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If she asks you, "Does this website make me look fat?", you already know the answer 
Seriously, I would pick some provider that offers some cookie cutter templates for various sites and slap something very very simple together.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Rob Philpott wrote: omeone told me (in the pub) that MVC 'was dead' and there's this new thing which you write in C# and it compiles it to JavaScript or something.
Really? MVC is dead? Personally, I would love it if I could write C# and compile it to Javascript, because that means I wouldn't have to write the javascript.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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There has been a compiler written for C# to JavaScript. I don't recall the name, but do some Googling and you'll find it. I even think there was a second one as well.
"'Do what thou wilt...' is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself."
—Aleister Crowley
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SquareSpace
Seriously, if you don't need a CMS, SquareSpace or its ilk is the way to go. Mostly easy and fun to use, with occasional teeth gnashing.
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I don't know if I would use a service that calls itself squarespace, but has a giant black circle on their home page. It seems to me they won't get your requirements right.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Thanks Marc. Alas it looks like something that is banned here as I get some DNS error, usually a sign of trying to access something which isn't approved.
I will look tonight.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.
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Seriously. Even WordPress would probably do if the site is little more than a pamphlet. Pretty sure it can do basic e-commerce if that's also needed.
Being developers, we tend to overthink these things, and--unless I had a reason to learn this stuff--sticking with these types of services should be plenty good.
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I'm no 'web person' either and it's not 100% clear to me what exactly you're asking for here but maybe NancyFx: Lightweight, low-ceremony, framework for building HTTP based services on .Net and Mono[^] is worth a look for you. I fiddled around with it a bit and it really is super easy to get started with it. Offers several hosting options including self-hosting. And it basically doesn't force you to do anything in any particular way but doesn't hinder you from doing MVC either if you so choose.
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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As the computer person you should make a decision first: Buy, Build or mix.
Unless you want to dive into web-development and spend hours and hours to get something decent, get your wife an account on one of the many online website builders! A customer couldn't care less if you use Ruby, C# or godknowswhat multi-tier architecture! You have to get the UIX right from the beginning to hook people up! If it is looking great on a mobile device, even better (mobile first)! Believe me, this is a vast field in itself!
I definitely would go for buy and save yourself a lot of hassle and your wife has something running in no time. As it is for her business, time is probably a critical factor.
I have done the same for my wife and there is still enough "tech stuff" that you might have to support her. This gives you ample free time and your wife is happy. Happy wife, happy live!
Have fun and regards to your wife!
Rene
Check these out: Best Website Builders 2017, Compare Website Builders | WebCreate
modified 22-Nov-17 3:10am.
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There are numerous ways to build a website and personally I (now a retired techie) would suggest that WordPress is probably the way to go, it has hundreds of themes to choose from and modern themes will automatically handle mobiles tablets etc. There are numerous plugins for WordPress websites and most are free. Also, if you want to get into the nitty gritty and start custom coding you can.
The big mistake though is to believe that a computer literate techie can handle DESIGN. To design a website needs a different skillset. I have mostly used someone else to produce a design, layout, fonts, colour pallet etc and then I just implement the design. Otherwise, you end up spending hours having to randomly trying different colours, fonts etc to see what looks good.
As well as all this it is worth considering that, even if you have the most wonderful website in the world, it is worthless if no one is looking at it. You need to make sure that you start off on the right foot and consider the site's SEO and how you will market it right from the start.
Good luck.
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I think you friend at the pub is talking about WebAssembly, Don't think it's ready for the big league yet - bit of background from Hanselman...
Net and WebAssembly
MVC is not dead by any means, still going strong.
In the past for small projects I've purchased Bootstrap templates and customised to meet my needs, loads of sites out there, I've used these guys (see link below). Advantage of using bootstrap is if you follow the grid system you can get something that looks good and works well on a desktop browser and a mobile device.
WrapBootstrap
For logos etc I've used designer friends or online bidding sites for example...
99 Designs
If you are using it as a learning exercise then you could go down the route of using Asp.Net core, again you can use MVC etc.
Learning ASP.NET Core
There are a few frameworks out there for single page apps and seem popular in the freelance world. It's up to you if you want to learn them.
Angular
React
Vue
Alternatively, if you don't want to tinker just download a wordpress theme.
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Hi Rob,
I can surely help you in building the website using ASP.NET. Please add me on skype to discuss in detail. My id is "karmicksolutions".
Regards,
Debabrata
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Depending on the site requirements, WordPress may be a candidate. There are plugins for just about anything you need -- the good ones are easily configurable.
Before doing this, get a few books on WordPress, install a practice environment, and play with it. While it's easy to do simple things, it can get complex.
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Consider utilizing a social media platform, especially if the business will have a physical location.
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I'd take a look at Adobe Muse. Last I checked they offered a 30 day evaluation which should be plenty of time to develop a web site. As for hosting the web site I google web hosting, there should be plenty of low cost hosting sites. I'd not try hosting the site at home, you will find that the constant care and feeding of the host computer will be a pain. Much easier to have a cloud solution for hosting that provides backup and support.
