Forum Moderators: mack
First I'll say what I planned on doing, where that went wrong and then ask for adice.
I'm just some guy that decided to build my first website for a club I want to start. My ISP provides me with 100M of space and domain registration through Tucows. My plan was to register my domain, conceal my whois data so I don't get calls in the middle of the night from Germany, build my web pages using Frontpage because it's what came on my machine and use the 100M my ISP provides for my site.
I was stoked to see that the domain was available and it's now mine. I thought I'd have access to a concealing option at some point and called my ISP when I couldn't figure that out. Concealing is not possible through my registrar and I suppose that means any Tucows registrar. Next up was some questions about how to load my pages onto my 100M ISP space. It's not possible with my new domain unless I buy a web hosting account for $10 per month. To use my ISP 100M for a page the site address has to go something like this: www.myISP.com/whatever
I definately intend to use my new domain but wonder how much it costs to transfer to a registrar that would conceal my address & phone data and who they are. Also, how much doe concealing the data cost?
Next question is, should I pay $10 a month and stay with my ISP for the basic web hosting or move on. Here's what they provide at that price:
1)Primary and secondary DNS for my domain. Why do I need a secondary. (Be gentile, I'm new)
2)100 Megabytes of storage space. Same space I thought I was getting for what I already pay. :(
3) CGI-email. This is a personal/sports club web page and I see no value in email services, but maybe I'm missing something.
4)Deluxe Email service or email routing for your domain. Same notes as given for #3.
5)5 email boxes. Same notes as given for #3.
6)50 Megabytes of email storage. Same notes as given for #3.
7)Full website statistics. OK...
8)Shared port (no dedicated IP address). No clue!?
9)5 Gigabytes of transfer per month. Guessing that's OK.
One thing going for these folks it the support has been great.
I really didn't want to pay a monthly for this website because It's never going to pull a dime in. And if I'm going to pay I'd like to get the most I can for the money to include service that will put up with the occasional new guy question.
So much for my plan. What do you see as my best options?
Thanks a million for your insight!
Ron
I'm sure others will have more to contibute, but first - don't worry too much about concealing the whois info. I've had my home phone number listed in mine since my first site went up in 2002 and have never had a call.
Next up was some questions about how to load my pages onto my 100M ISP space.
The easiest way is to ftp into it, but I don't really understand the set-up you're describing (hosted by your ISP).
Next question is, should I pay $10 a month and stay with my ISP for the basic web hosting or move on.
Imho, move on. At a quick read of your post, it doesn't look like you have your own domain in the URL do you? (www.myISP.com/whatever). I might be confused on that. But, if you intend to get serious about the site at any time in the future, get a cheap hosting package from a reliable company using your own domain. For the storage and bandwidth that you're getting from your ISP, you could at least multiply it by ten for 15 USD/month. It's not much money. If you care at all about the site, and intend to make it a permanent online institution, go wild and spend it.
I spent a bit of time here last night, searching and reading but I suppose I didn't hit on all the right points.
My tech/support guy, which seemed to know his stuff said that I can't use the space which comes with their internet account for a site with a stand alone domain name, like www.mydomain.com. Instead, to use that space my site's address would have to start with www.MyInternetProvidersSiteHere.com/aNameIcomeUpwith
Question: Even though I registered my domain through them I can get hosting anywhere and load pages to that domain without any coordination with my ISP/registrar before doing so, right?
The reason I'd like my whois info concealed is because I've been a member of several sports forums where I'll be posting the new website and, like most everyone there, I've made some people angry over the years. If I have to leave it open, I'm not worried because I put a 555 phone # there which I'd planned to correct it after getting the info concealed. I guess I can just leave it as is. My name and email are correct.
For now, I hope to build a simple site that has a background photo, a bunch of links, a main link to a pbase photo gallery that the site will focus on and submission guidelines for sending in photos for the gallery.
I can see the site growing into hosting the images itself which are about 150 high quality photo enlarging to 900ish pixels by 600ish pixels, having a photo submission guidelines page and possibly translations into German and French, having a separate links page and a local club page. I expect the page to be very popular in relative terms and be around for at least 5 or 10 years. The end result I've described will take a lot of learning on my part but I'm willing to do what it takes if I can pull it off without paying more than about $15 a month, in the end.
I guess from this point what I need is:
To find a good web host for my needs, grab a free FTP Client program (reading Filezilla and Core FTP are OK) and I've just downloaded something called gVim6.4 which I gather is going to help me build some pages.
My time is limited though and I'm really really new. (The only experience I have with HTML is changing font sizes, colors and alignments for a rare ebay listing.) I'd love to get the simple and searchable base page described early up and running quickly with the ability to improve and expand on it as I have the time and knowledge.
Thanks one heck of a lot if you've actually suffered through all of this and are ready to enlighten me.
I love helping the newbies out on the boards where I'm a resident pro and I guess this is where karma comes into play.
Cheers.
Ron
