Depending on how big of a site and how many products of course but most web hosts offer ecommerce type hosting packages with web builders that will help you build your store. They'll walk you right through the process of setting up your accounts and whatnot. It may not be the most exciting original design as you'll be working off templates, but you can usually build a nice, simple, clean website that you can easily maintain yourself, without needing any techies. Most web hosts will also register your domain for you, they should offer stats so you can check your traffic, provide you with email accounts for your domain, have an online manager to help you manage your account, etc. It shouldn't cost you much upfront, maybe a $50 set up fee. Prices run anywhere from $50 a month and upwards for your ecomm hosting
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I looked into that yahoo site yesterday, and that looks like the route we're going to be taking in the end. My f-i-l doesn't want to front thousands of dollars for someone else to do something that we may or may not want to change later.
One question further: If we do end up cancelling with a site like this, that gives you the domain name .... can you somehow keep the domain name? I'd hate to find that we're wanting to go our own way later, only to find that yahoo actually owns the web address and won't share nicely.
You absolutely own the domain name for as long as you pay for it. Yahoo, or whoever hosts would only be the technical contact. If you wanted to go someplace else, that new host would help you transfer the domain name over to their servers for you and usually only for a nominal fee, or for free as what they really want is your ongoing monthly hosting fees. The worst that could happen is Yahoo dicks you around a little by pretending not to get your transfer request to get an extra month or two of hosting fees out of you.
To be on the safe side I've always registered my own domain names, using www.register.com. This way it's my account, I'm the contact and I'm in charge of it. When I pick a host I get their DNS info from them and enter it myself - all hosting companies would provide the information that you need to be able to do this for yourself. And this way when I changed hosts it was a really simple matter for me to change the DNS info and with 48 hours I was up and running with my new company.
the merchant account that my fil uses won't accept yahoo (who we were planning to work with) as a host because it's "not secure enough". We can't seem to get information from them about who we can work through. I'm not savvy enough to design my own website from scratch so I'm stuck again. He won't put up the money ($1000+) to get a site designed. This is all so frustrating. I'm not really sure how to do this now.
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One question further: If we do end up cancelling with a site like this, that gives you the domain name .... can you somehow keep the domain name? I'd hate to find that we're wanting to go our own way later, only to find that yahoo actually owns the web address and won't share nicely.
Reply
To be on the safe side I've always registered my own domain names, using www.register.com. This way it's my account, I'm the contact and I'm in charge of it. When I pick a host I get their DNS info from them and enter it myself - all hosting companies would provide the information that you need to be able to do this for yourself. And this way when I changed hosts it was a really simple matter for me to change the DNS info and with 48 hours I was up and running with my new company.
Reply
the merchant account that my fil uses won't accept yahoo (who we were planning to work with) as a host because it's "not secure enough". We can't seem to get information from them about who we can work through. I'm not savvy enough to design my own website from scratch so I'm stuck again. He won't put up the money ($1000+) to get a site designed. This is all so frustrating. I'm not really sure how to do this now.
Reply
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