[Ekko]

I just completed construction on my internet store, my first site actually. On the downside, I will be going away for a 2 week trip with no internet access.

I was wondering whether it would be advisable to take my site online and submit my pages now to cut down on the waiting time when I return or if it is important to monitor your site daily. I have encrypted all my email addresses on my pages, is there any other concerns I should take into consideration?

[Rockn]

Waiting time for what? Monitor the site daily for what?

[Ekko]

The waiting time I was referring to was the time it will take for my site to start showing up in the search engines.

This is my first site so I may be sounding stupid (then again stupid questions are the easiest to answer, right? ) but what I meant by monitoring is: Should I be concerned about someone hacking into my site even if it is not even in showing up in search engine results yet. How probable is that? Concerns of that nature.

[WendyM]

I would wait, but not necessarily for the reasons you mentioned. If people do find and use your site while you're gone and they have questions, not getting a response for two weeks will create a negative first impression. Also, when I make a new site live, I like to continue testing for a couple of days just to make sure that all the links are functioning and information is being displayed the way I anticipated. I would never put a site into production and then immediately be unavailable to make any changes, but if you're sure no one will look at your site for two weeks, that's not such a big concern.

[Ekko]

Thanks for your opinion Wendy. Yes, being unavailable for that off-chance that someone would stumble into the site is a concern. Then again without being indexed into the major search engines I feel like the chances are so slight. I'm not sure what I'll do yet but I feel a little relieved that you don't think the hackers paranoia should be of my utmost concern.

[briealeida]

Are you hosting the site yourself? If so and you're a beginner, I would suggest that you not.

You should be fine but 'should' is just another four letter word! lol.

[cpscdave]

Seeing how you say its an internet store I would wait. Fortine favours the cautious (heheh).

Just a lot times code bugs dont come up untill its live and it would suck to I dunno say take ppls credit card info and email to random people cause of a missing ; okay not likely but still.

[Ekko]

Are you hosting the site yourself?

Noooo! Definitely not. I have a reputable web hosting service.

Just a lot times code bugs dont come up untill its live and it would suck to I dunno say take ppls credit card info and email to random people cause of a missing;

Paypal is taking payments directly on their site. I'm not experienced enough to integrate my own shopping cart and handle financial information. But you are so right about bugs! I thought I was all set but little stuff has already started coming up. The differences between browsers and older/newer versions of IE/FF are maddening!

I'm keeping it online for the next few days in order to test and fix all this stuff. Once I leave maybe I'll just make a notation that orders will be filled between certain dates. I dunno. I just hate to take the site down now that its online. Bad karma, if you will.