Hi, 

  If I could recommend in my opinion Joomla is better than WordPress with many more templates to choose from. Have you ever built a website using CMS ? 

I like 123-Reg for hosting, but not sure if it's the best one...

  Google sites are very good to start with. It's free and you can create professional looking site if you spend some time playing with it. 

Hi,

I found this website for a FREE website with GBBO and google.

http://www.gbbo.co.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=brand-cpc&utm_campaign=control-region&utm_term=g.b.b.o

Might be worth a look as its totally free for the first year I think.

Hope that helps anyone looking to get their business website up and running.

Thanks.

I always used to use One and one (www.1and1.co.uk)

They used to be the cheapest around, unfortunately not great on the support front (really if your just hosting a website you probably don't need support).

namesco are great and the support is excellent.If you buy the sitebuilder from them (which is great as you hardly need to do any work to build your website) for £5 per month you get the domain and 500mb webmail space for free and 10 free email addresses

Hi, anyone know what the difference is with a linux server? is it better than a windows server?

thank you

Following Sherenade's advice I signed up with Namesco yesterday.

made the mistake of buying web hosting and then getting the Sitemaster free 14 day trial to build the site.

Today tried to upgrade sitemaster but found that I should have only bought that as it's fully functional in its own right, and not bought the hosting package which is intended for those who have their own site building tools (doh! it's like buying two cars. You can only drive one at once!).

So, anyway I couldn't upgrade and thought that I was going to lose the site that I had spent all day building.

However... Thumbs up for excellent technical support at Namesco who sorted the problem out while I was on the phone by deleting and reinstateing the site whilst I was on the phone. Took about 10 minutes and didn't lose anything.

Would definitely recomend this to a freind but if you do go for a site and want to use their tools to build it then don't do what I did and buy the site name before signing up for sitemaster as it doesn't work that way around... Got the impression that a lot of people make the mistake that I did though.

Before anyone asks, I'll tell you what the name of the site is when it's completely finished. At the moment it's got structure and it flows well but having a bit of difficulty with the wordy bits (I know, unbelievable for me isn't it!).

Hope that this helps someone.

kind regards,

Shaun.

A quick question about website names.
Say for instance you had a business called "Eepemboop Mahoneymoose Bookkeeping and Payroll Services"
would you go for a website name like "mahoneymoose-bookkeeping.co.uk" or would you go for a simpler name like "embps.co.uk" ?
Obviously that isn't my real name.

Developing your own website is best, but the learning curve can be steep for many people. Wordpress.org is a great package, but you will have to buy website hosting and an internet domain name, and the cost are significant. I have also heard that 123-reg are good, but for small sites I'd guess that most hosting companies will do the job. UK web hosts are slightly better for UK sites in terms of search engine opitmisation. Wordpress.com may be another option - not sure if it would be free though. But they host the site and you 'point' your domain name to your wordpress site. So it makes things more convenient. Keep away from Mambo, and Joomla - they have too many features.