Hi all,
I am in the midst of creating a website and need some advice from those ahead of the power curve in this arena. First, a few very basic questions as you can consider me a newbie at this right off the bat:

1) What are the tradeoffs between a free site host (like google .site) and a web host you pay for?

2) Since I am a newbie at website creation, google seems very attractive with all the templates and easy point and click, but most certainly it comes with limitations that you experts most likely know about.

I am currently using the google, but I don't prefer the company's liberal stances... And would prefer another option, a tested option.

TIA

EDIT (1/9/12): Changed title to try to avoid future spambots.

I think you just have to register a domain which costs something like a dollar a month, and then you can host it yourself on any computer you can leave on and connected full-time. I'll ask our son who does that when he comes home from work. He hosts a few websites and runs a couple. I definitely agree with you about Google though, and even for searches I use startpage.com which works the same way and seems to be just as good, and they don't try to control your activity or keep records of what you've searched for to hand over to the nosey feds.

I purchased a three-year, unlimited bandwidth hosting deal from Godaddy.com for about $110, or $3 per month. To me that was a no-brainer. I'm reluctant to try to host the site myself. I don't necessarily always keep my computer on, and prefer being able to switch it off at will. (Occasional shutdowns are inevitable anyway). Also I suspect that Godaddy's web connection is superior to mine, resulting in snappier viewing for visitors to my site. Perhaps I'm mistaken about that. But for $3....

Godaddy, too, seems to have lots of accessories and options. Frankly I haven't investigated thoroughly, and I don't need (or understand) a lot of that stuff anyway. I'm a comparative newbie at web hosting. And I'm grateful for their 24 by 7 phone support, albeit with a non- toll free number.

I didn't mean to turn this into a Godaddy commercial. I bet there are other, similarly affordable deals out there, and I'll be interested to hear what folks have to say about that. But I know a lot of places charge more (and seemingly offer less).

-- Jeff

rictor.org is also hosted by Godaddy.com. Buying a domain name (10 years) and hosting for two years ran about $200 as I recall. I think its a great deal. I added a few extras, you could do the same without the extras for less.

Just my thoughts:

Does your ISP provide free webspace?

I started my 6502 hobby pages on tripod.com (free web hosting with ads) but got tired of the ads. I then moved it to my ISP's webspace. After two ISP changes, I decided it was time to invest in a site of my own. It has evolved over the years as well and I have tried many different formats.

I suggest starting small with something free and experimenting. If you end up with something you like, then move it to a permanent home.

Daryl

I have a website with Google.

http://www.northerndtool.com

They charge me for the name registration every year, but the site itself is free.

It is not bad, and its aliken to a word processor input (unless you want to use the HTML it offers) so it doesn't take too long to put up a website.

You can also set up email accounts to make it a sharing/commenting site if you wish.

Only down fall is that everything is listed as subpages of subpages in the bottom of every page, I understand why Google did it but I've "hidden" a few pages to make the site less cluttered with subpages.

Dimitri

There are free sites at Yuku.com

It is not always easy to get users. Yuku is free but there are advertisements and if you pay 5-6 dollars a month, the ads get removed. It is easy to set up a site. You can set up a site in less than five minutes but if you want to add forums, descriptions and topics, you can probably do that in 20 minutes depending whether you are a fast typist or not.

Your url would be something like name.yuku.com unless you purchased a URL and set the online software to accept the url.

I don't know what you want a site for but the 6502 is not going to attract a lot of traffic unless you have a site with dedication like this one.

You might want a site with more blogging capabilities so people can show their projects off. Unless there is something in it for users like blogging (what is in it for me kind of a thing), then it might be hard to keep users interested.

Unless you are getting personal satisfaction from a site or unless you have users, you might not want to keep the site.

The only problem I have with Yuku is if you post something by hitting submit, the posts once in a while don't appear on yuku which is a small problem. Try again and I bet they will save.

I use google for beeb816, Greg uses godaddy for visual6502, and my other half uses webfaction for her business. They have a 60-day moneyback guarantee.

