Hi

I optimistically started building my first attempt at a web site about 4 days ago with what I thought would be a useful resource by anyone planning to visit Stratford upon Avon.

I have no experience of web sites, hosting, search engines or html and was perhaps a bit niave about how difficult it would be.

The first mistake was when choosing a hosting partner I went with 123.reg after a bit of experimenting with some free orange space I had through my broadband account.

£70 later and a lot of muttering to myself later I discover that they provide some very poor uneditable templates and then when you go live the cover your web site content literally with a load of irrelevant links see....

http://www.thestratfordguide.co.uk

Once I noticed this I sent a few e-mails to them to express my disatisfaction and look to cancel the web hosting but keep the name but have yet had no reply. I then searched the internet for similar complaints and found that I am not alone!

Lesson 1 learned - Cost £70 and possibly losing the web site URL I want.

I have since found a really good company who whilst giving me totally free web hosting have answered a query I had within a couple of hours and have been absolutely fantastic, "free virtual servers" if anyones interested I would thoroughly reccomend them!

I have now got the first part of my web site live (loads still to do) and it is temporarily at www.theeasyguide.co.uk

Like I said with no experience I am pleased although it is very much a work in progress.

I have been looking with some growing trepadation at how difficult it looks like it will be to get this found in search engines when it is ready to go, although I must say the detailed answers on this site has been fantastic. Great Site!

The one thing I am confused with is that most of the answers say the number of sites linking to you is what determines your link but I have no idea how you would get sites linking to you unless you know anyone else with a web site but I guess this will come in Lesson two!

Anyway check out http://www.theeasyguide.co.uk and let me know what you think so far. It is still ery much under construction and a lot of the links are still to be sorted but watch this space as they say.

Andy