How do I make a website using a “hosted” solution?

On 12/8/2010, Nico Angleys asked me via email:

Hey Brian,

I quite like Marianne’s site as far as the design goes. Do you think I can put something like this together using wordpress?

http://www.marianne-kantert.de/

Cheers,

Nico www.nicoangleys.com

Nico's Current Website

Nico bro!

So, it’s time to dump Dot Net Nuke, eh? You have that running on some server space on a windows server somewhere…

You should go for a “hosted” page.

It’d be worth searching WordPress themes to see if one of them got you close to the look/feel of the page you mentioned, but I doubt it. They currently offer 105 themes in the free version of wordpress.com (that’s the “hosted” wordpress, as-opposed to the codebase, which anyone can download from wordpress.org and install – that’s what we run for http://servantsoftheword.org). Then you could pay the $12/year to get your domain mapped to the hosted wordpress… and even $14/year to custom-edit one of the built-in themes. That’s what I use for this blog.

Squarespace would really get you closer to that look/feel you linked-to at http://www.marianne-kantert.de/.
Check out some of their examples: http://www.squarespace.com/examples/category/featured.
But they’re on the “expensive” side for us guys who want to go gratis… $11/month for the two year plan: http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/.

Other hosted options?
My latest list was like this, but it’s just a list, not necessarily recommendations:

• http://Yola.com (supports google adsense)
• http://Weebly.com (supports google adsense)
• http://Jimdo.com
• http://Webnode.com

All four of these have:

• easy-editing (like microsoft word)
• a free subdomain (i.e. nico.yola.com)
• they’re advertising-free (except they link back to their own homepage)

Some of them even let you make your own domain name later for some $$$.

Paid options, again, not necessarily recommendations:

• http://SquareSpace.com – excellent! allows custom themes $$ coupon?: SISTA
• http://HomeStead.com – $5/month – click anything – start w template…
• http://Doodlekit.com – $$
• http://Viviti.com – $5/mo http://viviti.com/about/pricing

I hope you figure out how to make a new webpage!
-Brian