new website.......HELP!

Thanks everyone for your help and ideas. I think the Wordpress idea is the best bet for the time being, mainly because its free....... Depending on how things go that may change. My computer has now decided not to work properly so am having it checked over at the weekend. When I get some info on my site I will post it here for your constructive criticism!!

 

Ive just come across this site where you can register as a petsitter..might drum up some buisness for you aswell whilst your setting up your website not sure if or how much membership is thou it might be worth a look at
http://www.narpsuk.co.uk/

 

I use a guy for my websites. He develops it, hosts etc. and gives me full access to modify update etc.
Any probs, I just give him a call and he resolves it. I've been using him for ore than 10 years with no problems.
I can PM the contact if you want it. The cost for what you indicate would be about £200ish - although it is only my guess. I costs nothing to speak to him and discuss your requirements

 

How much does it cost to host a website? Per month or year?

 

Thanks Joolz and gcc. Right now I don't have any money to spare so both of those ideas would have to be for future reference. I've been looking at insurance, which I KNOW I need. and I'm finding that fairly confusing. I don't want to be spending my limited funds on something I don't need but at the same time I don't want to be under insured. The rates are ALL over the place! Same with the web hosting. It depends on how many pages and space and e-mail addresses you want. The cheapest is just under a fiver a month for a really basic website to over 20 quid in some cases for the big fancy sites. I figure I'm somewhere in the middle really.

 

I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for letting me know. That's my account getting cancelled.

 

STOP EVERYBODY! When I said Wordpress I hadn't met KOMPOZER yet...it is the one for me...

kyleleonard-it cost about £10 a year (for each site) to keep the name registered and roughly £6 a month to have a lot of internet space where you can put multiple sites. If you only keep 1, you may even get away with £4 a month.

 

For those on a non-existent budget interested in having a go at building their own website as a challenge to keep the braincells active or prelude to starting a business free web hosting space is available at X10Hosting and 000Webhost. It's not a special offer or cancel your credit card after one month swizz all you need is an email address and you can get that for free from gmail,yahoo etc.

These both provide all the web space you would normally need for a small starter site and have most of the features a site needs just like a Professional Web Hosting account, such as one-click easy installs for things like WordPress, Forums, Blogs & Photo Galleries. Downside is their free servers are overworked, a tad slow and occasionally flaky but the price is hard to argue with.

If you want a proper mywebsite.co.uk type domain name to with it see GBBO.co.uk where you can get one free for the first two years, after that you pay the going rental rate of about £4/year.

Alternatively for those feeling adventurous practically any home PC or laptop can double up as a web server using freely available software. You don't need a high spec all singing & dancing computer either, old tower systems running Win98 or an iMac G3 classic are ideal. It could however put a dent in your broadband package if you decide to run a chat room or stream movies but for a low traffic site it's fine.

 

All good stuff what you said (though I'll have to take your word for it on the companies you recommended, as I've never done business with them myself).

The only bit I'd not exactly disagree with but throw in an extra word of caution is the bit I quoted. For a business website, you need reliability. A typical prospective customer will not give your site a second chance if it is down the first time they try to look at it.

Running a web server from home is as cheap and easy as you say, but you'd be hard pressed to give assurances of reliability. Any of the following can happen without warning to take your site down:
* Your IP address lease expires and and your ISP issues a new, different one (rare these days, but can happen)
* Your ISP sends a firmware update to your router while you're out, and inadvertently smashes your configured routing rules, blocking incoming traffic or sending it to the wrong machine.
* A power cut takes everything off line
* Hardware failure either in the router or the server PC
* In the case of Windows, a Windows update comes along and changes all your firewall rules, blocking incoming requests

I've seen all of the above happen. Granted its rare, but its common enough to make me think its worth paying a few quid for some space in a data centre, with RAID arrays, bare metal backups, dual backbone for both comms and power, UPS, and a control room telling a team of engineers exactly what's happening at any point in time so that as soon as a component or connection falters, they can get straight on the case. No coming in from work to find your site's been down all day, no waiting for a customer to tell you they couldn't get on, just 99% uptime guarantee backed by the right combination of hardware, software, infrastructure and engineers.

 

For a serious business venture yes you do really need that peace of mind you can only get with a professional hosting company and all the services they offer. But for those pondering about setting up a 'hobby' website that cost is hard to justify so hopefully it came as a pleasant surprise to the curious you can get a similar service for free.

As for a home server I did say it was for the adventurous, it's a lot like trying to grow Pineapples in Wales but with the exception of the PC itself keeling over there's a solution for most problems in running one.