adamo

If you choose a web host with a 'one-click' installer such as Softaculous, the process to install a shopping cart such as those you mention becomes even easier, taking as little as 5 minutes.

Magento is a great shopping cart, and can be used for all sizes of business. Rather than starting out with a platform which you eventually have to move away from as your needs grow, Magento can grow with you and also has a large selection of plugins.

From an SEO point of view, it's much better to have sitename.com, sitename.com/uk/, sitename.com/au/, etc than uk.sitename.com, us.sitename.com. Some older websites used the sub-domain format, but to build overall SEO value to a website, you should use sub-folders.

I'd recommend looking at organic SEO first, then work on PPC (AdWords) advertising to get some paid traffic to your website. SEO will only do so much, and will take time to have an effect, so you should work on a paid advertising strategy to get some instant traffic. Social media can work alongside this - just make sure you update your social channels daily to show that you're active.

Moz Toolbar (http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar) is my favourite, and also has loads of other useful SEO features.

I'd go with iThemes Security and Akismet. You definitely don't want lots of different security plugins in case they end up conflicing with each other, since they all do very similar things.

Usually I'd always recommend Magento due to its wide range of features and SEO-friendliness, but it can be quite hard to use at first, so you might prefer to look at OpenCart as already recommended.

I've personally used Majestic SEO to get full lists of current and previous (removed) backlinks to a specific website. Seems accurate so tend to use that.

As mentioned, if you're a genuine, registered charity, send an email to the company selling the theme to see if you can get it free. You might also be able to get free web hosting if you send a few emails.

I think much of the time (though not always), you pay for what you get. If you pay £200 for a WordPress website for your business, there's a very high chance you're just getting an off-the-shelf theme from ThemeForest, but if you invest more, say £2,000-3,000, you should expect a custom-build with custom features. If you pay the right money, you can get a high-quality WordPress website.

I definitely prefer Magento, very SEO-friendly and suitable for small startups with only a few products, right through to big companies which import 1,000s of products.

Magento is definitely the leading eCommerce platform in many respects. It's scalable, meaning you can start out with a small shop and a few products, but then easily import 10,000 products with ease. It's also SEO-friendly out of the box (though there are a number of optimisations you should make), and I've often heard of people with Magento sites seeing slightly higher rankings after moving to Magento since being on another platform such as OpenCart. I don't see a problem with WooCommerce, and think it would be useful if you have a WordPress website and would like to quickly add the ability to take orders, though Magento definitely ranks higher if you want to sell more than a few products.

As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". WordPress is great in this respect, since it has everything you and a client could need, all in one admin area. Though, as already mentioned, don't just buy a cheap theme and try to hack away at it to try and build something amazing. Instead, code it up just like you would a normal website, and you can get some great results. Though it might sound great to build your own CMS, unless you're building a government site - why? WordPress already has everything you could ever need, and a great selection of plugins which can quickly add features.

Wherever in the world you're based (except the UK, where I'd use co.uk), I'd definitely recommend having the .com TLD as the main domain. Then you could have the .in redirecting to .com.

You can register .uk domains from overseas, but the registrant address must be in the UK, and PO boxes aren't accepted - needs to be a valid physical address. Hope this answers your question

Definitely install a security plugin such as iThemes Security to prevent this from happening in future. Being widely used, WordPress sites are common targets for hackers.

It seems no one has replied to this, so I figured I may as well! Basically, I'd advise getting a WordPress installation up as a starting point, then look for other things that can offer the features you mention. Have a quick Google and you'll find some - there are 1000's available, and I'm sure you could have these features on WordPress using plugins.

I'd advise looking at WordPress in conjunction with the WooCommerce plugin. This gives you the benefit of using the popular WordPress platform, whilst being able to sell products through your website. There are also plenty of pre-built themes available for WooCommerce which you can download and tweak.

Have you tried CodeGuard? Manages the whole backup process for you, you just need to set it up once. If you've got a hosting plan that comes with WHM, you can also setup remote backups via that system.

Yeah, don't trust GoDaddy with anything.. I can't believe how much they try to up-sell when you simply want to buy a domain for example!

It'll definitely be a bonus having all of the sites on one central server. If you can afford it, get a VPS with WHM/cPanel, then you can create individual logins for each site making it secure and also the FTP side of things will be easier to navigate through for each site.

I have a few sites hosted with Webhostingbuzz who I think have servers in the UK and US, and I've had no problems so far. If the majority of the websites' visitors will be based in the UK or it's going to be hosting a .co.uk domain, you really should choose a webhost that has servers in the UK. There are so many different web hosts though, so make sure you do your research before deciding on one.

I'm with WebHostingBuzz at the moment - was with Hostgator before but moved when they had almost a day of downtime. I think they have servers in the UK and US so you can choose, plus the price for their basic webhosting is £2.49/$5 if I remember so around your price range. Hope that helps!

I'd certainly recommend some sort of reseller plan. Although I have a VPS with WebHostingBuzz and that offers similar functions to a reseller plan. Choose your host wisely though as many tend to offer different control panels. You really want cPanel/WHM. WHM will allow you to create the end user accounts. Hope that helps!

Heart Internet are terrible, I've seen so many negative posts on here about them. I have a VPS with WebHostingBuzz and they helped me out with email setup as I wasn't 100% sure of a few of the details. Hope you get it sorted.