Hi Folks,

I'm at a decision point and not sure which way to turn, so I thought I would ask the "recognized experts"! I'm trying to soup up my website, Island Life 101, both to sell my products (books I wrote) and to get some income from Google ads. My website is built through the godaddy.com Website Tonight templates. I used that because I do not have web building skills, and while now there may be some other options, such as the things Bob and Josh teach on this site, I have put an awful lot of work into this little website.

It is only five pages, and yesterday I was informed that I had just surpassed my 50 MB limit. Either they will charge me every month for being over the limit, or I can upgrade to a lot more megabytes and pages -- probably more than I would ever use, but I could certainly fill a few pages with more content and get more ads.

My question is, should I do that? I haven't put any ads on the site yet; still learning how, and reading the Joel Comm e-book I found through recognizedexpert.com. I imagine that just those scripts are going to put me over the limit even more. I am paid up on this website for three more years.

Here's the thing: a website designer told me once that search engines don't like templates -- she said there's a bunch of extraneous code on there, and it's kind of like the difference between a good homemade recipe with five ingredients and the same dish in a package with lots of ingredients you've never heard of.

Should I just can this website and start over with Weebly or something? The thought of doing that boggles my imagination, since I'm really not a techie and every step of this is a major learning experience for me. (and maybe Weebly is a template, for all I know!) But I don't want to waste more time and money upgrading the website and putting on ads and trying to get links, etc. to a website that is never going to work for me the way I want it to.

Insights and opinions gratefully accepted!

Aloha,

Jill

Website tonight 4.1 sucks, 2.3 was very usable and easy to create pages with. 4.1 just seems like it hangs and then errors out or says you don't have account authority or some BS like that.

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Hmmm. I've been using Website Tonight (WST) to build several website. Some are my own, and some for other people. WST can be a little tricky, but so far, it's turned out to be an excellent little tool! Godaddy has updated some features recently and it's getting more versatile every year!

Personally, I don't believe search engines care how the website was built - template or no template. Even someone who knows XML/HTML can write bad code.

But, there may come a time when you should either consider moving to a different tool (like Kompozer), or hiring out the site design.