[outdoorskindaguy]

I was searching on google and came across this site in hopes of someone helping me out to make my own outdoors website.The bad news is i no little about making websites,and the good news is that i have alot of outdoor knowledge that i want my website based on.I have read your starters section,and i also have done alot of searching on this,but this isnt clicking for me i dont understand much about it and i was hoping that someone can help me out?I have pretty much all the details in my head and how i was looking for my site to looklike,but its not that easy.If anyone can point me in the right direction ill gladly appreciate it.

[Advertisements]

Hi outdoorskindaguy, welcome to Geeks to Go!

Tell us what you had in mind for a site, and maybe we can give you some ideas to help realize it!

(i.e. do you want a discussion forum like this, an outdoor news site, a static page with articles and ads, etc.)

[admin]

Hi outdoorskindaguy, welcome to Geeks to Go!

Tell us what you had in mind for a site, and maybe we can give you some ideas to help realize it!

(i.e. do you want a discussion forum like this, an outdoor news site, a static page with articles and ads, etc.)

[outdoorskindaguy]

This site will be almost like ths one in the sense that it will help people for free that dont have knowledge of fishing,or outdoors.People will visit the board just like they do here and ask questions,and post updates of good fishing areas,hotspots,were to go,how to fish etc.Im not looking for something extreme,or expensive because it based on helping people out and were outdoorsmen can visit the site and share there experience with the less knowledgeable folks.Here is a couple of websites that will give you a basic idea of what im looking for so hopefully you an help me out.

http://www.floatfishing.net/

http://www.greybruceoutdoors.com/

[admin]

To get started is all you really need is to register a domain name (www.whatever.com) and get a web hosting provider. You won't need much at first, but get a plan that allows it to grow with your site. If you get a host that offers Fantastico, you can get a forum similar to this running in a single click (we will soon offer this type of hosting @ http://www.geekshosting.com ), or just search for Fantastico hosting, and look for a good host.

Well getting the site setup is pretty easy. The hard part comes when you decide to give it your own "look", called skinning, and customizing it to suit your needs.

Forum software like we use is available free, or pretty inexpensively. However, to give it that "outdoors feel", provide places for advertising, etc., does require some pretty advanced knowledge. Not that you can't do it yourself, but it will take a lot of time. Another alternative would be to pay someone to skin your site for you, now that may cost $100-$1,500, depending on what you want. You can find the forum software we're using at http://www.invisionboard.com

You'll also need to get people to your site. That takes some knowledge of how search engines work, and unfortunately--time. I can't stress enough how important this is. It's not as simple as "build it and they will come". Even with sound practices, it takes a good year to build decent traffic to a site, two years or more to build a large community.

This section of our site, the web design forum, is only a few months old. Keep visiting and eventually we'll share info on how to do all these things. Ask a question, we have a number of people here pretty knowledgeable in web design, or Google can be a good friend as well.

Don't forget about the time commitment. I spend at least 20 hours or more on this site every week (usually more). It's takes a large commitment to build a good site, but, it's communities like this, and the one you want to build that make the Internet great!

[outdoorskindaguy]

yes, a forum like this one,but with an outdoor theme would be more then enough.Its a free public board so i hoping to keep it as less expensive as i can to start.I allready have the traffic part takin care of and all i need is my website up and how to do it.Thanks for all the help.

[Chexee]

Design and site building is either something you can learn or hire other people do to.

*has a bit of experience site building* http://hume.nu/chexee *nudge nudge wink wink* Haha, just kidding. You'd probably do well launching off yourself with a small site to begin with, and after building a small following, launch the forums and growinto a community.

Now, if you don't get huge feedback right off the bat, don't be disappointed. If you've got good content and are a useful site, it will still take a while for word and visitors to get around, but after a while, you will get regulars and all that and that'll have your toots planted for more growth. =]