total newbie

[thr333s]

hi, i'm totally new to the poker affiliate world. i've been reading the forums for a couple of hours and theres so much to take in. i really dont understand the basics of web design and updating websites at all. what i was wondering is if there a kind of "poker affiliate 101" type post somewhere or an article which outlines the basics for getting started? e.g.

1. best place to buy/host your domain

2. how much a site costs to be designed and if you can add content yourself after it has been built without having to have an experienced designer do it all the time?

3. whether a php vbulletin based forum is the best way to go and if having a custom made skin is a good idea? roughly how much does this cost? again can you add pages yourself afterwards without having to be a web design wizard or is it easy to add pages with content like rules/room reviews yourself?

3. when adding all the banners to the site, is this an easy process or does it again require someone in the know or the person who has custom built your site

4. when adding advertising banners to the site, is this an easy process or does it again require someone who is skilled to do this? if you had a custom built vbulletin skin, do the designers build the entire front page or just the colours/logos/buttons etc?


as you can probably tell i literally have no idea about this kind of thing. i'm aware there wont be an article with the answers to all these questions (these are only the few i can remember just now lol) but i would really appreciate if people on these forums could enlighten me on some of these subjects.

thanks in advance

[Jordan]

Speaking from experience here as i own one myself and i was like you when i first started my site...

I wouldn't start up a forum until you a driving a decent amount of traffic to your actual main site unless your forum will be able to offer something the others out there can't.

[thr333s]

cheers for the reply mate. had a look at your site, very nice. would like to have something that looks as good as that some day. when did you launch fuzionpoker, is it a relatively young site?

EDIT: was your forum template custome designed yeah? or did you do it yourself?

[bahh]

1.
There are lots of good hosts out there. I would recommend Dreamhost. Its cheap and you get stuff like unlimited DBs, lots of "one-click-installs" like wordpress, joomla, polls etc. Search on the internet and you will find discount codes up to $97. The have an excellent customer support. They have a really simple web controll panel that is very user friendly. You can host unlimited subdomains and domains.

Gosh, almost sounds like its my site

2.
I would recommend you to learn HTML and some CSS by our own. It isnt really that hard at all. Once youve learned it you are able to maintain your sites easily. If you cant design your own site you can always get a designer to do it for you. There are even some good designers here at PAW (seach the forum). Once he has created you a design template you can add content by yourself and update it with some basic HTML and CSS.

3.
vBulletin costs around $160. That is a one-time payment. If you cant afford that there are plenty of free forums to choose from like phpBB etc etc. As Jordan said it is very hard to open up a new forum without much traffic. Start off with a simple webpage and build up some traffic before you integrate a forum to your site.

4.
To add banners to your site is quite easy. It only requires some basic HTML skills.


Continue to read posts in the forum and you will learn the basics fast.

Good luck!

[Jordan]

Originally Posted by thr333s

cheers for the reply mate. had a look at your site, very nice. would like to have something that looks as good as that some day. when did you launch fuzionpoker, is it a relatively young site?

EDIT: was your forum template custome designed yeah? or did you do it yourself?

I know VERY little in terms of web design, i know some VERy basic raw html that lets me mess with the little things here and there.

For all my major designs like the making of the site template i paid someone for, and i am currently going through a re-design at the moment of the main site and am paying a member here to help me out with putting up the pages etc.

My forum was a freeskin but ive modified it quite a bit. initially it was an iPod skin

Custom skins can cost anywere in the region of $500+ but i wouldnt worry about that.

The best thing you can do is find a really specific subject on poker and make it the best site on the web for that subject by having the best content etc. I wish i knew what i know know from when i first began fuzion.

But i wouldnt worry about the Forum, a site doesn't have to be pretty to be a good site. Start brainstorming a specific niche and then write as much content as you possibly can for it

[bahh]

Yeah, content is in my opinion the most important thing in a successful site..

Originally Posted by Jordan

But i wouldnt worry about the Forum, a site doesn't have to be pretty to be a good site. Start brainstorming a specific niche and then write as much content as you possibly can for it

[thr333s]

cheers for that guys, just what i was looking for.

[lipaonline]

content, clearly design and updating....

to get return visitors.

for new visitors: SEO, link exchange, participate in forums of "community" ...