How user friendly is HostGator for inexperienced users?

Question

We recently launched a website on a free platform and want to switch to a paid hosting site. HostGator has everything we need as far as the site itself goes, but we are inexperienced with making websites and need to know how user friendly the paid packages are for inexperienced users? We can't find any information about that, just that they offer template packages (which we need). We really need to know if we can set up a great website without knowing how to write code on HostGator. We have a lot of very specific information that HAS to be on the site and need locked members only areas/calendars etc. so it's really important we figure it out before setting up the site with them. Any help is appreciated! TIA!

Answer 1

The membership management is more tricky that a basic web site, this might take a bit of coding experience, you can find a freelance developer who could add in with hours work.



Hostgator is a host with better customer support than many, but I don't believe they haveafriendly site builder like blog platforms or weebly have.



You might find a pre-designed site design on a site like templatemonster.com and get the author or a freelancer to customize and install it for you.



There are plugins available for the ubiquitous Wordpress blog platform used on 17$ of the top 1 Million sites for many applications beyond blogs, popular in part because the many themes and plugins allow one to customize a site without programming, many hosts provide a simple wordpress installer, most commonly Fantastico.



Member account management is built onto wordpress but making exclusive pags requires a custom paid plugin:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/members-only-pages-2



These are actually free

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-access-control/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-members-only/

Answer 2

You don't need to write any code. Use one of the free web editors such as Microsoft Web Expression to create your website and then upload it to your hosting account using a free ftp program such as Filezilla.



An alternate way is to use Wordpress which comes free from within your Hostgator hosting account via Fantastico. There are thousands of free themes and multitude of free plus for just about anything, ie seo, security, backups, social bookmarking,e-commerce etc.(These days all my e-commerce sites are Wordpress). Plus there are lots of free ebooks & videos on installing, configuring & using Wordpress - just google for them.

Answer 3

First don't buy your domain name from your hosting company. Don't put all eggs in one basket. Secondly, after linking your domain name server to your hosting account you should install WordPress since its the simplest DIY WYSISYG software there are lots of tutorials on YouTube you can watch and get it done.