Big Announcement!

Have you ever wanted your own web site?  You know, your own domain name, pretty site where you can show the world what you have?

*sigh*  It's something I've been thinking about for some time now.  I kept thinking, how can I justify spending money when I have very little coming in for myself?  After a ton of discussing with the hubby, he said "go for it".  I spent so much time researching that I had little time for anything else!

I asked questions, I checked out web sites that both hosted sites and offered to register domain names and I think the worse part was coming up with the name itself.  All the ones I thought of first were taken.  I slept with a pad and pencil beside me so if anything jumped into my head during the night, I could write it down and not forget it by morning (yes, I do this often).

So, now I have about 2 pages of potential names and 2 different hosting sites to pick from.  Now, do I want an elegant, clean looking site or a grungy, primitive looking site?  I showed both templates to my hubby and he jumped on the primitive looking site saying it was more me than the elegant one.  I even had a name picked out that matched the template!  So, off to domain.com to see if the name I picked out was available.  Yippee Skippee!  It is, so I snapped it up.  I'm officially a dot com now!  That's kind of exciting, don't you think?

Now onto the hosting site.  You can pick a plan where you do everything yourself including the backgrounds and all the HTML.  Um, I don't think so.  I have very little knowledge of HTML so what is next?  I went with a plan where they do some of the stuff for you and you do the rest.  I purchased my template for $5.00, sent them my name etc. and they put the name on the template for me and set it up for me.  Let the fun begin.  *sigh*

The very first question asked is:  Do you want to . . .   1.  Register a domain name.  No, I have one all ready. 2.  Transfer a domain name.  I think, no, why would I transfer something that isn't anywhere right now?  3.  Use a nameserver.  HUHUH?  okay, I'll take that one.  LOLOLOL!  Then the hubby tells me, you do want to transfer, the domain name is registered at domain.com so you need to transfer it.  Poop.  Well, dear hubby, turns out I picked the good one!  To transfer it would have cost me more money, the way I did it, all I had to do was go to domain.com and reassign the destination and let the propagation begin!  (That's where you information is gathered in the new place).  I was told between setting up the new template and getting the information gathered to expect a 24 to 72 hour wait.  Okay, that's enough for today anyway, my hands were shaking when I went to hit that SUBMIT button a few times, I can stand a break.

Well, within the hour, my site was all ready to go!  Add a few photos, assign a shopping cart, slap on descriptions and I'm in business.  Not so fast, buck-o!  I sure did have a lot to learn about webbing!  LOL!  My head was spinning and my hair hurt.

I tried for a day and got nowhere.  That evening, my phone rings and it is someone from my hosting site to see if I needed any help.  How nice!  Customer service!  Well, Donald, pull up a chair!  I got a lot of answers, we talked Etsy, eBay and AOL.  LOL!   After 40 mins., I was feeling better and ready to keep at it.  I finally figured out how to add photos and the sizes needed to do before uploading.  I added a few products and the next day, some more.  Now it's time to try the shopping cart.  *sigh again*  These are available from Mals-e.com.  They give you 8 options to use.  I just could NOT get any of them to work with what I wanted to do, so I finally gave up and just added the shipping costs into my prices.  Is that good or bad?  Would you buy with options like that?  I have mixed feelings about this, on one hand, there's no debating over shipping costs with a customer, they have NO clue if you are overcharging them or not but still, will they like this?

I worked and I worked until I was finally satisfied enough to open my doors to the public!  Still needs work but that will come.  Here is my NEW store!  Don't you just love that new store smell?  Please stop by!