First let me say hello to all. I am going to be starting an online retail business and I could really use some advice. I'm trying to decide wether to try and design my own site from the ground up or use a template provided by whichever host I choose. I have some very basic knowledge but not much. My site will probably be selling several hundred products and I'm not sure I will be able to set that up by myself. Can anyone recommend a good webhost that could do this for me? There are so many out there that its hard to know who to choose and what features I will need for my business and which ones I won't. If anyone could offer some advice or point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

Welcome to the forums.

I would stay away from the cookie cutter, site tonight type of stuff. Mostof it looks worse than a FrontPage site.

Is this going to be an online only business? Will you need to ship goods or provide digital delivery?

There are quite a few decent shopping cart scripts out there. They will provide the basic templating for the site. Most can be modified. My personal favorite is cubecart. I played with several and it seemed the most complete to me.

It is free to use if you leave the back-link or is modestly priced without it. You can take it for a test drive before you buy.

Any specific questions?

Yes, it will be online only. Im going to be selling nutritional supplements. So, you think even with little knowledge I'd be better off creating my own site? I've made a site before, but cant remember what program I used and it was very basic. I'd like to incorporate menus and tools to sort by brand or type of product and things like that. Is there a particular program you would recommend that is fairly easy to use?

Use a template but modify it. It's a good way to practice web design and you'll eventually create a site design that is somewhat unique.

Andrew

e-commerce templates are a dog to modify if you don't have a lot of experience. If your budget is limited your best bet is to try out a few of the canned OS solutions such as OS Commerce, ZenCart, maybe X-Cart if you want to drop a few bucks. All have positives and negatives. Get a good host (my picks would be pair.com or sectorlink.com) and opt in for a plan that offers PHP/MySQL (Zend Optimizer may also be required for your secure transactions, depending on the payment system you choose). Check the software versions, make sure they are compatible with the latest release of the shopping cart software you choose.

After getting some experience with the software, and when the sales justify it you might consider a custom solution.