I'd appreciate guidance & thoughts on creating a website. This is to promote my part-time "retirement" business - antique & collectible firearms appraisals, consulting, collection liquidation, and select consignment sales -- Supica Consulting LLC. Years ago I designed, set up, and maintained two websites for my Old Town Station business - ArmchairGunShow dot com (firearms sales & collector info) and ArmsBid dot com (catalog & promote our live gun auctions). I used Publisher software and a local hosting service that's out of business. Both sites did very well with high Google rankings, rating in the top five for lots of significant search phrases, and #1 for some, but that was 12 years ago.

What I want to make now would be a version of ArmchairGunShow Light -- listings of firearms & related items for sale, with gun collecting info - old articles, photos, videos & the like. Simplicity and ease of use (on my end) are very VERY important. Flashy design - not so much.

Here's the Wayback version of what ArmchairGunShow looked like right before I sold it: Armchair Gun Show, antique guns and collectible firearms for sale I know it looks pretty crude today, but what I want to do would have similar content, function, & layout.

My questions:

WHAT SOFTWARE? I see Weebly, Wix, Squarespace and others promoted. I started a Weebly site, but backed off when it appeared that they want a percentage of each sale made on the site, which would be unacceptable for this type of business. The software needs to accommodate hundreds of individual gun-for-sale listings, each with multiple photos, and index pages by types of guns with thumbnails & links to the individual listings. Most of all, it has to be simple, easy, & idiot-proof to use.

WHAT HOSTING SERVICE? I have the impression that most of the major software packages also provide hosting services. Correct? If not, any suggestions?

WHICH DOMAIN? I've reserved GunHeritage dot com. There's a good possibility I could re-acquire my old domain, ArmchairGunShow, at some cost in time & effort. I thought it wouldn't make much difference which I used, but a website builder strongly suggested resurrecting the old name, indicating it still had a strong presence on the web. Does that make sense?

FINDING HELP. Should I have someone initially design and set up the website for me to run? Any suggestions?

ECOMMERCE - My old site didn't accept direct online sales. The buyer had to call or email to order the gun, make payment, provide FFL if needed. I suspect that is still the way to go. Does that still make sense for this type of operation?

FUNCTION - Although I didn't use them in my old business, I expect online sales sites (GunBroker, etc.) to be a primary sales vehicle this time around. I'm thinking it's still a good idea to have the website to promote the business. 1) does that make sense, and 2) any suggestions as to which online sales site would work best for selling antique & collectible guns? And, of course, for S&W's it's Smith-WessonForum.

Thanks in advance -- Jim

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Jim Supica