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Now be gentle, its my fist time in this group.
I am planning out a web site for an online travel agancy run by me myself and I.
I have some free web space from my ISP blueyonder, the domain I would be given is www.mysite.example.co.uk
The question is if I buy a domain name and point it to this free web space would it still get good search engine postioning (site design aside) or do I have to go and buy some 'proper' commericla hosted space?
Also on another note.
If I build my primary menus which will appear on most pages and add them to my pages as include files making my job of alterations much easier is this ok with the search engine? or do they like to see static html for links.
[edited by: rogerd at 8:23 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs, please... [/edit]
Welcome to WebmasterWorld! You've found the right place to answer your first, question, but not the right guy, I'm sorry to say.
In the meantime, on the second question. You will be including these files using some sort of server-side technology such as SSI, PHP, Perl or whatever you choose.
A search engine is an internet client. As such, it has no idea what goes on server side to put your page together. Therefore, there is not and can't be any inherent penalty to having a dynamic page and the advantages are tremendous. If you are worried about server load, you can use some sort of caching.
Tom
Any other advice on the hosting/domain question welcomed.
Chris
[edited by: agerhart at 9:58 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] removed company specifics [/edit]
If you are using your Blueyonder space make sure after you point the domain to it it doesn't visabaly redirect, by that I mean that if you go to www.domain.com it doesn't redirect to www.chrisf.domain.com
To be honest if you are going to build anything more than a vanity site I would avoid free webspace. I would read through WebmasterWorld, work out what technologies you are going to use and find a host that offers this for you.
You may not feel as if you will need a database now but you might after a bit of thought think it might be worth planning it for the future. Most free spaces won't allow you to have one for example. If you have dabbled in ASP but your host only offers PHP it would be more sensible to find a Windows based host.
Decent hosting these days is as cheap as chips and might save you a lot of hassle in the long run.
And lastly the best thing you can do is read as much as you can round here, for a brand new site there is a excellent post on Build a successful site in 12 months, its over 2 years old but still has all the basics you need
[webmasterworld.com...]
and also have a look in the Link Development Forum because without links you won't be found!
[webmasterworld.com...]
"Beginning Wednesday, October 6th, all clients sites will be moved from clientname.foo.com to www.foo.com/clients/sites/clientname"
Which means you are screwed. Hosting is cheap. Consider what it would cost you (in time, effort) to move your site from free.foo.com to yoursite.com in 2 years time versus what it would cost to host it properly outright.
If you are actually thinking of using a free host, don't unless you have absolutely no money and your time is worth nothing to you. If not dealing with the hassles of free hosting would allow you another hour to work or another hour to cook a meal at home instead of eating out, you'll make your money back. Some cheap hosts are very good, but I have experienced and heard nothing bad about free hosts.
That said, I first started hosting for free on paid space that was free to me which is a totally different situation. As long as you can use your own domain and have access to advanced features, free is fine! In fact, if anyone wants to offer me free space on a quality ISP, I'll be happy to take you up on it!
Tom
www.mysite.example.co.uk
If the example.co.uk in this case is the name of your hosting company, then absolutely do not use it for this kind of site.
Firstly, as PatrickDeese said, you don't have the kind of control which means that your site can remain as a permanent feature at the same address. If the free provider decided to change all the URLs, or to exclude all search engine spiders to save bandwidth, your site will disappear from the SERPs without a trace - and all your hard work with it.
You mention buying a domain name and pointing it to the free space. Trouble is, it looks good in theory, but in practice it won't be a good idea. Usually the only option when using such free space is to have your mysite.example.co.uk site loading within a frame showing the domain name. This is a killer for not only the search engine bots, but also it terms of usability for your visitors, who can't bookmark your pages correctly to name just one issue.
Proper hosting with your own domain name is cheap: from $7 to $15 a month for a basic shared hosting package, and a domain name at $9 a year. Other very important things you get with real hosting is a detailed statistics package with page views, visitor info and referrers. You can't run a real site without that kind of info.
Aside from that, it makes a difference where other links point to, and how the internal site navigation is set up - like which URL the site pages point to when linking back to the homepage. It'll be a mess with PR.
That said, I've got a couple of sites on ISP space for a few years that work just fine for their purpose and do well, using the actual address and not redirection. I'll more than likely do a couple more because the space is available, just limited scope/personal sites. There's no scripting, CGI, PHP or SSI possible, so it does have limitations. But for a serious commercial site with substantial revenue expectations, I totally agree - a real domain and hosting are absolutely the way to go.
Arrgghhhh! Stupid typo
but I have experienced and heard nothing bad about free hosts.
I meant to say "nothing but bad", in other words don't do it. My basic list of things that I must have are
- own domain
- php
- htaccess
- mod_rewrite
In practice, I would also require
- database server
- shell access
- unique IP
If you are not getting these things, free isn't worth it unless you just want to put up pictures for Auntie May to look at.
Tom
I have been hearing a lot about PHP.
Chris
