Calling all web site/domain/TLD experts!

[Ritchie200]

Questions....

Looking to set up a web site for my biz.  I know a few of you have your own sites.  I would like to set one up and have it stand alone - in other words, I do not want it linked through a local provider or Intuit or something similar.  I want just jimsbiz.com/net/whatever.  Which brings me to my next question...  How many TLD's are people buying to protect their brand?  It seems like more are popping up every day.  And I also realize the benefits of possibly setting up your memory hog/transfer files/videos/pics on a different tld from your main site.  I have heard from several sources that godaddy is about the best domain service out there - true?  I would just like to hear from some folks who have done it for your advice, web site development tools/programs, pitfalls, etc.....  By the way, as evidence of even being on this site - I do not want to hire someone to do the work, I want to do it myself!

Thanks!
Jim

[EL34]

I had Go-Daddy for 3 days and got my money back
A bunch of liars that sold me a product just to get my money
Needed a web host that could provide Perl (everyone does this)
Needed to be able to get the shopping cart and other Perl based things up and running ahead of time before going live.
Could not get the Perl things to run properly.
Could not find anyone technical at Go-daddy except idiots that were reading from a manual

Spent 3 days on the phone with those idiots and finally cancelled the account and got my money back

Went to IX-webhosting and was up and running in less than 30 minutes.
http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.dspmain?PID=2949771&gclid=CP2wrqb1i58CFQghnAod_A2jJQ
That's where EL34world and Hoffmanamps.com are now.

I have had to call IX many times for help, info, etc and I have nothing but praise regarding their technical people and their skill level.
You can get hosting for as little as $3.95 a month

First purchase your domain name  - www.mywebsite.com or whatever
You can do this many places like network solutions or IX can do it for you
If you are unsure about it all, get a web host that has good technical people that are happy to assist you, like IX webhosting, not Go-Daddy.
I would purchase your domain name at IX and let them set you up and get your web site live.

Start small, set up your index.html home page first and then add pages slowly as you get the hang of it.
If you do not know how to do html editing and create web pages it helps to get a WYSIWYG editing software like MS Web Expression.
I have used Front page 1998, 2000, 2002 and now web expressions. They all have been very easy to use.

There are free html editors out there but the ones I have tried all sucked.
Here's one that did not suck as bad as some of the other ones, but still sucks compared to Web expressions.
http://kompozer.net/

[RicharD]

Another thumbs down for GoDaddy.  They're really geared towards the housewife who wants a website.  I'm using hostmonster and they've been good to me.

[Shrapnel]

GoDaddy is only so well known because they tend to use all those hotties to advertise their biz. Bluehost, and others can probably work for you. You can actually chat with someone over at Bluehost before you even invest.

I actually use the "free" Zymic service. (Doesn't do pearl for the free service afaik, but it does PHP and MySQL, and NO ADS) Free doesn't do PHP e-Mail functions, but a paid hosting would.

Best advice, search and talk to the providers before investing. Also decide if you want some kind of CRM (Content Resource Management) such as Drupal, WordPress, etc. Some of these have integrated shopping carts, and then there are shopping cart based sites using oscommerce and zen-cart. Some create sites and just tie it into PayPal to handle the sales (checkout end.)

[PRR]

> How many TLD's are people buying to protect their brand?

Do you have a brand so hot that some scum will register jimmsbiz, jimzbiz, himsbiz, etc? Mostly only folks like utube get into that kind of fight.

And how could Hoffman "protect his brand"? There's several other guys named Hoffman(n) selling amplifiers, and hundreds more selling other products (drills, dovetails, packaging, music, propellers...). Probably very few were registered to ride Doug's coattails.

> the benefits of possibly setting up your memory hog/transfer files/videos/pics on a different tld from your main site.

Different server-machine, perhaps. www.jim.com for main site, videos.jim.com for big videos... that's not a TLD thing.

And how big-fat does your first startup have to be? For my university, I ran 24 sites including audio and video files and one really lazy/slow script on one 2GHz Dell. The utilization meter hovered at 1% and bopped to 10%-20% very rarely.

Here's a screen-grab of CPU use. It runs high because Task Manager uses CPU, and because I snagged this through a VNC connection rather than from the console. It's taking hits from all over the world all day long, I've sat at the console and watched, and it's just never working hard.

Yes, the music and video are not popular like an iTunes or YouTube.... when you get BIG you have to work different. But don't over-buy just to promote your band or studio or capacitors.

> web site development tools

If you know what you want to do and how to do it: UltraEdit. It's better than NotePad, which is better than vi on a VT-100, which is better than a chisel and rock.

