Tell me... About launching a web site

[Ernesto]

I live in south east Sacramento county. It is rural area where one is likly to find a single wide trailer within view of a $million estate. We are served by a small newapaper that claims a population of 50,000 people. I have been thinking about trying to organizing all the closet Democrats that MUST be out there. So the question is: how much trouble & money would it take to get a small web site up & running? Now that I am retired, I have the time to do the right thing.

[eyesroll]

1. Would a free blog work?

You can sign up for a free (ad-supported) site at Blogspot or something similar. The tools are pretty easy (though limited). You could post whatever information you needed from any reasonably current Web browser. A free comment utility (Haloscan is the one I use -- again, free but limited) could allow other people to post and respond. (You also could authorize other people to post directly to the blog if you wanted.)

If you're looking for something more powerful, you can get a Web site started pretty easily, sometimes for free from your existing ISP (your domain would be something like :www. yourisp.com/~yoursite, instead of www. yoursite.com). If you want your own domain name, it's only about $15-$30 to register, and you can find basic, ad-free hosting for $10 a month, on up.

Edited to get rid of the links -- these sites don't actually exist.

Good luck!

[brainshrub]

2. Suggestion:

www.godaddy.com to buy the domain name. Less than 10 bucks.

[LuminousX]

3. Best Approach

While I believe having a website is as necessary as having a phone, you may want to look for community web services (Yahoo Groups, MSN Communities) to start so people who are already using those services can find you.

When you get a handful of members, decide what you want to do. If you want a discussion board like this, then you might want to stick with the community site so you don't have to worry about the technical details. If you really want to get into the technical details, start looking at webhosts. I use DreamHost (http://www.dreamhost.com) for all my hosting needs.

The software for bulletin boards can be found all over, many open-sourced and free.

[starroute]

4. It takes time more than money to do it right

Your ISP may offer free web hosting. If not, hosting services start at $5 a month (as long as your bandwidth is low) and are easy to find.

Putting up a simple webpage takes a little learning but not much. There are books like Web Design for Dummies to give you the basics and software that can get you going even without knowing HTML. You could easily have a basic site up within a month.

But the big claim on your time and ingenuity would be finding those closet Democrats you assume are there. Submitting your site to search engines and mentioning it on boards like this one will only catch people who are already interested. The big problem is getting the word out through non-online channels -- and I don't know of any easy method of doing that.

It really comes down to advertising, and it's no different than for any other product. Suppose you were a basement inventor and had come up with some gadget you thought people would find really useful if they only knew it existed? Or suppose you had written a self-help book and wanted to get the word around to people with that problem? Where would you go with it, how would you present yourself, and how would you make your product seem exciting or important?

That's your big challenge, and compared to that, just putting up a webpage is going to be trivial.

[Ernesto]

5. Thanks for the help!

My plan (so far) is to run a classified add in the community newspaper with a catchy recruiting line and the link to the website. Hopefully I will be contacted by genuine Denocrats (or any one else) that are fed up with W & company. I would prefer to leave my phone number out until I meet the folks. What do you think?

[Fixated]

6. ....

Check out my blog in my sig. Costed nothing, you can do daily updates and such. It's really fun and easy, actually.

[Ernesto]

7. I'm KICKING

because I'm interested in any advice that the Saturday crew might give....... Thanks, DU'ers!

[WWW]

8. Hey Ernesto

I will help you if you need it. To register the site is $35/yr at www.networksolutions.com.(check here first to find your site name.) To have the site hosted is between $6 and $20 a month, but I would go with the latter as they have less downtime. (maybe you can share the space with other like minded DUERs) If you want to design the site yourself you can buy microsoft frontpage (I will help you, just email me). Or if you send me the info I will do it free. Web work is my career (although I give away or barter most of my services!) I had my dishwasher and hot tub installed last year for free for doing the plumber's web site. If you need a list of the sites I have designed, just email me.:)