Free UK web site offer now live
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Getting British Business Online, the governmnent backed-scheme that offers UK small businesses a free web site, is now live.
Partners include Google, Enterprise UK and Paypal.
You get:
A free web address: Choose from any available ‘.co.uk’ domain name.
A free web site: You build your site using an easy Wizard-type tool provided by Google, which lets you upload your own words and images.
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March 25th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Though the scheme is designed for DIY use by small business owners themselves, if you find you need help there’s a variety of free and paid for assistance.
There’s a map at
http://www.gbbo.co.uk/learnmore/inyourarea/
April 2nd, 2010 at 2:01 am
Good idea but why use the mobile. My wife now can’t put her website up as she doesn’t have a mobile and she can’t use mine as we tried. So we have one of my businesses there and that’s it. So she misses out. My son has a business he can’t get his on and I have new business starting out can’t get that on.
I can’t run both businesses under the same web-id.
Why should my wife’s Aviation English Language School be penalised because she doesn’t have a mobile?
Brgds
Dave Hunter
April 7th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
This isn’t quite the big problem you seem to think it is.
The mobile is only used once, during the initial registration process. You give the set-up wizard a mobile number, and it then immediately sends a text message to it containing an activation code. You type this code into the on-screen setup form, and continue on with setting up your free web site.
The point of this procedure is that it prevents bad people registering lots of free web sites and using them up. BT has payed for the registration of 100,000 .co.uk domain names, but this allocation could be exhausted in a few days if automated robots started signing up for the scheme on behalf of Internet fraudsters.
So this is why each mobile phone number can only be used once to apply for a free domain name under the GBBO scheme - fraud prevention.
If you want to register multiple domains for yourself and your family you have three options.
1. Borrow someone else’s phone - it’s only used once, briefly, during the registration process. As long as they don’t want a free gbbo.co.uk web site themselves they have lost nothing by letting you do this.
2. Buy a SIM-only pay-as-you-go phone card. These give your existing phone a new phone number (which you could perhaps use just for your business calls), and are cheap or even free from UK supermarkets.
3. Register your own .co.uk domain name and forget about the GBBO offer. These are pretty cheap anyway - about £3 a year, and you can then use them with exactly the same Google Sites tool which the GBBO setup wizard links into.
Regards,
Ian.
April 7th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Here are some links for doing the things suggested in my comment above.
PRIME doesn’t endorse any particular commercial supplier, but we think people should be aware of the sorts of thing available on the market, and what they cost, so they are not too easily put off.
Example of SIM-only Pay-As-You-Go offer - from Tesco
https://www.tescomobile-freesim.co.uk/Default.aspx
The SIM is free - you pay for the calls in advance so don’t need to take out a contract
Example of where to get sub-£3 a year domain name
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
from one of the biggest sellers of UK domain names
How to get free Google Sites tool and free Google hosting:
You get this as part of the http://www.gbbo.co.uk offer anyway, but if you want to skip the GBBO thing you get Sites free anyway as part of the standard package that comes with a Google email address - which is itself free.
http://mail.google.com/mail/signup
There’s a lot of cheap and free stuff out there!
April 9th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Hello
What a great idea! So at the beginning of this week I checked that the website name and address for my one man “start up” business was availiable. It was, yippee! So I registered and followed all the steps through, “brilliant”.
Unfortunately when I received a confirming email from Nominet it referred me to another, but similar, but not what I had selected, web address!
Hmmm. I emailed them. Hmmm. No reply (yet). Ok so I email BT Busi9ness. Ditto!
I went back to the beginning. Yes the address that I had selected was still availiable. So I started all over again. But because I have thyis “other” web adress linked to me I can not proceed.
Cheesed off, frustrated, not suprised at “no reply”. The BT site quotes 24 minutes average response. More hmmm.
So this Ian chappie seems to have all the answers. I wait, bated breath and cup of strong tea!
Thank you
April 12th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
You could try the Helpline for the Getting British Business Online scheme, 0800 500 3123. This is operated by BT. We’d be interested to know if it’s any good.
Re re-registering with GBBO again to get the name you actually want, there’s nothing to stop you doing this as long as you use (1) a different email address, and (2) a different mobile phone.
If this isn’t practical then your only option is really to just buy the domain name you want, and forget that aspect of the free offer. You can still use Google Sites to build and host the web site for free - which indeed anyone can do if they have a free Google email account.
Regards,
Ian Stobie
(PRIME webmaster)