[EL34]

I did purchase the hoffmanamps.net domain also, but I wouldn't purchase other domains unless you get a well established business.

I own several other domains like
www.hotvalves.com 

[tubesornothing]

What I did before I selected my ISP was I called their tech support line about 5 different times and on weekends.  Asked a bunch of techie questions.  Too many of the ISPs fail at tech support.

[Shrapnel]

Ritchie,

Are you planning on making your own web-pages? How's your experience in this? If the site is to be complex, and your knowledge close to a n00b, you may want to farm out the creation and maintenance until such a time as your knowledge can take over. (I don't know, you may already be at this level, or may not.) I'm willing to help you with it if needed (with what I do know.) IF you do farm-out, describe verbosely what you want, and how it should look, then don't go changing your mind a dozen times. (When I design for others, I show them what I thought I understood they wanted, and get their approval or revise as needed.) Changing your mind too much just leads to dissatisfaction of what you get, and a writer/creator feeling the same.

You got some good answers so far: investigate, ask questions, choose wisely and get help where and when needed (as you have by asking this.)

[tubesornothing]

I forgot to mention, select an ISP that has the ability to support "Content Management" tools.  One example is "website baker". http://start.websitebaker2.org/en/introduction.php

This will enable you to easily edit the web pages yourself without having to learn HTML, CSS, etc.

There are a lot of content management systems out there, you might need to review them a bit.

[EL34]

My Ix webhosting accounts come with free site studio
http://sitestudio.psoft.net/site_studio_demo_page.html

Never tried it
You just have to turn it on in your control panel

Your get e-commerce, web mail, ftp manager, all the php stuff, perl, mysql, odbc, phpbb, and lots of other stuff are all included in the web hosting.

[RicharD]

Beware of the cheap hosts.  Lemme tell you a horror story:

Several years ago, I was commissioned to build a website for a band who shall remain nameless.  I found a dedicated server with a price that seemed too good to be true from a company called Infinology.  It was in fact a dedicated server with adequate bandwidth but all I got was an IP address, usr & passwd, and a raw install of Apache on top of a FreeBSD OS.... that's it.  Tech support was virtually nonexistent, and when they did help, they charged me for it.  Well after blowing the whole site up and paying to have it put back to it's original state of nothingness, I ended up building a clone of the server and hanging it inside my LAN so I'd have a box to experiment with.  My unix skills are...... well.... not so good, but I did manage to get PHP, MySQL, and a few other odds-n-ends installed and working.  Eventually got the whole site up and working.  Probably made less than a dollar an hour by the time it was all said and done.  Then I was dealing with their outtages like all the time.  It'd usually take 2 days fr them to respond and get us back up.  About 1 1/2 years into the deal, Infinology disappeared in the middle of the night.  A few months later, they were back, but I washed my hands of the project when the site died.  The band wasn't happy with me nor I with the whole ordeal.  Sometimes you gotta cut your losses and run.

[EL34]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not Infinology

That's the web host that screwed me and the reason I started looking for new homes for all my web sites.
They were ok in the beginning, many years ago, and then something horrible happened at infinlogy.
A guy named David used to help me in the beggining and he was ok.

A small web host in Sarasota, fl is where it all started, then they got way too expensive
Then Infinolgy for several years until they went south
Go-daddy for 3 days
Ix-Webhosting now and so far so good.

[Ritchie200]

As usual, I knew I came to the right place!  Thank you all for your tips and advice!

Maybe I should have been a little more specific in what I am intending for my content.  I am looking to put up lots of video blogs, written blogs, as well as a "library" of reference materials.  I would like to have search capability on the blog content as well as the reference materials.  Maybe an alphabetically listed archive to back up the search?  Then the usual - "About Me", Learn More", "Contact Me", etc., buttons.  Seems pretty simple (?), do not need a shopping cart until I finish my book.... - but then, that's why I'm asking!  The work I do requires telephone or face-to-face to quote.

Am I a noob?  Yeah, I guess I qualify!  In the past I have done work with everything from RPG, cobol, fortran(trash) to extensive 3d cad and cam programing - so I think I have that logic mindset down.  Whether that will help me design a web page remains to be seen.  However, I am in no rush and don't mind tripping and falling as I learn to walk!  Obviously, simplicity of navigating my site would be paramount.  But I have seen a lot of amateurish sites and I would hope those experiences would help guide me.  Shrapnel, I may need you on speed dial!  Thank you for the offer....you may regret!

Doug, it sounds like your ix guys are pretty slick with everything I might need.  I will definitely check them out!  TON, thanks, I will check them out.  Buttery, I just need a godaddy girl to help me around the office!  Maybe I do qualify as a housewife!

