it upon myself to create a new one from scratch - Lady Lumley's School. Without any prior content it took me a month. 2 years later, that original design was dated and I created a new one again from scratch. But with the content already in place, it took me only 5 days to get the new layout and images sorted. It is dependant on your website's needs, and whether you have the time an patience to create your own site. Now it's in place, I don't have a lot of updating to do. If that sounds more like what you need then I'd go with that - create it yourself and find a host. Like I say, getting someone to do it for you can be costly.

 

There's a huge amount of users here who are skilled in web design, be it HTML and CSS or Joomla. All you need to do is ask. I hope this is somewhat useful. I'll let others give you recommendations for hosting companies, as we use our LA servers.