Advice About Making A Website

[Adam M]

Hey!

I wanted to make a nice website for my business like @Leo Gura...

I basically have all the time in the world and am open to learning to skills...

I want this to be the long-term platform for my life's work.

I want to have a blog, courses, and eventually even a forum.

I've thought of a couple options...

Right now I'm using Kajabi to host my website, course, and email marketing... I can create a blog and stuff on there but it's pricey ($200/month).

The other option is that I make my own website...

So my question is... 

 

What's the best way for me to go about doing that?

I have an entry-level amount of website building experience... I just know the basics of how to get hosting and  a little bit of word-press.

How do I start?

What do you reccomend?

[thepixelmonk]

It'd probably be relatively straightforward to build all that within wordpress. It has forum plugins and you can lock certain content behind paywalls and such.

Ghost is also pretty decent blog / membership platform.

Edited October 21, 2022 by thepixelmonk

[Yarco]

I think WordPress is the optimal balance of cost / knowledge / effort required for what you get.

(Hosting your a WordPress site on your own hosting/domain, not using Wordpress as a host. WordPress.com and WordPress.org are totally different things)

Learning to code HTML/CSS is very inefficient and largely a waste of time for most people if coding and web design isn't part of your life purpose. You're redoing stuff that someone has already made a plugin or theme for 99% of the time.

Wix, Kajabi, Squarespace etc are the most user friendly but limited and features and they'll nickel and dime you to death for add-on features over time. And you don't have 100% ownership and control over your own website, they can make it a hassle to transfer somewhere else later and basically hold your site hostage.

[SaltyMeatballs]

Learn some sysadmin skills and host the website yourself on Linode. It will cost around $5 per month.

[Leo Gura]

Wordpress is good.

Or use an even higher level platform.

It does not make much sense coding anything if you can avoid it. There exist platforms and 3rd party solutions for pretty much any element of a site you'd need.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Michael569]

On 21/10/2022 at 5:56 PM, Adam M said:

Right now I'm using Kajabi to host my website, course, and email marketing... I can create a blog and stuff on there but it's pricey ($200/month).

holy shit that's expensive !!!!! 

Wix costs about 700 USD for a 3-year license and you can do all that stuff there easily. And you can get Wix Acend to t=do the marketing stuff for you for abut $20/month I think. Maybe less. Some of the course plugins may be extra but definitely nowhere near Kajabi prices. 

I have zero coding skills and website on Wix was relatively easy although of course the current website is a reflection of my lack of skills so in the future I may actually pay a designer to redo it. If you have decent experience, you can work magic there.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Michael569

[Hello from Russia]

Webflow

[cle103]

WordPress. Use the "Divi" theme (200$ lifetime). It let's you build everything frontend drag & drop style and is the best on the market imo. If you want a bit more performance you can go Webflow (WordPress can get bloated and a bit slow). 

Email marketing = ActiveCampaign (better and much cheaper than Kajabi). 

I'd worry about courses later. Take a look at "Skool" if you're looking for something high quality.