PRR, I'm not worried about the slight differences in spelling on the domain.  If this is successful, and all I bought was jim.com, for example - I would hate to see a competitor buy jim.net and put up similar content.  This is why I'm sure Doug also purchased his .net also.  There are just a ton of TLDs out there and you could spend a lot of $ picking them up!  Also, I would love to host the site, but my satellite link (with tech support from India/Philippines/Vietnam - all named Bob) is too fragile and would hate to lose clients who are waiting for the cloud cover, rain, snow to move over my house.  Thanks for the advice!

Time to start looking!
Jim

[Shrapnel]

Ritchie (Jim),

You got a good enough background there that taking the time to play around with learning the coding (beyond [X]HTML) you can do it. The [X]HTML is just basically a bunch of formatting tags (with CSS helping for a uniform format.)

Just to get started, download XAMPP (get the full one to get MySQL and I think PHP with it) and Perl and install it on a WinBox (or Linux box if that's your flavor) and play with it. It's a free way to get your feet wet while learning. (you may want two folders, one for your work in progress, and one for backup) with the work folder inside the right folder, and your installed browser, http://localhost/ is all you need for an address when XAMPP is running on the same machine, otherwise use the IP address assigned to that PC by your LAN instead of "localhost." Most CRM packages aren't so W3C standards compliant, but they do work. (Wordpress may be a good choice, but investigate it to make sure.)

As far as regretting it, that remains to be seen  but time will tell. My contact info is on my website that should be linked to my profile.

[EL34]

I would not worry about disk space or bandwidth too much these days.
May have been an issue many years ago, but you usually get quite a bit of bandwidth and disk space these days.

All the Video's, mp3's and other media that people can download on EL34world don't even come close to maxing out my plan.
That was with 1,700,000 hits in December

The basic plan I have at IX gives me 2500gb's a month of bandwidth and I don't even come close
I also get 400,000mb of disk space
All of EL34 world only takes up 2400mb

[RicharD]

>NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not Infinology

They suck in ways I'd never even though of before.

[EL34]

Yeah, they stole almost a years of hosting fee's from me and trashed a bunch of my web pages.
They should be behind bars

[PRR]

> I would love to host the site,

No, no, no.

That's what I did 1995-2009.

I got a wire into the building. I got an old 386 from Claudia. I installed NT and PWS. Golly, I had a webserver!

PWS is a cut-down MS IIS, and even in my innocence it smelled like hacker-bait. This turned out to be true. Though MS software does not always wait for hackers to fall down. Also my "server room" was a closet with bad power. Lots of fixing, several midnight runs from home to kick life back into things. Since I was on salary, taking time to work on stuff was part of the game.

I am REALLY glad I don't do it no more.

If you have anything ELSE to do (blogging, selling), you don't want to muck with machines or core software. Certainly not at $7/month, which seems to be the going rate for what you really need. That would not cover 15 minutes of my time, and while there were months I didn't touch the servers, there were weeks when I did little else.

That's before the requirement for a SOLID internet connection. DSL/cable hardly cuts it, even if you pay to be allowed a server. Satellite seems far more dubious, and less likely to allow you to run a server.

What's your upload speed? In early DSL, uploading large files from home to the server could take hours: ADSL (the only kind in residential "DSL") is arbitrarily slow going out. Most folks don't mind: web-surfing is a 100-byte request and a megabyte reply. But uploading videos is going against the stream. In ADSL the up-limit is arbitrary (and set low to choke servers); in satellite the uplink is technically unlikely and for-sure slow.

You really should host videos on YouTube. You can embed them in your site so patrons think they are ON your site. YouTube's servers really are better at this than most any commodity host. YouTube re-processes videos for free, and works to be sure most viewers have no trouble. 'Most any other video technology, someone won't have the player or the player won't have the codec.... but everybody and their grandmother watches kitten-videos on YouTube.

[madison]

I am in Richie's position but I have a couple of very basic sites up via Hostmonster.
Wonder if anyone has any tips for a Mac user as far as what site creation software to use?
Looking for a very cheap or free alternative.
I used to use Dreamweaver but my version too old.
Sorry to high jack.

[tubesornothing]

I am in Richie's position but I have a couple of very basic sites up via Hostmonster.
Wonder if anyone has any tips for a Mac user as far as what site creation software to use?
Looking for a very cheap or free alternative.
I used to use Dreamweaver but my version too old.
Sorry to high jack.

I am pretty sure Hostmonster supports Joomla, Typo3, etc.  With CMS system you dont need to have creation software on your computer.  Easy to create, lots of features, easy to update.

[madison]

Thanks.
They have so many options, hard to know where to start.