How much should I expect to pay for someone to create me a simple two page website and where is the best/cheapest place to host it?

September 20, 2008 10:03 AM

How much should I expect to pay for someone to create me a simple two page website and where is the best/cheapest place to host it?

I have an idea for one of those simple one word website and since I know just enough web stuff to end up messing it up I would rather pay someone to do it for me.

The url of the website will be a question and the first page of the site will be a one word answer (with a link to an external page) and at the bottom of the page it will say "more", with a link to the second page.

The second page will contain one or two sentences explaining the website and an archive of all of the pages that the one word answer on the front page has linked to.

There will also be a basic free tracking service that I would like them to set up on the front page.

How much should I expect to pay someone to create this website? I will provide them with a log-in for the site that I have hosting on and the text (html) for the two pages.

What is the best (cheapest) place that I can find to host this, assuming it is a tiny website that gets a small amount of traffic. Preferably, I would like a site that will also handle domain ownership, as I have not bought the domain yet, but it is still available.

I would like to update the website nearly daily, changing the site that the one word answer links to, and adding that new site to the second (archive) page. Basically, however the site is set up, if I have the html for the those two pages, will I just be able to make the changes on my local copy and then upload it/ftp it to the site?

This is a political site for the US election... should I be concerned at all about potentially hiring someone to make this website who has strong opposing political views. Would it be good to be upfront about the political aspect of the site and which side it is for?

I don't know anything about website security... is such a set-up (two pages) likely to be a secure set-up, or is there a bunch of other steps I should take to make sure this isn't hacked/corrupted by spammers or something.

Is there anything else I should be aware of when trying to hire someone for this type of project?

posted by davidstandaford to computers & internet (12 comments total)

www.dreamhost.com <>
Then install a Wordpress blog (Goodies->One Click Installer).

Enjoy.
posted by SirStan at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2008

This is a 5 minute design job, if you provide all of the content. I bet you could find a friend who knows even the most basic thing about web design/HTML to do this for free. In fact, with about 20 minutes of research, you could do this as well. :) Otherwise, you could probably find someone to do it on Craigslist for $10-$20.

You can register the domain with a company like 1and1 for a few bucks. For hosting, you can go with something like Dreamhost which is about $7 a month. You can use free tracking with Google Analytics -- just copy and paste a few lines of code into the page.

As for updates, yes, once the design is created, you can just open the file locally and swap out the content with whatever you want, and re-upload. Or if you want to get fancy, whoever designs it can use some javascript to randomly cycle through a list of predetermined pieces of content.

Pretty easy job.
posted by nitsuj at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2008

ARG! Sign up @ dreamhost.com, its ~5/m, but theres a $80/off a years hosting coupon on their forums.
posted by SirStan at 10:15 AM on September 20, 2008

Since you predict a small amount of traffic, check out Nearlyfreespeech.net. You only pay for the storage and bandwidth you actually use, so for a very small site you could easily pay less than a dollar a month.
posted by Nedroid at 10:18 AM on September 20, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If I were you, I would use Textpattern.
What you describe seems like it has very little design involved, and just the proper coding.
If you know how to make a simple page, that looks how you want it (but is static), you can use textpattern.
To make it dynamic, you just insert some special markup which textpattern injects the dynamic stuff into.
Thats what I use, and I know very little coding.
(also, I too use Nearly Free Speech, which is awesome and cheap).
posted by ooklala at 10:43 AM on September 20, 2008

www.weebly.com

Free, nice templates, easy to use, and did I mention free?
posted by dbiedny at 11:30 AM on September 20, 2008

You can register AND host at Dreamhost.

And you can use the METAFILTER signup code for that discount...
posted by dmd at 12:57 PM on September 20, 2008

You can probably do it yourself.

Try infogami or a free wiki like wikidot
posted by swapspace at 1:57 PM on September 20, 2008

Also 2nding dbiedny
posted by swapspace at 1:58 PM on September 20, 2008

You could probably do this for free on Blogspot using a simplified template. Just redirect your domain.
posted by dhartung at 2:17 PM on September 20, 2008

I really like A Small Orange for hosting. I can't say how much to pay - I would say someone might do it as favor to you, since it's such a quick project...but I'm sure people who actually do web design here will shoot me for that suggestion. :)
posted by Liosliath at 2:46 PM on September 20, 2008

Seconding that the tiny plan from A Small Orange might be a good hosting fit.
posted by PueExMachina at 6:55 PM on September 20, 2008