You might ask Mike N if he still does user pages on 6502.org

The problem with public hosting is that it is public and you have no really good idea as to how secure it might be, how trustworthy the employees at the hosting company might be, etc. Ever wonder how you suddenly become a spam target? Public hosting companies have one or two less-than-honest employees who see easy money in selling a bunch of E-mail addresses. Yours could be among them.

Also, if your site exists solely within the confines of a public hosting site, do you have unrestricted access to the source code for your site? Not the templates and such provided by the hosting service, but the actual code? You might wish you did if the company hosting your site goes bust without warning.

As for godaddy, they have a reputation for domain hijacking. I've had my share of troubles with them in the recent past attempting to move clients from godaddy to private hosting. I'd avoid them if possible.

Despite repeated accusations by a certain member of this forum that I'm a negative person, I'm not...just a "careful shopper." If I seem to be playing devil's advocate, it's because I've seen a lot of issues with public hosting. That was what led me to set up my own hosting more than a decade ago. I haven't regretted it.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Thanks for all the input! I will try and answer each in chronological order.


I sort of like this option. It's free and would learn alot of the basics, although I'd have to dedicate more time to it.


No problem. I've seen their commercials with Danica Patrick here in the US. I wasn't even sure what the commercial was about till now...


Not anymore. I just checked this morning. TWC stopped the service due to "low interest" in Jan 2011.


A yearly charge? How much?


I don't care about traffic or... It would be a more useful way to convey my convolving thoughts and ideas. With a site, I think it would help me focus a little better. Also, I could share files instead of joining another photobucket/file sharing site.


I think I need to finish at least 1 of the 2 (soon to be 3) project's I have going first. Then maybe I'll have the credentials to ask. Thanks for that vote though BigEd!


Exactly right! Which is why I started this thread. I'm not so trusting either, especially when my hard work is involved. I'm all about sharing, because sharing by other folks is what got me to where I am now. I'm about wisely sharing and not depositing all of my info into an untrustworthy person/business' hands. I do realize I'm fearful primarily out of ignorance, but...

What software do you recommend BDD?

They charge me 10$, which seems plenty fair for domain registration.

Dimitri

You would typically use a separate computer, and it can be an older one. High performance is not particularly needed. I think our son started out with a 286 in the garage long after everyone was in the GHz range with 32- and 64-bit computers, and it was adequate for having just a few people at once listening to MP3 data he was dishing up on our bottom-of-the-line DSL connection. Now he has a 1-7/8" rack-mount computer out there that is specifically intended to be a server. If you're not trying to support a bunch of users at once with video, your existing connection and an older computer will probably be fine.

There's a grand tradition of hosting low-volume websites on tiny hardware - how about hosting on your own homebuild? You'd certainly learn a lot!

A more sensible option: github projects can have an associated website, just by creating a branch called 'gh-pages'

I run my company website with Apache on SuSE Linux. Any server Linux distro will do...the desktop distros may not have everything that you need. You can download ISO to burn DVDs and, as Garth mentioned, you don't need to run this thing on high powered hardware. Anything from a 486DX upward will work. Linux and Apache are free for the downloading.

Strongly resist the temptation to run a site on Windows. You will feel like a guy with bad sunburn caught in a swarm of mosquitoes trying to keep a Windows web server running.

The nature of your Internet connection will be important. If you are going to serve pictures, bandwidth will matter. If you can get a static IP address life will be much easier. Otherwise, you will have to use something like Dynamic DNS so browsers can find your site.

BTW, the so-called free hosting is never free. If they don't charge you for the space and service they steal some of your bandwidth by attaching advertising to each page.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I recommend turnkeylinux for a selection of right-sized linux distributions for server purposes, and unetbootin for a pain-free way of putting an ISO onto a USB stick for a quick trial - no need to install anything to disk and the computer only needs to be new enough to be able to boot from USB.

Also, it's impressively quick to boot from a USB stick.

which is why Linux has more of the server market than Windoze does-- Running reliably is more important for a server than for a desktop PC. Even on my Linux PC here, the last time I rebooted was many months ago, when an update required the reboot in order to be activated. Oops, I forgot about the two times it shut itself down a couple of months ago (which I wrote about here) because the fan went out and the processor got too hot. That was a hardware problem though. I shot some lube into it and it has been happy ever since.