Author Topic: Building a website (Read 2392 times)

shmokes · « **on:** September 11, 2005, 07:31:55 pm »

I'm starting to think seriously about building a website for myself. I don't have any immediate plans to use it for anything other than a personal website, and a repository for media that I can link to from message boards and/or My Space. I'm trying to decide how best to go about it. I'm thinking that likely, for my needs it would make more financial sense to go with a hosting company, rather than running my own web server. I would have to upgrade my cable internet to a business account in order to get a static IP. That's my main concern about going that route. On the other hand, I'm thinking that I could make my MAME cabinet my web server so that the computer inside it, which is overkill for a MAME machine (Athlon 2400 I think), could pull some more weight. I'm not sure what the extra cost would be with upgrading to a business account. It might not even be a consideration until February, cos I'm getting a killer price on my internet services currently cos when I switched from DSL to cable I also switched from DishNetwork to digital cable and got in on one of those "trade us your dish for a year of cheap cable with all the movie channels for free" promotions.

Anyway, the other option, of course, would be to have someone else host it. I haven't checked around at all, but my ISP's cheapest package is $15/mo. for 250 MB online storage and 16 GB bandwidth. How competitive is this? For all you people with experience, who do you think has the best prices? I'm not real thrilled with the 250 MB limit. That doesn't seem like much. I'm not going to have a website that generates much traffic, and it will be pretty basic. No ecommerce. Just some basic HTML and Flash. But I do want to use the space to host picture, music and video files for message boards and My Space. The hosting, of course, implicates the 16 GB of bandwidth too. How competitive is that number?

I definitely don't want to spend more than $15/mo (and would very much like to spend a lot less). I suspect that I would have to spend at least that to upgrade my internet service to a business class account and get a static IP, so I am currently leaning toward a 3rd party hosting service, at least until my needs expand.

Please advise.

mrhowell · « **Reply #1 on:** September 11, 2005, 08:27:35 pm »

www.ipower.com

shmokes · « **Reply #2 on:** September 11, 2005, 09:08:38 pm »

Classic. Thank you.

coasternuts · « **Reply #3 on:** September 11, 2005, 10:09:31 pm »

Or if you want to pay nothing more a month try http://www.dyndns.com/

Geekboy · « **Reply #4 on:** September 11, 2005, 11:19:03 pm »

I've been using www.e-rice.net for a couple of years now. No problems, and cheap. 10 bucks a year.

Then go to godaddy.com and register your .com. $9.00 a year.

$20 a year for your own domain. Not bad.

AtomSmasher · « **Reply #5 on:** September 11, 2005, 11:57:06 pm »

www.doteasy.com does free hosting with no ads.

Right now I'm using www.totalchoicehosting.com which lets me have php/sql/perl and unlimited email and ftp accounts for a few bucks a month.

shmokes · « **Reply #6 on:** September 12, 2005, 03:13:20 am »

Been doing some research and it looks like I'll go with PowWeb

I found some website that reviewed and rated web hosting companies and they gave them 9.5/10. For $7.77/mo. you get 5 GB of online storage and 300 GB/month bandwidth. 10 GB of bandwidth per day is a helluva lot of space. And that price includes just about every imaginable feature. 650 mailboxes with POP and IMAP support, PHP, MySQL, Subdomains, Email Virus Scanning and Spam filtering. I swear to god, it even includes SSL and a shopping cart if you want to set up an ecommerce site. I don't know anything about that and won't use it, but it sounds pretty impressive for 8 bucks a month.

Their domain registration is heftier than godaddy, at $15 a year, but if I pay for two years of hosting I get don't have to pay for the first two years of domain registration.

Thanks for the info. It was searching for reviews for ipower.com that led me to PowWeb.com

RayB · « **Reply #7 on:** September 12, 2005, 11:24:06 am »

I recommend Site5. ( www.site5.com )They are top notch for small shared hosting. My great experiences with them ended though when my site became too popular for the plan I was on.

All you need is the cheap of the cheap hosting, and a domain name (directNic). www.directnic.com

ChadTower · « **Reply #8 on:** September 12, 2005, 11:43:48 am »

Next step:

Can anyone recommend a good web software suite? I've looked into Mambo but the setup is fairly complex. Since it is larger than I need anyway, can anyone think of a similar, login capable server that is free?

Stingray · « **Reply #9 on:** September 12, 2005, 12:15:46 pm »

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but I'm using PHPWebsite:

http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/

Setup was pretty painless. I've been pretty happy with it.

-S

ChadTower · « **Reply #10 on:** September 12, 2005, 12:22:11 pm »

That's not bad... simpler than Mambo, still login based. Does it have a forum module?

Stingray · « **Reply #11 on:** September 12, 2005, 12:23:59 pm »

Yes it does, although I've never used that particular feature myself.

-S

ChadTower · « **Reply #12 on:** September 12, 2005, 12:26:05 pm »

Neato. I'll give this one a shot and see how it goes. My football team asked me to take over the website for them, since I'm a software engineer and no longer have to focus on game conditioning for the time being (

) The existing site is kind of sad and rarely gets updated more than the upcoming practice time info.

melarky · « **Reply #13 on:** September 12, 2005, 04:13:20 pm »

Hey shmokes, if you want a local solution, WestHost is here in Utah (in Providence, right by me in logan, I live about 2 blocks from them and I use them for stuff like my dads website etc...).

http://www.westhost.com/

Santoro · « **Reply #14 on:** September 12, 2005, 06:34:22 pm »

http://www.1and1.com

Cheap and reliable. They host arcadetokens.com, santoro.com, and mamenation.com without issue. I use Netobjects Fusion (which they provide for free) to do my development.

