What site development tool and web hosting do you recommend?

Wordpress is the CMS I recommend to virtually any small business. For hosting my best experiences have been with Blue Host and HostGator.

dedicated server for certain and wordpress anything other then godaddy and 1&1 sucks too.

although I was hoping to use joomla on a site but the user interface is not for me. I dont have that much free time on my hands.

JBM, what's the main advantage of a dedicated server? Speed? Security?

yes and yes, but it is way overboard. just goto bluehost or hostgator and get a starter one. I use namecheap and its flawless, although the server repsonse comes up in googles page speed test, oh well, shrug.

What about GoDaddy or self-serving?

I have to check, but I think we have enough storage to host our own server/website. My geeky teenage son gets turned on by this stuff!

I wouldnt give Godaddy any of my money nor would I attempt to make my own server. Just beyond my limitations.

Wix

He is building a lead gen capable website, wix wont due. Sure its fine for people who hate seo, but for everyone else you need real hammers and nails.

JBM said:

He is building a lead gen capable website, wix wont due. Sure its fine for people who hate seo, but for everyone else you need real hammers and nails.

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I don't know for someone who doesn't hate SEO but thinks it's a joke (the hoops that you have to jump through guessing what rules you are playing by this week), thinks WIX generated some decent results with little to no effort. I cannot imagine what someone could do if they knew what they were doing. :thumbsup:

Got another three requests through the site today.

TNTSERVICES said:

Got another three requests through the site today.

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That's great Rob. :thumbsup:
I average about 3 to 4 estimate requests a day from my website too. Life is good! :thumbup:

Oh and to the OP, I recommend BlueHost for hosting and Wordpress for a site builder. :thumbsup:

I am a big fan of godaddy but a friend in Atlanta who knows alot more than I do about hosting swears by the value of bluehost. On the godaddy site they have a comparison tab for blue, go and one other.

My friend sent me a code: wowjena

Not sure what type/kind/how much of discount this would give but may be worth a try.

TNTSERVICES said:

Got another three requests through the site today.

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Nice.

There is no games really. None that I really am worried about. Local is pretty basic, you do you citations, do your thing with G+ , post some blogs ect.

The largest factor for local search I would say is strong on page, then relevant citation building/local links/ then social signals.

If your in a major city you will have trouble, this is where an seo expert will come in handy. Not for high powered links, but for picking off low hanging fruit that brings in highly targeted buyers while using re occurring keywords, in proximity and co citational.

Its all gotten rather simple.

but yes, wait till they pull all the do follow links on all the people building their author ranks, lulz on that one. It was already mentioned inadvertently in a video last month or two.

WordPress and Synthesis Web Hosting are what we use and I would recommend to anyone looking!

I would personally avoid GoDaddy hosting like the plague - too many horror stories out there. WPEngine or Synthesis are both rock solid options.

For a small business that wants to post occasional updates and manage their website themselves, Wordpress is hard to beat. As for themes, I would personally highly recommend Genesis as it is very actively developed and supported. It's also extremely fast and responsive out of the box.

I have never had a problem with my hosting from Godaddy. Been with them 2 years never a single problem.

I love Wordpress with Pagelines, I can make tons of changes and get things only quickly with next to no coding.

As for hosting your own server, why bother, the money and time you spend will outweigh any advantages.

I got the unlimited plan from Godaddy, I stand up and take down numerous sites in a year.

@SectorSecurity - Second that re. dedicated being overkill for most, especially new websites for small businesses. Shared should be fine, or VPS.

Another tool to consider if you're going the DIY route is squarespace.com; it's probably a little easier than WordPress, but not quite as flexible. It's more similar to Wix and another tool, Yola. Guessing it might take you 2-3 days to set up a basic website, and then a few hours per month to update the website.