Weebly & More....

[SoapMakingTommy]

Hey guys, just wanted to start a topic here cause im trying to keep things moving forward and i have no intension of giving up.
I am trying to start my own website, and picked some web hosting site called weebly. Basically my website url look like this tjhealthandbeauty.weebly.com.
I would like it to be my won domain so i have to pay a fee.
The problem is that the domain .com is not available.
Someone apparently owns the same website name as me but does not use it.
I thought someone bought it around the time i came up with the name, but i did some search on google and it says: Created:2012-07-17 Expires: 2014-07-17.

My question is at the date of expiration will i be able to purchase that domain, or how does the process work once that has expired?
If anyone can help me with this much appreciation.

Another question i had was about web hosting website in general.
Since i am kinda new at this, I am wondering if anyone has experience with weebly or other sites and can give me advice or tell me of a better alternative to weebly.

If you guys wouldnt mind checking out the page and telling me how it looks so far?
Its nothing fancy as i can only do so much with editing, i am not even sure if i pay a fee i will be able to full edit it the way i want. But well see. hopefully you guys can steer me in the right direction.

Thanks

 

[shunt2011]

I can help with a couple answers. I use weebly. I was really easy in the beginning, I was working diligently to get it how I wanted it to look and then they went and changed it and since then I can't figure it out. Now, I'm not tech savy at all but it was really easy to navigate at first. I've since kind of given up and my plan is to dedicate some time to see if I can figure the darn thing out in the near future (after taxes are don and all my stock it in place for shows etc. As for the domain name if the person doesn't renew their application then you would be able to purchase it. However, if they renew it then no, you won't be able to purchase it.

 

[FGOriold]

I just switched my website from 3Dcart to Shopify and am very happy that I did. I looked at weebly, shopify, wix, bigcartel and squarespace and narrowed it down to shopify and squarespace. Eventually I decided on shopify and am very happy that I did. The reasons I chose shopify (full e-commerce site, $29/month if paid monthly)

1. Clean templates that are "responsive" in that they adjust to the platform the user is on - desktop, phone, tablet.
2. Built-in analytics. I can see how many visitors, where they came from, search engine terms and conversions right from my shop dashboard.
3. In-house credit card processing. Instead of having to have a merchant account with another company, I get credit card processing via shopify. The transactions get processed for a reasonable fee, then deposited into my shopify account to be automatically transferred to my bank account in 3 days. No additional fees for this - just the processing fees all credit card processing incurs.
4. Weight based shipping option - I can assign a weight to each item then set of weight ranges to apply shipping charges.
5. Shopify App for my ipad and iphone that syncs with my shop. You also get a free card reader to process transactions/payments right from the device.
6. Paypal
7. Hundreds of Apps from shopify and 3rd parties to integrate into your shop. One that I use is the facebook app so my shop is also on my facebook page.
8. Share features (pin it, like, etc.) are integrated into each product listing that I believe you can toggle off if you do not want it.
9. Customer support via online chat is awesome and they are very knowledgable and helpful.
10. Online shop manual and docs are very up to date and very useful.

As far as your domain becoming available to you - I am not sure how that works and if there is a grace period before the current owner loses it if they do not renew it for another year or so.

I had my shop up and running in 4 days.

 

[ca_soap]

I also use Weebly and I have had absolutely no problems with them. I did my website and went from zero to up and going in less than a day. I have done quite a bit of research since then working with search engine optimization and tweaking a few things here and there and I am quite happy with my site and get quite a few compliments on it.

 

[Cococamila]

Does it state it's parked? Or on sale? Some people buy popular domains and just park them and sell them in order to make a buck. If you search the URL and you get one of those funky pages that say something along the lines of "this site is hosted by such and such" and not a real website then it's pretty much a parked domain. It's a common practice unfortunately.