ChadTower · « **Reply #15 on:** September 13, 2005, 12:39:24 pm »

Quote from: Stingray on September 12, 2005, 12:23:59 pm

Yes it does, although I've never used that particular feature myself.

Haven't found a forum module yet, but I did find this one, which could be quite useful:

Quote

LeagueSite - Sports Team/League CMS
LeagueSite is a PHPWebSite module that adds roster, stats, and schedule information for a sports league or team onto the PHPWS base. It can be used to create a website for their fans to learn more about the league and its teams and players.

sirwoogie · « **Reply #16 on:** September 13, 2005, 12:45:55 pm »

Another vote for 1and1. We use 1and1 for the dedicated hosting. All of arcadecontrols is with them, as well as most of my other sites I host seperately.

I don't have experience with their shared account offerings, but I've heard more good than bad on other forums that rate providers.

sirwoogie · « **Reply #17 on:** September 13, 2005, 12:49:47 pm »

With regards to website/forum software... my vote is a Mambo/SMF solution. The main BYOAC site will eventually be going to Mambo, and it provides a bridge to SMF. Mambo is a bit of a bear to learn and setup. But once get over that initial learning curve, it works great.

Again, this is just my preference. The only way to know for sure is to try them out and see what fits you best.

ChadTower · « **Reply #18 on:** September 13, 2005, 12:55:11 pm »

I tried Mambo. It WAS a ---smurfette--- to set up, and given that I work knee deep in J2EE, that is a statement. Circular configuration items were rampant, making it an exercise in frustration. It's also really heavy for what I need the website to do, meaning all of that annoyance wouldn't have enough payoff.

sirwoogie · « **Reply #19 on:** September 13, 2005, 01:01:35 pm »

I can appreciate that (both Mambo and J2EE, plenty of experience in both). The options it gives is both the good and evil of the product. It's integration into SMF was nice for us, so that was the main choice.

Good luck with iPowerWeb, they seem to be decent from what I heard. I do know that Retroblast was there for quite a long time.

ChadTower · « **Reply #20 on:** September 13, 2005, 01:03:42 pm »

I'm not familiar with SMF.

sirwoogie · « **Reply #21 on:** September 13, 2005, 01:54:55 pm »

It's the forum software that we're running here.

http://www.simplemachines.org/

ChadTower · « **Reply #22 on:** September 13, 2005, 01:56:14 pm »

Right... I dont' really need a high volume forum like this. I anticipate 20-30 users, most of them intermittent.

sirwoogie · « **Reply #23 on:** September 13, 2005, 01:59:03 pm »

It's for low or high volume. Of all the forum software I've had to use, SMF is one of the easiest and robust ones to setup. In 10 minutes you could have a fully functional SMF site. The footprint is minimal (about 5 megs of php code) and requires a database (prefereablly mysql, others will work).

Stingray · « **Reply #24 on:** September 13, 2005, 02:00:20 pm »

Quote from: ChadTower on September 13, 2005, 01:56:14 pm

Right... I dont' really need a high volume forum like this. I anticipate 20-30 users, most of them intermittent.

The forum module in PHPWebsite should suit your needs fine. There aren't many features really, but it should be ideal for a low volume like what you describe.

-S

SirPoonga · « **Reply #25 on:** September 13, 2005, 02:01:23 pm »

The source for smf is well written too making it easy to work with. I am going to try and do some more integration of the control.dat site with the smf forum.

Elfman · « **Reply #26 on:** September 15, 2005, 12:26:54 am »

I too will submit my vote for SMF.

RayB · « **Reply #27 on:** September 15, 2005, 09:37:36 am »

PHPBB is free.

ChadTower · « **Reply #28 on:** September 15, 2005, 09:38:50 am »

I thought Cold Fusion was just an IDE? It has a server piece?

Elfman · « **Reply #29 on:** September 15, 2005, 12:36:05 pm »

Quote from: RayB on September 15, 2005, 09:37:36 am

PHPBB is free.

As is SMF

Elfman · « **Reply #30 on:** September 15, 2005, 12:48:04 pm »

Quote from: ChadTower on September 15, 2005, 09:38:50 am

I thought Cold Fusion was just an IDE?

ChadTower · « **Reply #31 on:** September 15, 2005, 12:55:35 pm »

Right. I've never really played with CF, just seen sites developed with it. I spend most of my days wading around in enterprise scale J2EE app code. I personally don't, but a lot of people at this level of development look down on CF as being for amateurs or people just getting out of a ten week training program.

Elfman · « **Reply #32 on:** September 15, 2005, 01:31:28 pm »

Quote from: ChadTower on September 15, 2005, 12:55:35 pm

Right.

ChadTower · « **Reply #33 on:** September 15, 2005, 01:48:29 pm »

I think the problem comes from the fact that a few years ago, it WAS a tool for amateurs and people getting out of a ten week training program. I used to see them get out and get jobs as CF developers. It was pretty good at making a quick but limited ecommerce site at the time, but not much else.

ChadTower · « **Reply #34 on:** October 08, 2005, 07:44:24 pm »

Just downloaded phpwebsite, will give it a shot this weekend.


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