Cheap internet hosting.

[CarpenterChris]

Sorry for spammy sounding title, but I would like to join the digital world with a website, I've now finished college and have a load of photos of work I've done for customers and want to put them on a website.

I've had a look and most of the sites I've seen the hosting is so expensive, does anyone know of a cheap reliable webhosting company?

Ta.

[Wes]

What do you want to pay Chris?

Mines £4.99 per month + vat with 1&1. The support is good although the hosting cost is a little expensive compared to some. I've been with them for about two years. I've got up to 10 databases (1 database = 1 website, unless you're going BIIIIGGGG lol) on that package though as I've got more sites in the pipe line, so you may be able to get your hosting down to perhaps a third of that. I've heard a lot about 'bluehost' being good but don't quote me..

Something that you should think about is how you're going to build the site. My personal opinion would be to stay away from 'click and build' applications although they are safer regards hackers. Click and build is something that website providers use to draw you in but IMO they're very restrictive with regards layouts of the website and general usage, although they do make life a lot easier early on.

I'd strongly suggest you look at using 'wordpress'. It's a steeper learning curve than the easy click & build, but well worth it mate. It's all about the themes and plugins

This entire comment is probably going to get trashed by some of the egg heads (Billy & root ), but trust me with the wordpress thing

[Someone-Else]

Mines £4.99 per month + vat

Ouch.

I pay £9.99 / 2 years for the .co.uk domain name
and about £15 / year for the webspace (oh, and emails and about 10 email addresses of my choice)

But I would agree don't touch the "wesbiste in a box" offers or the "use our template" offers. They seem good but you soon find they are limited.

Me, I am trying to use coffeecup (Before you ask, no, i dont draw circles round it, its a web design prog, CLICK THIS seem ok ,but i don't use it much.

Webhost, got to be Extendanet

[Wes]

Your hosting doesn't sound like a bad deal Someone-else, although looks like it's slightly lacking on some features but I suppose it must cover your needs...You get 5,000MB of disk space whereas my 1&1 has 50GB and you only get 2 Databases opposed to 10...

I was looking to set up a several websites in the beginning so went for the better package. Although on reflection, I'd have just stuck to something like yours to get used to one website first as just one can be a handful early on.

That html editor looks a little advanced to me...Wordpress plugins are by far the way to go IMO. There's simply a plugin for everything (SEO, code editors, backups, sliders, forms and the huge list goes on) and with most plugins it's just a one click install and it's done!! The theme changes are an absolute doddle too...

[Bork]

Wordpress is very good, you'll run out of ideas long before it runs out of capabilities because it's very popular software it's often targeted for hacking attacks. It can be worthwhile to have your wordpress instance hosted by someone who knows what they're doing so you don't fall foul of that. It can be damaging for business if someone idly visits your website one sunday afternoon to find it's been hijacked and just links to some horrible pictures

I use hover.com to buy my domain names normally, they're cheap but have excellent support if you need it. They'll do the right thing by default like hiding your physical address etc. Small things that catch some people out when it's their first time.

For email, i'd recommend considering Google Apps for Business. There's a bit of a learning curve involved and there is bugger all support (although there's plenty of documentation) but i'd whole heartedly recommend it, although something sticks in the back of my mind that it's no longer free for small businesses. It's just handy because you get GMail and all the storage space and spam filtering that comes with it. If you're advertising your email address decent spam filtering is worthwhile. There are other options outside GMail which are very effective for spam filtering, e.g. the free SpamHaus lists are pretty effective when coupled with greylisting.

Just be careful not to go too cheap for your hosting. I won't name and shame but a company i did work for about 10 years ago had a fairly large account with a brand name hosting company. They switched to a cheaper provider because it was going to save them over £600 / year. To be fair, they were probably over paying, but the new hosting lasted about 2 months. It was slow as a dog and then one day went offline, only to be told a hard disk had failed and they had no backups. Client should have had backups so the buck stops with them but still pretty poor IMO.

End random brain dump, hope it helps

EDIT: forgot to put up the whole reason i was posting if you want to roll the sleeves up and do your own web design, check out bootstrap at http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ and http://bootswatch.com and https://wrapbootstrap.com and google for others.

If you want to drag and drop an existing but free design, check out http://www.oswd.org

If you want to pay a small fee (£10 - £25) and get something genuinely beautiful, check out http://themeforest.net for wordpress specific designs.

