Best website builder?

Joined
Jul 19, 2018
Messages
16
Reaction score
3
Age
26
Hey guys!

Getting my 107 here soon and wanted to build a website to display my content to potential customers. I already have a domain and was wondering what web site builder everyone recommends from their experiences as well as what they’re paying?

Thanks!
 
I've used (and currently use ) WIX as well.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SZAABS
Hey guys!

Getting my 107 here soon and wanted to build a website to display my content to potential customers. I already have a domain and was wondering what web site builder everyone recommends from their experiences as well as what they’re paying?

Thanks!
Do you just have the domain name registered or have you already purchased a web site hosting package? You may want to look at the hosting companies that are aimed at professional photographers. They usually have design templates that can be customized, very good management for videos and photos, and support for sales of prints and other services. Petapixel has an article ranking the top 13 sites for commercial photography hosting.

I use Smugmug. They are paranoid about backups so you don't have to be. You can upload the pics and videos and they generate links to different versions of the files.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SZAABS
I use Wordpress. I've built many sites with WP. Commercial and personal
 
  • Like
Reactions: SZAABS
I use Wordpress. I've built many sites with WP. Commercial and personal
I love me some WordPress, I run my blog on it. There are some big pluses and minuses if you choose WordPress

On the Plus side:
  • It's a mature platform with a large ecosystem. For most things that you would want, it can do it right out of the box or there is a plugin that will do it.
  • You can host it yourself or use commercial hosting.
  • Very easy to add content.
  • Very easy to customize. Lots of themes that can be downloaded or you can buy a customized theme.
On the Minus Side:
  • Since it's the dominant CMS platform out there, it's a large target for hackers. In February of 2017, thousands of WordPress sites were hacked from a 0-day vulnerability. You want to protect your site. Automate backups and 3rd party security monitoring will largely mitigate the security issues.
  • Does not address the storing and display for any drone pictures and videos. You want to make sure that whatever platform that you use allows for the amount of storage that you will need and the bandwidth for users to view those files.
My blog was one of the ones hacked back in 2017. I self-host and had daily backups. I was able to nuke the entire site and created a new virtual machine with everything needed to run WordPress. I loaded in the backup and updated the DNS entry to point to the new VM and I was backup. I then installed LetsEncrypt to get free SSL support and tweaked the web server settings to automatically redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. Then I signed up a security package. Most people don't want to go that deep under the hood. Nor should they have to.

Whatever choice that you make, make sure that you get SSL support. You want the HTTPS for your site. Google is going to penalize you in the search rankings if you only offer an unencrypted HTTP URL. It's 2018, there's no excuse for not running SSL. LetsEncrypt isn't for everyone, but it's free and it works.

If you are considering WordPress, take a look at Ghost. Ghost can be a better choice if your site is more like a blog than an ecommerce site. Ghost is faster and probably cheaper to run. For a comparison of Ghost and WordPress, the Ghost people have this page.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SZAABS
I stand by using Wordpress. You can self teach yourself via their website. Many options available to you. My site, buckchucko.com will give you an idea. Been running it since 2005.
 
I've used Wordpress for years and have built many websites, more recently using Wordpress + Divi (which is not free) to get the website up& running as soon as possible and be able to hand it over to the customer to use/develop/add without my help.

There is a massive free library and loads of online tutorials Divi Library | Elegant Themes

I have no commercial link to the above, just a happy user.

A
 
My website builder was a real human. Wordpress based using Avada environments and numerous third party plugins for lovely and fast image presentation. Cloudflare for speed. Make sure your hosting is compatible with whatever you use. Preparing your image and video files properly is essential. The visitor experience is essential.

www.jeffreysipress.com
 
I am setting up my site with Wordpress. Using the Neve theme. I am on a shoestring budget for my 1st 2 years in business. Registered my domain with Google, using a free hosting service (Free and Unlimited Web Hosting with PHP and MySQL) <--slow

After I build a portfolio and start gaining business I will find a faster, yet affordable hosting service.

Wordpress has a little learning curve for me, which it shouldn't.. I used to rock with HTML and CSS.
 
Back in the day I was also using Wix and Squarespace, however they are both pretty rubbish right now. I know that people keep on using WIX, however the last time when I have used it, I was really dissapointed by it. There were a lot of things that did not work as they should. Since then, I am only working with WordPress and Shopify. I actually consider these two, as the Best Website Builders right now. I might give WIX another chance in the near future, however I am not really sure about this, we'll see.
 
Last edited:
Hey guys!

Getting my 107 here soon and wanted to build a website to display my content to potential customers. I already have a domain and was wondering what web site builder everyone recommends from their experiences as well as what they’re paying?

Thanks!
Bluehost is the way to go user friendly and you can embed your youtube videos on your site, here is an example of a site that I have. jcwilliamsphotography.com
 

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,352
Members
104,933
Latest member
mactechnic