I am making a website at the moment and have run into a decision I am not sure how to make. I have been intending on making the site myself as I know a reasonable amount about it, but I want to add a site search and blog. These two things I have never done before. Should I hire a professional to help me with these items, use Google custom search and Blogger or learn to write the code myself? Or is there a place I can get the code I need somewhere? Im a little stuck on this at the moment as I want the best outcome but am not sure how to get it. Thanks.
Also I am not sure if I should have on my first page a large photo which I would change monthly and a link to the news blog, or have the news blog on the first page? I know this is all a lot to ask and very subjective but I want other peoples opinions. Thanks again.
If you have some experience building web pages you should be able to easily cut through any of Blogger templates and just get what you want. I have integrated them into a plain html based site and ASP.net web sites too. If you have a Blogger account then go in an select a template and then scroll through the template code.
Here is one of my sites that I integrated Blogger. The main page and trainers corner are done with Blogger. All I did was select a template and then stripped out everything I didn't want, leaving just the content area for the posts.
Who is your webhost? Most hosting companies I have seen and used have a library of free tools like this ... search engines, blogs, contact forms, email lists, etc.
You can do it your self... but you have to ask yourself how much is your time worth. If your handy at php, asp, or someother scripting language sure... if not you can spend endless hours troubleshooting your app. No need to reinvent the wheel... but also no need to hire a pro since the resources are out there for something free or a real polished app for a small fee.