[Someone-Else]

I think thats not a good business idea.

I have a company (I just invented it) called ultimate.

My website is ultimate.zog my email is

Code: Select all

info@somegenericfreeprovider.com

Would it not look better if the email was the same as my company name i.e

info@ultimate.zog

[CarpenterChris]

I think thats not a good business idea.

I have a company (I just invented it) called ultimate.

My website is ultimate.zog my email is

Code: Select all

info@somegenericfreeprovider.com

Would it not look better if the email was the same as my company name i.e

Code: Select all

info@ultimate.zog

Almost always you'll get at least 1 email address so you could have

someone-else@yourcompanyname.com

or

Enquires@companyname.com

.

Decided to go for the wordpress and bluehost. Thanks a lot. :)

[Wes]

Good plan Chris

Try not to use wordpress through the bluehost 'site builder or 1 click install' IMO. You can link a separate wordpress install to your bluehost database. Bluehost may be different, but I installed wordpress through 1&1's 1 click install application and now am not able to update wordpress!!! Which is critical for security.

Also updating or even installing some plugins isn't possible (Not that many though, 95% are fine).

I'd also recommend when you install a theme for your site (Twenty Eleven theme is set in wordpress as standard but there are loads of great themes to choose from!), learn how to create a 'child theme'. This will mean you can alter the design of your site using CSS and you wont loose any of your design work when it comes to theme updates. Plus the main theme (not child theme) will essentially be your theme backup if you cock anything up...It's all good fun...Enjoy mate

[Someone-Else]

Coffeecup sound easier, its WYSIWIG

what you see is what you get

[CarpenterChris]

Good plan Chris

Try not to use wordpress through the bluehost 'site builder or 1 click install' IMO. You can link a separate wordpress install to your bluehost database. Bluehost may be different, but I installed wordpress through 1&1's 1 click install application and now am not able to update wordpress!!! Which is critical for security.

Also updating or even installing some plugins isn't possible (Not that many though, 95% are fine).

I'd also recommend when you install a theme for your site (Twenty Eleven theme is set in wordpress as standard but there are loads of great themes to choose from!), learn how to create a 'child theme'. This will mean you can alter the design of your site using CSS and you wont loose any of your design work when it comes to theme updates. Plus the main theme (not child theme) will essentially be your theme backup if you cock anything up...It's all good fun...Enjoy mate

It came with FTP access so I'm going to put all the wordpress files in the directory of my site, then go to mysite.com/wordpress/install.php or whatever it is going to be. Then I'll just enter my MySQL database details into the installer and away we go! Hello 21st century!

I've had a look at some themes, theme forest looks like it could swallow up my money, so many really good themes, but as I'm probably just going to use the site to show of work to clients and then add a 'contact me' page, I'm more than likely going to go for a theme that shows of the photos, more than a 'blog' theme.

Thanks for your help mate, really appreciate it :)

[Wes]

You sound like you're on the ball there Chris

'KingSize' theme looks good, but £30 ish

One last thing I'd say, there's been a huge increase in people using smaller devices to log on the web i.e. Mobiles and tablets etc, so I'd perhaps make sure whatever them you go for is a 'responsive theme' (Loads of free ones out their). In other words your website/pictures will automatically adjusts to the size of whatever device is viewing it. You might know that by now but thought I'd mention it..

Let us know your site address when you're up and running (After 100 posts of course )..

[CarpenterChris]

Yeah, theme forest does look a bit expensive, but you have to spend money to make money I suppose

I didn't actually think about that, thanks.

Once I've got it up and running I'll show you guys. :)

Thanks for everything mate :)

[Megaross]

I use forth hosting, because I'm tight, and it's only £2 a year.
Downsides? The guys presumably run it part time so you'll never get a support answer straight away, about 11am or 4pm seems to be when they answer it.
Upsides? It's £2 a year and I've yet to have any real issues.

TSOhost/ Vidahost are the best in the business but they do charge accordingly.

I get my domains through 1&1, they've f*ck up a bill for me once over the years but my god was the service good when I phoned up. The rare breed of call centre worker that isn't a complete waste of space.

I code all my own stuff in HTML and CSS for a template, as well as all the graphics.
Then I've actually developed my own content management system with php, it's extremely basic but because I understand exactly what's happening I prefer it.

It's much simpler than it sounds, for me the graphics are the most frustrating part of a design.