What do you think of Ken Evoy's Site Build It?

I'm going to build a site, and I thought he was a good choice. His work looks professional.

If your aim is to build a massive content site - then go for it. Think long term.

It'll have a lot of articles, reviews, biographies, and links to booksellers. All I have so far is a domain name and a nebulous vision, but I want to be professional. From what I've read, Ken Evoy is supposed to be one of the top people in his field. Is that right?

I have great respect for the man... If you want an all in-one-package, it's definitely recommended.

If you are more advanced, you can use XsitePro as well.

I don't know anything about building websites. That's why I thought I'd go to Ken Evoy for guidance.

Hi Zipper,

It's OK for content, but you can't add anything that would require a script to execute. It would be possible to link to third party resources though. For example, if you were selling products/services and were using 1shoppingcart.com it would work fine, but you wouldn't be able to install shoppingcarts, forums, blogs, polls, autoresponder software or anything else that requires the use of scripting on your sitebuildit website.

It would also be difficult to move your site later on. With sitebuildit you don't get an FTP account where you can login to retrieve your files. Many of the components of your website will be generated "on the fly" and pulled from a central database. This means the only way to copy the files locally is to generate the individual files and use your browser "view source" to copy the content and paste it into Notepad (or some other ASCII editor) and save the file with the correct name and extension. Then you have to make sure you copy the graphics too.

It took me about two hours to do this for a client who had about a 20 page website on sitebuildit. She had out-grown the service and required a website with more functionality. As your experience increases, you may find the site puts limits on what you want to accomplish. It just depends on what you want to do with a website in the next few years.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

Huh?

Do you build websites for a living? I'm not quite ready yet, but in the next month or so I'm going to want to assemble a site, and I'm going to need help. It's going to be about books and I'm calling it: Information Super Library.com I'm going to include biographies about authors and links to booksellers and online writing classes. There will also be articles on how to write well. Do you have software that will take me step by step through the process?

Hi Zipper,


Yes, I've been doing it for about 9 years.


I wrote an eBook that I sell for $29, on how to use NVU (which is a free software tool for building websites). But the software is free, and there is a good help section included with the program. My eBook gives you more of an indepth look at how to use templates with the software, and how to do other things, like installing cgi scripts.

I also maintain a discussion forum whose purpose was for the discussion of building business websites, but it tends to get off track into other discussions a lot of the time.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

Fabulous! When I get back, I'll try it! I'm going to be gone for some time (unsure how long) but it will be the first thing I do when I return!

Great stuff Steve. You may place your link to your ebook in this thread for our members...