Hi,
My 2 cents: (from close-to-a-pro)
This is the first time I heard about PHP at GDI forum/website.I was very, very sad to think that I had not access to it... I browsed member's site showcases and saw no traces of programming being used...
I've been here for less than a week, but I have the impression that we have more website newbies than pro's... and the pro's sometimes promote a dot .com website on their profile...
I pass my mouse over that globe image on the left side of the posts, to spy other .ws sites for ideas as how my referals could use them - family albuns? pet page? what do people like? I forgot what it was to be a newbie and enjoy the pleasure of just sharing my simple thoughts... would like to get that back... I see they are sometimes more popular than my "HTML tutorial" or "business ideas" scratch..
Still, without programming capabilities, GDI offer would left something to desire for the pro's... it's a great price, sure, for domain and hosting, specially with the business opportunity, but if you are going to use the domain alone, with forwarding, your might as well just say you are here for the MLM alone, or am I wrong?? And what would be the point of your referals buying more then one domain/website if we all just wanted to get in the business opportunity?
On the other side, with PHP, I will stick with GDI and buy my domain when my trial period is over... because I can do many things here wether I get other people to see that or not - it's their loss... I can win so much from what I put on my website, even though I have no business of my own to promote.
And there's just so much to do with your website!! I could post some great teplate sites here (with hundreds of great-looking, professional templates) and a visual HTML editor "Web Weaver EZ" - free edition (do a search on google to download), which newbies could use to build GREAT GDI websites...
And with some search engine optimization research, plus, google adsense ads (or any paying ad for that matter), GDI pays for itself with 0 referers...
But, people will be even more free to create and to EARN if they could read Amazon products' feeds, do clickbank searches (affiliate selling), put a small forum, or use "
include('top-navigation.html')", for example, to add the same header and a footer on all site pages... that's what I would most miss, while updating my site pages.. imagine adding a new link to 10, 20 pages, one by one..
Someone mentioned promoting .ws websites to schools, etc., groups in general.. wouldn't they use it better by havind some dinamic content? Like a messages board more advanced than the guestbook??
I think newbies here now can get a picture of what their "pro" referals could do, like some of you said.. even if you don't understand quite what it is, we have to know what to tell them..
What got me truly interested in GDI was the possibility to refer people for a great offer they could enjoy with either 0 or thousands of referers... tell them about google adsense, affiliate programs, etc., which can surely be used with GDI websites, but also would be good it they could: authorize paypal downloads automaticaly... using free website scripts... this last one depends of having PHP (any programming, simply put)..
Finaly,
A database would be great, and could be priced differently than the normal price... we would all expect that, I think... but not having that option at all is a bit dissappointing.. anyway, one could always use a flat file instead, for most jobs... as long as we can use PHP!
As far as what concerns Yahoo hosting, I browse many webmaster sites and web hosting forums (hey, great for my advertising with signatures!!!! Haven't had the time to do that this week..), and Yahoo is NOT recognized as great hosting company, like they are as a search engine.. people (clients we lose) do tend to think they would have recognition in specific services just because they are so popular in gerenal, but we have to "show" them that they will do better with us.... and for that matter, we need to show what we earn from GDI subscription directly, with referals, and also from the GDI services (ou websites)..
Show that great pet website of yours, with links to: paying ads, amazon pet products, books abouts pets, clickbank e-books ready to download (which they will do after buying and leaving you cash credit!).
I'm in a hurry to leave all the links, if people ask I can put later, but if you just do a search on google typing all the terms I used, you can learn what are all those things....
Plus, feel free to contact me anyone through this forum.
(site is not up, I want to build it with those templates I told you about, I'm still not sure how to share content resources between my former website - if you would like to click the globe on the left to visit it, there is an HTML tutorial, but it was still under development.. I might bring all content to siteworks.ws.. but don't know if the terms "internet business" will rate better on search engines, that's holding me.. I will surely mantain both domains.. and if I can get them to profit from affiliates and adsense clicks, I will make more!!)