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There are some applications (I use Serif Web Plus X8) check that out. If you're talking a web application (I. E. program) you're talking a whole different beast. I've fiddled around with developing applications on the web for years using ASP.Net and stuff like that but I haven't gotten really serious with it, I don't think I have the mental bandwidth any more that it would take to know 40 different frameworks, languages ... yadda, yadda. I still build primarily WinForms applications. Sounds like a web-page builder application (like I said, Serif or "Dream Weaver" or whatever they have nowadays) is your best bet.
-CM
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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Having done this a few times in the past. I agree to avoid the CMS.
If it is a brochure site. Buy the domain on GoDaddy, and have the wife build the site With WIX.
It gives her full control, they LOOK nice. They Are Decent Brochure sites.
And it takes you out of the picture.
I spent 1 year closing down Joomla sites I had hosted for various people with their hair-brained web site ideas. Seems like an IDEA is NOT sufficient for success... Surprise, it turns out that selling the idea, and getting users, and spending money on marketing, etc. etc. etc. are all important.
I moved 3 of them to WIX and all of them were happy, and felt it was so much easier... And I moved on.
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Rob...
If your wife is planning on an e-commerce site you may want to check out nopCommerce, which is a complete ASP.NET MVC (C#) Open Source tool that is designed for such sites. It also has a variety of themes you can select from and if none of those are too your liking, for a reasonable fee a third-party affiliate will design one for you.
Unless you plan on making significant changes to the site, there is no programming required. However, if you want to make such changes yourself, there is documentation that shows you how to do this.
If your site is going to be a mixture of e-commerce and content management functionality than you may want to consider the CMS, DNN (originally DotNetNuke) for which the Community Edition is still avaailable as a free Open Source download. However, the additional modules you may require are commercially available for reasonable prices.
Most CMSs today are quite bloated and quite finicky to implement. So far, as of my last experience with DNN several years ago, this software still offers a rather straight-forward implementation and easy administration. DNN is also based on ASP.NET MVC (C#).
If you want to build your own, my advice would be to stick with ASP.NET WebForms. In general, WebForms is still far easier to learn and implement than MVC and in my view is still far more powerful than MVC can ever hope to be as a result of the WebForms server-side controls. As to the latter, you can obtain a complete version of Syncfusion's Community Edition Control Suite for all platforms completely free. All you have to do is go to the website and register for your own copy. Syncfusion also provides complete free PDF manuals on a host of development subjects including ASP.NET that you may want to avail yourself of.
Many people will recommend MVC over my suggestion for WebForms. However, if you decide to go that route you will find a morass of tool selections along with a learning curve you may not want to be bothered with.
ASP.NET MVC was popularized as a result of the popular MVC paradigm for Java web development and the maturing Open Source Community, which appears to often prefer complexity over simplicity. Don't ask me why but there is no "right way" to develop for the web as MVC supporters will tell you that MVC is.
If you have any further questions, simply contact me at my email address... 
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I believe there are a number of services that offer very cheap web site hosting and provide tools to build the front end itself.
And they are responsible for keeping it up and running as well. Which if you build it you would also be responsible for.
Additionally I would suspect that some probably provide shopping cart additions which allow for products (maybe services?) to be ordered from the site and credit cards accepted. And I suspect you are really not going to want to do that yourself (I have done numerous server side implementations of that so I know what is involved.)
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Flashbacks here. Having a similar resume, I was faced with exactly the same situation a few years ago. Although, I didn't want to host it locally. I chose an inexpensive hosting service and used a provided template to create the site thinking that my wife could learn how to manage it easily and take myself out of the picture. It worked nicely for a while until it broke. It was a black box. I couldn't fix it and neither could anyone at the hosting service. After an eloquent verbal assalt on some poor support person and a great deal of agonizing, I decided to do it myself.
I chose all free stuff; PHP, MySql, HTML and Javascript, and borrowed code and useful libraries from various sources on the internet. I learned enough to put the site together and even added an ecommerce section running payments through PayPal. Being a mostly .net programmer, I had a bit to learn, but it's all coding and turned out to be fun and interesting. And, best of all, I was able to teach my wife how to update the database and content. It still breaks every now and then, but it's not a black box and I know the programmer.
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Random comments first, I think the "MVC 'was dead'" comment is funny and completely ridiculous. Whomever told you that is the first person to stop listening too. Second, the compile to JavaScript idea just about as funny. MVC, WebForms and compile to JavaScript are all current and usable technologies.
Now useful advice, I know you said no CMS but this is probably going to be something to reconsider. You need one that is lightweight and easy, that is unless you want to be doing updates all the time. I find when I am asked to do this concept that it involves initial build, hosting and the usual but then continues to need updates on a regular basis. It is a bit the nature of websites to constantly change.
If you really want to stick with no CMS, then I agree with some of the other comments, you need to find something that offers a good, customizable cookie cutter template and use it to build the site. You need to find the easiest way to build something nice and something easy to update. I think somebody mentioned nopCommerce and that may be a good way to go. There are many other systems like them out there. If you do need shopping cart and e-commerce capabilities then you are getting into a whole different mess. Depending on volume and software, you may now have to worry about PCI compliance, so you probably want to use a third party to process payments so you don't have to worry about that type of information. There are a large amount of considerations depending on the site needs. I would lay everything out and make sure to pick the easiest to use and maintain software.
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