IT or website people. Some help please?

[sil3nt]

beware if you pay someone to design a website for you. A mate of mine signed up with some American crowd that basically offered to do what you're looking for. 9 grand later, no website and no come back, poor bastard got scammed big time.

If your spending that much money you surely want to go meet the people at their office!

[MaxCannon]

If you are serious I wouldn't trust xtra (or any other ISP) with your Email.

I'd point you to a hosted Exchange.
We partner with a locally based one and they have been very good to date.

Email is the killer app for business.
Recently one NZ ISP lost a bunch of mailboxes.

I'd also recommend backup of whichever machine you are putting your documents on.
The number of times I get handed a dead laptop by some desparate person who has not backed anything up and now it's all gone.....

I guess in short. You could do it on the cheap or you could get some professional IT help for a few bucks and save yourself a ton of time and worry in the future.

(Yes I work for an IT company but I'm so busy right now I don't really want any extra work).

[Berries]

Agree you should get both .co.nz and .com if you are going to take it international.

Are you thinking of making your own website ?

[GOONR]

Thanks for the quick feedback guys.

Business is in integrated facility services/management, intending on taking on the likes of spotless and ISS. Basically property management and facilities management as one tailored solution but aimed at commercial property owners/syndicates, retirement homes, rest homes and businesses across NZ. So the focus will primarily be NZ based but with a longer term view to potentially getting into Australia as well.

I am a big believer that NZ businesses need to have a global focus if they are going to truly grow a successful business, however since my business will be focused around NZ based assets, clearly NZ is my primary target market and thus I also tend to think that a .co.nz domain is going to be more in keeping with my market.

I don't think that a DNS is what I am after, although admittedly I don't entirely understand them. Longer term I will be developing a website that has a customer interface with software that we have already built that allows all of my customers to view their work in the system and to add new work to be undertaken, view what they have spent in the last 'x' months and thus a projection on their next 'x' months capital outlay. This is cloud based software so all that customers would need is to log onto their user account in the cloud/programme. However this is an aside and over and above the scope of what i want to achieve in the next 2 weeks which is simply a business website so that my potential customers can start learning who I am! More money can be spent on marketing etc. once I am actually making some to cover the cost!

FYI I am based in Auckland.

PM Sent, I'll help ya get started!

[Marmoot]

So the focus will primarily be NZ based but with a longer term view to potentially getting into Australia as well.

Do a .co.nz, and when you expand to Australia make a new .com.au website. That would give you additional chance to do well in the Google.co.nz (and Google.com.au) search.

.Com would provide less relevance to the search, as well as to your audience. NZ and AU people would prefer to deal with more-trusted local websites (the impression of "local people") as opposed to some unknown american/nigerian on the other side of the world.

[Gremlin]

Remember that for .com.au you need an Australian business number. They are a little more restrictive than others re reserving a domain.

[Brett]

Guys, thanks very much for all of the advice, I am certainly gleaning the info I am after.

MaxCannon - agree, hosted exchange to protect email might be a good idea...also someone with good spam filtering would be lovely.

No, not thinking of building website myself. I know what i want, but would rather have it done properly than stuff it up myself and have something that looks exactly like I did it. Don't want to get it done from the middle of Uzbekistindiaasiaplace for the lowest cost possible, would rather give some business to a local designer Besides I can instruct virtually everything I want so creative input would not be too high, just putting my ideas together.

doman4less looks pretty good. All I am looking to do is get the business up and running to return some capital and then would be willing to invest in heavier IT.

[Edbear]

Guys, thanks very much for all of the advice, I am certainly gleaning the info I am after.

MaxCannon - agree, hosted exchange to protect email might be a good idea...also someone with good spam filtering would be lovely.

No, not thinking of building website myself. I know what i want, but would rather have it done properly than stuff it up myself and have something that looks exactly like I did it. Don't want to get it done from the middle of Uzbekistindiaasiaplace for the lowest cost possible, would rather give some business to a local designer Besides I can instruct virtually everything I want so creative input would not be too high, just putting my ideas together.

doman4less looks pretty good. All I am looking to do is get the business up and running to return some capital and then would be willing to invest in heavier IT.

Get hold of this guy, rudy@yhp.co.nz and if you want to know how good he is, call John at www.jamesblond.co.nz

[jonbuoy]

I´m sure a lot of people are going to say differently but if its a small startup business their are plenty of providers out their that will sort out the whole package -email, domain, web host and web design tools, remote webmail access anti spam and antivirus email scanning. I use 1&1internet, you can build an fairly nice looking basic website with their website design tools with no knowlage of website design.

If your not doing e-commerce or expecting millions of hits per hour or looking for flashy video and sound these will be fine. Your free to change and update as you like without paying someone to do it.