I have my first "job"

My first blog post was about my brother, Sam, purchasing a bar and starting up an online presence. While Sam loved my idea for Facebook and Google+ pages, he's also a smart business man and doesn't want to take any half measures. Part of being a smart business man is realizing that he has a brother that he can blackmail into creating his full website for free. He's also cheap, so we'll be using a free web hosting site.

I covered the different digital presences and how they apply to Sam's bar in my first blog post. Here are the types of digital presences that we determined are good for Sam:

Brochure - Provides information about his bar.
Informational - Updates on events.
Media - Pictures and Video of what's happening at Cheers.
Data Gathering - Customers can sign up for a mailing list.
Interaction - This is on the roadmap, but we may just depend on Facebook and G+ to provide it.
eCommerce - We'd love to make money selling shirts, mugs, and shot glasses.
Promotional - Promotion is the whole purpose of this site.

I'm still a novice web developer, so I won't be getting too fancy with Sam's website. I'd like to keep it simple. I've scoped out the competition and here are a few sites (not all for bars) that I think can inspire our design. I really love "clean," minimalist design, so I wish I was better at it!

http://nakedcitybrewing.com/
http://www.nuevo-aurich.de/
http://www.giannis-steakhouse.com/
http://www.karlyngroup.com/
http://g2geogeske.com/
http://jamrestaurant.com/

After looking at these sites and assessing my skill level, simple is the way to go. I've determined nine pages that we'll start with.

Home
About - To learn the story of Sam and Cheers
Location - A map of where to find Cheers
Contact - How people can reach Cheers
Beer - A list of the beers Cheers serves
Food - The food menu
Events - Upcoming events at Cheers
Mail list - The mail list to receive updates and offers from Cheers
Store - Where customers can purchase Cheers branded merchandise

Now we just have to figure out where we want to host this site. As I wrote earlier, Sam is cheap, so free is our only option. Here are the web hosts I've looked at so far, based on the list that was provided to us in my Web Design Tools class and my own searching.

000webhost.com - This site comes recommended by commenters on my favorite blog (lifehacker.com) where the commenters are usually more helpful than most internet commenters. Their free hosting gives you 1500 MB of disk space and 100 GB data transfers per month. That looks like a good choice.

50webs.com - This is the #1 free host on the list I linked above. They're an option, but they only provide 500 MB of disk space and 5 GB of data transfers per month for free. This is way less than 000webhost.

AwardSpace.com - This is the #2 free host on the list. Their free hosting only gives you 250 MB of disk space and 5 GB of data transfers. Once again, this pales in comparison to 000webhost.com.

DreamHost.com - If I were going with a paid option, I would likely choose DreamHost. They were selected as the best web host by the readers of Lifehacker. Unfortunately, Sam is cheap, so they are out of the equation.

I'm going to read up in my Web Design Tools class to see what my classmates prefer, but I believe my choice will be 000webhost.com. It offers the most bang for Sam's buck (ha ha) and comes recommended by actual users. Of course, this is a very nimble project that we're working on, so if this web host rubs me the wrong way I can always jump to another!