I’ve been asked many times by prospective clients if I recommend using one of those Do-It-Yourself template services. Now, in my head this translates to “should I hire you or just do it on my own” and seems to have an obvious answer. Honestly though, I don’t have any die-hard objections to most of these services, as long as you know what you are getting yourself into once you sign up.
So here’s my top things to know about Do-It-Yourself website services:
1. Do-It-Yourself website services offer templated designs 99.9% of the time. I know this because I’ve had people hire me to try to modify their “template” into a custom design. Most of the time, you have a few templates to choose from, you can pop your logo into the header, add your menu text and your body text, and that’s about it. There’s usually no ability built into the system to add custom code and design. If you want this ability without hiring someone to custom design a standard website for you… get a blog.
2. These services are, well, services. They usually charge a monthly or yearly fee to allow you to have the website through their company. It may be beneficial for you to get a quote for a custom website, and then compare the one time cost of that to the monthly payments you will be making through the Do-It-Yourself service. If you could have bought a custom website for the price of a year’s worth of monthly payments on a do-it-yourself service, you might want to go custom.
3. It is just about impossible most of the time to convert your do-it-yourself website into a “standard” website. If it was this easy to build a website through a service and then transfer it over to flat files, the companies who offer this service would never make any money. So if you think you may want to convert your website into a custom website in the future or add any advanced functionality such as ecommerce, you will probably need to have an entirely new website created if you are moving away from a do-it-yourself service.
4. Many of these services offer domain registrations as part of their package deals. Be careful when registering your domain through these services, as you may have difficulty if you ever need to transfer it to a new registrar. These services do not offer DNS management services for their domain registrations most of the time, once again because they don’t want you moving your website away from their service.
5. When signing up for a service like this, you always need to keep in mind how you are representing your company. Like it or not, do-it-yourself web templates look like templates. People will be able to tell that you did not pay to have a custom website created by a professional and more likely than not you will end up having to have an entirely new website built in the future to improve the integrity of your business on the web.
6. If your reason for wanting a do-it-yourself web service is so that you can update your website yourself, there are many less costly alternatives out there for you. You can get a standard hosting account and domain registration for around $60 per year, have a wordpress blog installed and custom templated to your liking for a one time fee, and you have a website similar to a do-it-yourselfer, but with a custom template and for a much lower cost.
7. For every service, there is an equally good script that will do the same thing or more for no ongoing cost. If you are looking at hosted do-it-yourself ecommerce services, keep in mind there are many ecommerce solutions that do not require you to pay a monthly maintenance fee just to have a shopping cart. Many of these ecommerce services are charging up to $300 per month for a basic shopping cart. For this money you could easily get a shopping cart script installed on your web server and never have to pay a monthly fee for it. This frees up more cash for you to spend on necessary services for your company’s website such as hosting and credit card processing services.
No matter what you choose to do, please educate yourself on the service you are planning to use. Think about what you will need to do with your website in the future and what flexibility you will need. Most services offer a basic brochure website, and any advanced features beyond that are off limits (other than maybe a paypal buy button).
When push comes to shove, you get what you pay for. If you want a quality custom and professional website, you will most likely not get this through a templated do-it-yourself service and you will be calling me in a year anyway to re-do your website from scratch. So my suggestion is, unless you have very minimal requirements for your website, save your money and pay a professional.
First, every band or musician website should have sound clips. The internet is often the first place people go to learn about new bands and what their music sounds like, so if they can’t hear you, your website is nearly worthless. That being said, you need to be very careful about protecting your music. No matter what security precautions you take with the programming and setup of your website, sound clips and other media can always be swiped off of your page one way or another, no matter what format it is in. Before you share your music, make sure you edit the MP3 file down to a 30-45 second sound clip. This way, even if someone swipes the file, all they have is a small portion of your song.
1. The main difference between Windows and Linux systems is that Windows is proprietary, developed by Microsoft, whereas Linux systems use open source software to run, and were created and perfected by countless programmers who simply want something better.