What do I do if I purchased something from a fake website?

What mistakes do newbies make when creating a website?

• I'm creating a website catering to the residents of the town I live in (in Tennessee). It will include content such as a calendar of events, crime blotter, a "yelp" like area where people can comment on the local businesses, interviews with residents of "notoriety", a trading post where people can buy, sell, trade, barter, etc , a "Facts n' Stats" area that talks about population, income, square mileage, history of the town, etc., and again...it caters only to my town. The town is big enough to “merit a website” and create a following, but yet still small enough to retain that “small town feel”. (There is a ton of construction and new business going up). I've identified my competitors and feel the vision of my website offers something that they don't. My revenue will come from advertising. (I'm just finding out about Adsense). Eventually, I will be selling hats and tee shirts with the website logo. I’ve already purchased the URL (purchased?? Am I using the right words here??) I’m on a shoestring budget, and would like to avoid costly mistakes as much as possible. I'd like to know if there are any rookie mistakes that people make when creating a website such as this. Are there any LEGAL PAPERS I need to sign? Disclaimers I need to utilize? Are there any books, websites that I can look up that will answer some of the questions that I don’t know yet to ask? Any help would be appreciated.

• Answer:

  I operate something similar in my Tennessee town. I used Yahoo! Small Business as the host because it is inexpensive ($10 a month), has a variety of templates to use on the various pages, and is easy to update. However, you can not edit it if using Google Chrome, so I have to switch to IE or Firefox to edit. I don't think it will allow public comments, so be sure your platform allows that. Our community group operates a Facebook page that is very popular (over 4,500 friends) where we do many of the things you are proposing. An advantage to FB is that it goes out to your "friends" when you post ... they don't have to pull up the website. You can start a conversation and get almost immediate input on the subject. It gets emergency and crime news out quickly. We used it during the tornadoes last week. There isn't anything you have to do legally unless you want to trademark your name and logo. However, you need to establish guidelines for content ... posts for yard sales are okay but posts for Bubba Joe's Fish Shack are advertising and must be paid. Also keep a close eye on what the public posts and delete inappropriate content quickly. You need to look at new posts at least twice a day. One incredibly popular page on my website is old photos of the town. I "appropriate" them from images on eBay. Start saving the images (I check eBay daily for my town's name) and create a collection. Anything that brings people to your website generates a buzz. Another popular page is the school calendar. Oddly, my page has a higher position in search engines than the actual school board website. I don't include sports on my website because there is already an excellent website dedicated to sports in my town. However, I have a link to that site from mine. Also provide a link to your city's website and the chamber of commerce. One last suggestion: Before you start building your pages, do all your writing in a word processing program. It is so much easier to compose your copy and then cut-and-paste to the new website. It isn't much fun sitting there composing on the website page. Be sure to proofread -- I hate typos in websites. Also have all your photos in one place and in the order you want to use them. Saves lots of time. Best of luck and try to have fun. It is a lot of work.