Hi everyone- i am in the process of registering my cake business from home.. excited and scared... I am trying to create the web site by myself with a help of a very good techy friend. There are TONS of web site softwares on the internet- free and not so free, my head is spinning from all the search results!!!
can you please share which software you used to create your own website? which ones you likes or disliked? I wish i could pay someone to develop the site, but at the moment want to try and tackle it by myself.
Any feedback is appreciated. thank you so much!!!

Let me ask this. Are you confident you can produce a professional quality web site? When starting a new business, especially in the food industry, your primary concern and focus needs to be on quality. Everything you do and present to the public should scream professionalism and quality. If you don't have the finances to afford a professional website, I would suggest starting with a facebook page. Facebook is one of the best ways to market and spread the word about your business. I can't tell you how many referrals I have gotten from people posting pictures of the cakes that I have done for them on their own facebook page. The lay outs are standard, there isn't anything fancy. Then, once your business is throwing off enough extra income, have a website developed. I'm having mine done at the moment. It is only going to cost me $120 for the initial set up, then the cost of the domain and registration.

I think it's great to do it yourself. You'll be able to update it as necessary without waiting for your web designer to be able to do it for you, and you can tinker with it until it's exactly the way you want it.

I don't think facebook is a substitute for a website...lots of people don't like to use facebook.

Have you looked at Intuit? You can design the site yourself and they have lots of templates you can use as a starting point. They also provided statistics on web traffic. Friends of mine use them and they love it.

Godaddy.com and vistaprint.com are both great websites with easy to use templates.I also recommend Paypal merchant services for your online shopping, very affordable transaction rates.

I forgot to say, I tried both CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer and WYSIWUG Web Builder, and would definitely recommend WYSIWUG web builder, especially if you don't have a graphics program to use side-by-side with the web software.