The Birth of a Website
 

In light of the rising costs of constantly running auctions on Ebay and their new policy changes, I've been researching software and webspace on the net to create and house the new website I'm going to build.

My Question is, Does anyone have any suggestions on website building software or services?

I can use all the help I can get. :yes:

Thanks in advance.

If it were me I'd hire Brian. He seems to have it all figured out.

There are all sorts of places you can get space. I use 1and1.com. The cost is $4/mo and that includes the domain name. See this page for details on the various packages: http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Hos...op&__lf=Static

Which one you choose depends on your space, bandwidth, and business needs.

I don't use any of the more advanced features like MySQL and such, but it is available. And if you plan on selling stuff from the site, you want to look for a package that includes a shopping cart of some kind.

As far as writing the pages themselves, I write everything out longhand via a text editor. There are lots of authoring programs out there that will do that drudgery for you. Once the files are built, just FTP them to the site.

Since it sounds like you want to use at least part of this for hot linking images (have the image located on your server, but appear in other websites such as eBay, RCM, etc), you want to make sure the host you select allows this. Some do not allow hotlinking (mine does).

Brian,

I just want to thank you for sharing this with me. That looks like a reallly good starter package at an incredible price.

The ones that I was looking at in the beginning were something in the range of $50 setup fee and $40 bucks a month.

I will definately read through this and put some things together.

Thanks again,
James

I am in a dispute with 1and1 right now. we prepaid a year to host a site and forum for a non profit organization. at the end they asked if I wanted to renew but the thing closed down months beforehand I said no. now they are harrassing me over a bill which I don't owe. The have an automated dialer thing calling my house phone every couple days. I won't even deal with calls unless it's a human. I did talk to someone and explained the deal, and she still didn't understand. I mean if you pay for a year, term is a year and you don't renew, write in you aren't going to renew, then where is there an extra fee coming from?

I use a canadian webhost now. I paid a little more for the .ca name for my company than a .com but that's cool. as far as a server, I just use the personal space I got with my internet plan and have the domain forwarded to that location.

Word is easy to make webpages with. I am working on the canada rc pro site right now and the site has a built in page editor. I hate it but the rest of the pages and sites are using it so I have to use it. eventually I will figure out all the stupid quirks but it drives me crazy trying to do simple little things (having to use html coding to change font size was one bane, and I admit I don't know html coding well.). that and I can't change some things without getting the overall site admin to do it, so being handcuffed and not knowing until I try to do something gets frustrating

LOL, I just got an email from 1and1 today saying I had malware on one of my pages, and said I had 24 hours to respond before they would suspend my account. Well, I can understand a company not wanting legitimate malicious code on their servers, but this is hardly malicious. I sent them an email back but they have yet to respond.

Other than that, 1and1 has been really good to me. I'm sure there are lots of others out there, it's just a matter of finding one with the price, features, webspace, and bandwidth to meet your needs. For small personal sites, 10GB space and 100GB bandwidth will most likely be more than you'll ever need for storing webpages, pictures, and some home videos. If you want to hold tons of videos, you might want something bigger. For any site requiring a database (storefronts, forums, etc), you'll want more space and bandwidth. Most sites also allow you to upgrade packages should the need arise - just make sure you are aware of any potential fees.

Microsoft Word, FrontPage, and other WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors do work, but creates extremely ugly code, and support for CSS is kinda clunky. There are better software titles out there meant specifically for HTML editing and have the same type of easy interface. Do a Google search and you'll get tons of stuff for free. The better stuff costs money, but it's a start. Do try different things until you find one that is easy and works for you.

To transfer your files to the server you can use command line FTP, but that's kinda clunky. GUI FTP programs are easier to use. WS_FTP works very well. A simple drag-n-drop interface makes it act much like Windows Explorer.

I've been happy with godaddy.com. I paid $11 for 2 years of my domain name and pay $3.95/mo for hosting. Just another option for you to look at.

I've been using ws_ftp pro for a while. it works great. I use my space in behind to post pics of rc's I have fixed and sell... winter projects, and am always adding and deleting. nice to toss a whole folder up at once, then delete the whole folder rather thn 1 file at a time.

I am not supposed to get the bandwidth I use but have been a telus internet and phone subscriber for a very long time, so they cut me some slack.

Oh, depending on how much stuff you have and what your needs are, most broadband ISPs also give you 10-100MB of free webspace. They are generally pretty picky about hotlinking and don't have many of the features of actual hosts, but it's something to consider.

I must be getting slow in my old age- I didnt actually realize you had an entire website dedicated to cool webpage scripting stuff, I just thought it was the RC realted stuff. Some of that stuff is seriously clever and cool- will mos likely be using some of it on my neglected website to spruce it up a bit (giving credit tothe original author ofcourse).

I use 1and1 for my domain holding, but I left them for hosting over a year ago. Since I use a shopping cart for my store, I kept having errors with mysql and their database or something. They wouldn't work with me, and gave no guarantees that they would be compatible with my cart software. Every server update put my site at risk of shutting down. If you are going to do an html store they are great.

I now use ewd hosting, which is guaranteed to work with my xcart software. I haven't had any down time since switching. Good pricing too, and I can swap packages at any time which means that I can grab the cheaper hosting packages when they come out.