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Any Suggestions for How to Make and Host a Simple Website ?

rhysonsax

rhysonsax

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I've almost completed my research phase and gathered a lot of information on Lawton saxophone mouthpieces. M/Pieces - Ligs - Lawton Mouthpieces: Researching the History

I would like to make the information available as a simple website with maybe seven or eight linked pages, including text, tables and some photographs.

My experience on making and running websites is very limited, but I have done it for a couple of bands that I have played in. Both of those were more costly that I wanted (on a monthly and annual basis) and the second one of them leads to a daily stream of spam email that is mighty annoying.

What would you suggest as the best way of producing and running a simple website that will cost very little but look good ?

Rhys
 
Google Sites is free and very simple. Here's an example with two pages.

The Riviera Fine Arts Center

Art Workshops with Greg LeRoy Limited enrollment classes: [more detail] Beginning painting Intermediate/advanced painting Drawing beginning/intermediate Life Drawing Call (805) 560-8754 for more information or write classes@RivieraFineArts.com
sites.google.com sites.google.com
 
A quick look: very good photos, nice simple layout. I've used Google Sites and I know it's limited compared to SquareSpace ($100/year) or WordPress (free limited or paid).

Suggestion: is there a way to add the contact link at bottom of all pages? Possibly a link on your name? (Unless you don't particularly want to be contacted.)

Also, I think if you buy a domain through Google Domains, it will work with the sites. Need to verify that, but it would be logical.

Something not enough people who make sites actually do:
Put yourself in the place of a person who is interested and looking for something, information or product. Try to act like that person and visit the site. Most people focus on the look. They don't realize that people scan, and don't read the text until they've found the bit they've come for!

For example, chefs often have beautiful but annoying sites. You go there wanting to reserve, the phone and address are on one page, not the first which has an over-sized photo of the chef or the room. You want to the menu and they want you to download a PDF, etc.
 
I've used Google Sites several times to build sites, one for one of my choirs I used to be in and one for myself. It uses templates. It's OK. I think the hardest thing was getting it to point at the domain name I purchased.
 
It is likely not under your control, you say the site does not use cookies but the popup below appears:
Scanning down the page it goes then reappears when scanning up the page.
Apart from that first impressions it looks good and I like the neat way on the 'Home' drop down everything starts with 'M'

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies.
Learn more
Got it
 
Targa said:
It is likely not under your control, you say the site does not use cookies but the popup below appears:
Scanning down the page it goes then reappears when scanning up the page.
Apart from that first impressions it looks good and I like the neat way on the 'Home' drop down everything starts with 'M'

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies.
Learn more
Got it
Click to expand...

Thanks for that good spot.

That's annoying and not something I had realised. I will just take off that statement about Cookies.

Rhys
 
I appreciate all the information shared in this thread. I have been dragging my feet for quite a while on building a website for The Saxophone Shop. I even paid a ridiculous amount for the name "saxophoneshop.com" from some jerk who owns a magic store and has nothing whatsoever to do with saxophones. :(

This is my facebook site: The Saxophone Shop
 
Last edited:
jbtsax said:
I appreciate all the information shared in this thread. I have been dragging my feet for quite a while on building a website for The Saxophone Shop. I even paid a ridiculous amount for the name "saxophoneshop.com" from some jerk who owns a magic store and has nothing whatsoever to do with saxophones. :(

This is my facebook site: The Saxophone Shop
Click to expand...

I think that Google Sites is fine for a website whose purpose is to give information but I wouldn't use it for a business that includes e-commerce.

Conversely, some of the Website template providers can help businesses build very professional looking sites, including e-commerce, provided that you fit in their categories. But I would have struggled to build my mouthpiece information site with its multiple pages in their off-the-shelf templates.

I'm thinking of making another simple website for our big band using Google Sites again.

Rhys
 
stitch said:
Can't say I'm too keen on the rotating border of your logo. Sorry ... but you did ask!
Click to expand...

Fair enough !

It is supposed to look like the Lawton ligature thumbwheel, but I decided that if it all rotated the text wouldn't be legible and it would get annoying.

I will keep thinking.

Rhys
 
rhysonsax said:
I wouldn't use it for a business that includes e-commerce.
Click to expand...
Again, many businesses make such mistakes and end up with sites that aren't pleasant to navigate. If you want to sell a service or product, it's not a great idea to do the site yourself, but if you must, at least spend the time to get good tools and do the research to make it a pleasure to use.
 
Yes, the New Sites which is very much better than the Classic.

I don't think there are "templates" as such, but there are "Themes" which give a start in terms of fonts, colour schemes but not much more. I think you can then try to swap the whole site to a different Theme but I haven't done that.

Rhys
 
Saxlicker said:
Rhys this is happening for me too.
I expect you already think like this but I would size accordingly then compress if required.
Great job though :thumb:
Click to expand...

I guess that it is mainly down to the widespread use of "Image Carousels" with multiple jpg pictures of mouthpieces. I didn't do anything to compress the photos down other than to crop them.

Any idea on what size for each picture would work OK if I used say 24 pictures per page ?

I like the Carousel in theory but the Google Sites one can crop individual pictures a lot, particularly if they are not all the same size.

Rhys
 
rhysonsax said:
I guess that it is mainly down to the widespread use of "Image Carousels" with multiple jpg pictures of mouthpieces.
Click to expand...

Yes, these will cause problems. And in fact not very user friendly as images just whizz past you. They were all the vogue a few years back.

They can work if the slider allows the user to control the image - ie pause and play- but the automatic ones are not so nice. You look at a picture and then suddenly it changes.

For images on the internet I tend to reduce or crop to at the most 1000px dimnsions and use jpg compression of between 65% and 75%.

But if it is only going to be displayed smaller, then make them as small as the site is going to display at. (Although up to double size but with a display reduction can be good for Retina screens)

Wordpress automatically reduces images, but even so it's best to do it yourself in something like Photoshop first (I use Affinity Photo as I prefer it vastly to Photoshop)

But I noticed some of your images are very big, around 3MB, and when a slider is loading several of those it is huge (and Google search engine will penalise you for sies as huge as that)
 

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