Software for starting a new e-business website?

Let me pre-empt the inevitable by confessing that I am completely naive when it comes to website development and maintenance. Nevertheless I believe I have a marketable idea for a small e-business website, and I am sussing out website design software to begin experimenting on my own in putting this together. My general needs are fairly atypical but nevertheless are basic and should not require any technical sophistication. I am a PhD in a specialist area of human behaviour and essentially the idea is that the customer would pay a fee to ask a specific question, for which I would reply with a detailed response based on my research and training. So there is no product aside from intellectual content, which eliminates the need for 'shopping carts' and so on. Also, I am considering charging $15 per question but ideally I would like $2 of each to go toward one of several charities. I'm envisaging a scroll-down list of charities from which the customer can choose. Any advice for a novice?

You can start by coming up with another idea. The internet has just about all the fre information a person needs and if someone needs a professional to answer a question, they would use the phone and usually get a free answer there too. I could not imagine anyone paying 15 dollars to ask a question. You would think that someone with a PHD in anything would know this.

I'm not trying to be mean by answering this question like this but I think you should know (from a web developer with more than 14 years experience) that this idea is sure to bomb out even with the best of advertising capabilities.

It's the Information Highway, not the information buy way.

But if you are insistant on giving this a try then simply use software such as phpnuke or postnuke which will allow you to create a site like this by simply installing it to your webspace and associating the database with it. Then administer the site through a backend control panel with no need for programming knowledge. Good luck.

Yahoo has a good web hosting site check there . very low cost.they also tool to build the site . but you need a shopping cart. be carful with that. lot on the market.some are flat fee or % of each sale .

Depending on your abilities there are numerous programs that are available. Yahoo has a very easy to use program called page builder, that they offer free with web hosting services, the problem with yahoo page builder is that when it comes to search engine optimization (making it easy for people to search for) it is very limiting. Dreamweaver or Go Live from Adobe are two more programs but they are more advanced and take time to learn. All said and done comparing the time it takes to learn and do it yourself you might consider a Content Managment website (CMS). For about two thousand dollars a service will design and set up the site in a way that will allow you to manage what ever content you like with out the chance of any major mistakes. It will also be made very search friendly using key words you specify so that when people search for the content in your website they will easily find it. Good luck

Then this is your way to get the proper answer.

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/Sof...

Creative Professionals

not sure about the charity part, but your best bet for an e-shop would be oscommerce - its free, quite easey to use.
if u sign up with www.sdhinternet.co.uk they will install it for you and offer support as well

Just like the previous answers to this question, I have the same opinion. You can ask a question to anyone on the internet for free, and anyone can claim they are PhD specialist area of human behaviour.

However if you want to have a professional website that people will be confident to ask you questions where you will still earn money, you still can do this by having a website that offers 3 kinds of services,

1. Ask you through your website which is something like yahoo answers.
2. Through Live Chat / Live support on your own website
3. Through Phone

People are more confident if you provide a telephone number where they can talk to you live. Some people are searching on the internet for Professional help. So you must establish first that you are a professional by providing your details of expertise, a mailing address and a telephone number.

You want to be able to bill them when they call your number, there is a solution for this, you can sign up on "Keen" website choose your category of expertise. Keen will bill every person that calls your number, per minute. You set your price per minute. Copy the html code that "Keen" will give you and paste it on your website. Keen will send you your money.

Each of the 3 services that you offer will have different fee rates.

You need a website to set these all up.

I use to build adult live webcam / chat / phone chat websites before, basically it has the same functions as what you need except that they provide webcam shows and their services is adult.

Go to http://www.intrinzicdesignz.com I can build a professionally developed and designed website that fits your needs and taste for as low as $79 one time fee.