I want to set up a web site. I see that there are a lot of companies who offer packages with domain name registration, hosting, design software, etc. What of the extras are necessary? Is one format better than another? What else do I need to consider to make my choice. Is this something anybody here does? Any recommendations of a service that you use?

It would be a hobby related site. It would be mostly pictures and some text. I would want an area for others to be able to post comments and maybe even upload pictures. I don't need a shopping cart.

My ISP does offer pesonal web hosting. The problem is they only give me 10MB of storage and 300MB of bandwidth per month. Not really enough for a site if I get any traffic.

Here is a useful site:

http://www.findmyhosting.com/

First, you need to figure out your storage and bandwidth needs, and then go looking for a plan that fits those needs. It can be very cheap (like $5 per year), or pretty expensive.

Take a look along the left side and there is a link for budget web hosting and super cheap web hosing plans. Browse through these, they will often be plenty for a personal web site. Check the ratings and reliability too.

Demick

Board Member Paul Heery is a wiz (and a 914 guy)

paulheery.com

John,
I use Epsilonhost to do mine. It's cheap and the service is pretty good.

Hey Sean, I'm also interested in publishing my photo-documentary of the work I've done on my teeners. I've already built the HTML web page on my laptop. Could you answer some questions regarding your recommended site?

1. What does monthly transfer mean?

2. How do you upload new pages to their server?

Vegas, thanks for starting this post, I've been wanting to do this for some time.

BTW, I've already registered a name, just need a host.

Rob

monthly transfer means traffic allowed.
You get an FTP account when you set up your hosting with them. You'll need an FTP program or can use Windows explorer. I like WSFTP Pro for FTP.

I have an older outdated plan. It is similar to Plan B, but is slightly more $ and allows less traffic. I chose them because they were cheap and they offered mail as well. I wanted MoronThrottle.com mailboxes. My seanlee.tv hoster charges lots more for that service.

What happens if the traffic goes over the limit, do they automatically bump you to the next level or do you just pay the monthly difference?

I haven't gone over. That's a lot of throughput for a non-commercial site.

I use selectedhosting.com, to host a small forum and and a few misc. pictures and files I want to share. $4.95 a month for the basic account, I pay $10 because I wanted SSH access. Comes with PHP, mySQL, 50mb of storage and unlimited transfer. I have a feeling if I was using it to host massive porn archives and transferring a terrabyte or so they might have an issue, but I've posted some pretty large images to high traffic locations like the VWvortex Car Lounge with no problems.

I have a small hosting company with a few servers. Let me know what you want and I can shoot you a price. I can give you as much or as little storage and bandwidth as you need/want. I normally don't give people ssh unless I know them, or they pay more, but i could throw that in if you promise not to try and "root" me. ftp is there, email as many as you want, etc etc. Just depends what you need. Let me know.

I use getmehosted.com. The plan prices are very reasonable, and the tech support is good. It's a unix server, but they support php, sql, front page extentions, etc, etc. The package I use comes with an Invision BBS and some other stuff. They have some ecommerce packages, as well.

I dumped dreamworxhosting.com because they were having pipeline problems. I know it wasn't their fault, but the folks they were doing business with weren't reliable.

Oh, something that was important to me was that they also offered pop3/smtp and web interface for my own mail domain. Gotta have that.

Hope this helps,
Rusty

There are a number of different traffic plans available, depending on where you go. Some places give you an upper limit, then charge per unit over that. For example, if you have a place that gives you 1GB of transfer per month, they may charge a set amount for each 1MB over that. Some will have tiers and simply move you to the next tier. Most of the hosting places will charge this way (total number of bits transferred per month).

What this means is if you have lots of big, high-quality pics on your site, you'll transfer more per page view than you would if you had a page of mostly text, with a few low-quality pics. You'd want to pay attention to how big the JPEG files are. For web use, quality can be pretty low and still be acceptable. You can also do lots of thumbnailing, with little pics that can be clicked on for bigger versions, on the assumption that people will only look at some of the big images, not all of them. This also makes your page load faster.

OK, rule number one: Do not register your domain name and set up your hosting account through the same company. You need to keep them separate to protect yourself. Find a good registrar and stick with it. I've been using GoDaddy.com for a few years and am happy with their services and pricing. Right now .com domains are $8.95 a year, but they occasionally have a sale for $6.95. I have about 30 domain names that I manage through my GoDaddy account and their tools make it pretty simple.

Rule number two: Choose a hosting provider that is stable and stands a chance of being around for a while. Don't beleive all of the bullshit that they put on their websites. When you narrow it down and are thinking about choosing a hosting provider do one last thing, Google their name and the word "sucks". See what people are actually saying about that company.

Also, beware of some of these "Hosting Reviews" websites. Some of them are actually bogus and owned by the hosting companies that they rank high.

Rule number three: Make sure that your hosting provider has multiple avenues that you can use to contact them to address issues. My current provider that I have most of my sites with offers support via: email, help desk, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and they also have an active forum that is moderated by about 10 individuals from the company. I've never had to wait more than 15 minutes to get a response to an issue.

Rule number four: Features, features, features. Make sure that the hosting provider is not limited regarding what they can offer you. Even though you may not need something today, you may in the future. And, moving a site to another provider can be a real pain. Don't limit yourself by choosing one of these low-cost, no-frills providers. The price difference by going with someone that has full-featured services is negligible.

To sum up, my choices:

Domain registration and management: GoDaddy
Hosting: Total Choice

I do have a reseller account where I sell hosting plans. But, I use that primarily for my clients that need a lot of handholding. So, if you want your hand held, contact me. If not, go to Total Choice. I've hooked up a few people here with them and they seem satisfied.

Check into Rennlist.com

Your membership entitles you to a 200MB website if its about P-cars...

Hard to beat the price and keeeps the $$$ in the family.

Find someone to help us finish the "members rides" area and you can upload all the pics you want AND they will be thumbnailed.. AND you can build a webpage.

Just not enough time in the day to get everything done.


B

B - My abilities are very limitied. I'll be glad to help if I can.
Tell me more about what you need for the 'members rides' area.

I've been using readyhosting.com for about two years now with no major issues.

My website

No porsche stuff on there yet... I'm waiting to post it until I have some 'after' pics... the before pics are scary!