View Full Version : Sorry, another web-hosting question...
Hi all.
Have decided to make a website for my photography stuff.
I want to get a decent host and I am going to buy a domain name to go with it.
Can anyone recommend a good host please? (i have just tried setting up with 1&1 btu their payment page keeps crashing......)
Also need info on setting up the website itself. Is it a case of simply buying a website creator like Dreamweaver and uploading to the server, do the servers make it easy to upload and update the site.
The site will mainly be for my photos, I want a basic home page with links to other pages with my pictures in them, different pages for different aspects of my photography.
Any help will be much appreciated.... :)
Hi BRL,
I used 1&1 in the past and they were ok. A lot of people I know use FastHosts (http://fasthosts.co.uk) and claim they get good service and performance.
To upload your site, you would normally use an FTP client. Good FTP clients are drag-and-drop and look like Windows Explorer (which may or may not be a good thing). If you're a purist you could use a command line FTP client... PUT, GET... ahhh those were the days. :zzz:
Dreamweaver will handle all this for you. It has a built in FTP client and the site management functions are easy to use. It is a very powerful package and there's a reasonable learning curve to it. I have only toyed with it, but I imagine that if you're doing a lot of regular updates this is probably a very convenient route.
I could be way off the mark, but it sounds like you don't have much experience of creating web sites.
Apps like Dreamweaver give you a nice WYSIWYG environment to create your own site, but you'll still have to understand how to interpret and tweak the raw HTML code to get the best out of it. It's not that difficult, just something else to learn.
If you're just starting out, why not experiment without paying out big/much money?
You could try
Flickr.com (http://flickr.com) (free basic photo hosting account)
Set up a blog at Blogger.com (http://blogger.com) - Free
Or...
Buy your domain for cheap (eg. 123-reg.co.uk (http://123-reg.co.uk)) and then set up a Google Apps (http://www.google.com/a/) account (free and includes web hosting) and point your domain at the Google Apps server.
All of the above have easy to use upload or creation tools and you can get a reasonable site cobbled together without going down to the raw HTML detail.
Hope this is useful. Feel free to PM if you need any help.
A word of warning on 123-reg (see the other thread of mine). I have had significant 'outage' of email service from them over the last 6 months. Servers 'down' but not shown on the status page until queried. They were ok, but I think the Pipex ownership has affected them, as it has Supanames where I have web hosting, who had up to 4 servers 'down' for a few days recently.
I have moved domain hosting from 123-reg to FreeParking and have so far been impressed with the tech support, and the website to 31X which seems to be fine and has a comprehensive control panel.
Thanks Guys. I did have a web page made with the free web space given to me by Bt Internet.
Somehow I managed to cock-up uploading the site I made and all that could be veiwed was a list of the index. I should have uploaded the index first or something like that.
At that time you could only upload to btinternet using CuteFTP which I did as and when I needed.
I used to upload pictures back then but this time I want to upload loads of them and have the freedom of my own site with no restictions.
I also had a domain name from Freeparking which directed to the bt page.
I don't think I will be using Dreamweaver as that is what I used last time and made a mess of things so I am looking for an easy alternative to that.
airborne_artist
31st Jan 2008, 16:08
http://www.dataflame.co.uk/hostinglinux_all.html - the Linux hosting refers to their OS, not yours, and you won't need MS stuff unless you are doing really complicated stuff.
£30.00/year for 1GB of space and 10GB transfer per month. Domain costs are extra.
frostbite
31st Jan 2008, 16:45
Serif do some site design software which is pretty much like desktop publishing to operate.
Dreamweaver is the bees knees, but you may not want to make honey. For designing websites, there are some cheap and/or free packages, some of which are quite good. I use a prehistoric one that's now extinct, so I wouldn't recommend that.
DON'T use the Microsoft thing (FrontPage, I think it is still called). My daughter did a whole load of webpages using that, and found that only folks using Internet Exploder could view them. Then her ISP dropped FrontPage Extensions and they wouldn't work anyway.
I use Fasthosts to register domains (I have an absurd number). That's dead cheap, and they all redirect to my "real" ISP. Each domain links to a different "front page", all on the same server.
The ISP I have (an Entanet reseller) provides MySQL support and all kinds of other stuff. I don't know what the bandwidth or webspace limits are, but they're more than I use.
For uploading, I prefer FileZilla: it's a very nifty FTP package, and it's free.
Bern Oulli
1st Feb 2008, 12:30
I've been using http://www.purple-paw.com/ for years, both for hosting and doing the business of registering/buying a domain name. inbound mail diverts automatically to Outlook Express.
PyroTek
1st Feb 2008, 13:02
I'm soon to get hosting at dreamhost, It offers extremely generous specs for a very low price...
http://www.dreamhost.com (http://www.dreamhost.com/)
I'd recommend it to anyone, (For your info, it shares the myspace data center in california.)
Thanks for all your help.
I have some webspace and a domain name now.
Next step is to make a web page and upload it to the right place this time around!!!!!!
Thanks again for all your help. :)
DON'T use the Microsoft thing (FrontPage, I think it is still called). My daughter did a whole load of webpages using that, and found that only folks using Internet Exploder could view them. Then her ISP dropped FrontPage Extensions and they wouldn't work anyway.
That must mean your daughter must have used some Microsoft-specific server features that only IE can support, like ActiveX stuff. You don't have to do that if you use FrontPage, you can also use it to make basic websites that work on any server (with or without the FrontPage Extensions) and any browser.
I don't do that any more, though - these days I'm more inclined to look for a LAMP* setup, and install a "Content Management System" like Drupal or Wordpress. Who needs to re-invent the wheel? ;)
* Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP
Probably. My daughter isn't a computer techie, she's an artist and writer (and an alcohol abuse counsellor). She did what she could with the tools on her office PC. She was miffed when she found I couldn't view her pride and joy website - and nor could several others who weren't using IE.
All is now sorted.
Sorry if this is a bit late, only just saw the thread.
I recently got hosting for my flying club's site - streamline.net
Great host, very cheap for what you get - couldn't ask for more.
I am probably too late but I use http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/ for a whole bunch of websites.
I use them for DNS only, and the actual hosting is done on a PC running FreeBSD which is sitting at my office on the end of a 448/8192 ADSL line :)
But even if I used a professional firm for the hosting (which has a LOT to be said for it, I have to admit) I would still use VN for the DNS because I can then switch the hosting from one company to another very easily, just by logging into the VN control panel and changing the IP of the hosting server.
There is another probable downside of using a server on ADSL and that is if one is running an SMTP server on it: even a fixed IP (which I have) gets blacklisted by some ISPs, and quite a lot of my emails end up dropped by stupid spam filters.
I have looked for a business hosting provider who is "cheap", say £30/month, but I have not found anybody who can provide the facilities we need without adding on a lot of cost.