I am hoping the computer types can help me out. I am on a committee of two charged with making a web page for a smaller organization. After reading around, including some older Straight Dope threads, hostica looked like a good bet to use. The other person’s brother has set up several computer web sites using Go Daddy, and she’s very high on them. She showed me one of her brother’s sites, and it looked pretty bad to me - very plain and he couldn’t easily provide text under his linked pictures. Color me unimpressed.
It very well could be the brother’s page building skills, and I may be judging too harshly. Does anyone here use Go Daddy for site hosting? If so - what are your thoughts about it?
A professional web designer is in the middle of creating my site for me now (I’d give you a link, but the text is pretty embarassing as it has a lot of placeholder/draft text) and she swears by Go Daddy.
I have no complaints so far, but then, I haven’t launched the site yet so I don’t know. However, I have no reason to believe I won’t end up with an attractive, professional site through Go Daddy. It’s all up to me now … must stop posting on SDMB and finish the darn site…
IMO it is your brother’s page building skills and not GoDaddy. They provide a variety of hosting capabilities and you can choose the one that fits your needs and budgets. We have several dedicated servers with GoDaddy and they provide us with the same capabilities that any other hosting service would. You can pick a Linux or Windows based server. With the dedicated servers you can install anything you would like.
My only complaint with GoDaddy is that we often will ask to rent many servers for a month (we cover some sporting events.) They have a month-by-month billing cycle so this isn’t a problem for them. But I specifically tell them each and every time that this is ONLY for a month. But they then put me in for automatic re-billing anyway. I then have to call them up, remind them of what was said and ask them to make it right. They always have, but it is a pain none-the-less. Now that I have learned that they will do this, I have started taking the following precautions: I go in and manually cancel the server at the end of the month - again a pain but not too big of a deal. I also use a “secure” number generated by Discover. This is unique to the GoDaddy site and can be canceled after the initial billing.
Easy to use basic web pages for beginners, they will register your domain name through GoDaddy for $10, and host your site for free. 100MB of storage. WYSIWIG page designer, import pictures, text and links into pre-rendered templates.
Site hosting and page building are totally different arenas.
I’ve had my site on GoDaddy for a number of years. I use it to register my domain and to redirect the domain name to another name. Both have always worked fine.
They will pester you repeatedly with sales of your domain name under every extension in the world but you can just ignore that. And they are good about warning you when your registration will expire.
Site building has nothing to do with the underlying host company. You can’t judge GoDaddy by how it’s used any more than you can judge a printing firm by the content of the books it puts out.
I use Godaddy and I have never had any problem with it. Their customer service has been great the few times I have needed it. I am really satisfied with them. They seem to be really reliable and a good value.
The company that hosts a site has *nothing * to do with the quality of how the web site looks, unless they also designed and built it.
I used Go Daddy for DNS and web hosting and they’ve done a good job and have good customer service, which I cannot say about one of their competitors who charges much more.
I code my own web sites, so the praise or criticism falls only on me, not Go Daddy.
They did make a little boo-boo a couple of months ago, left an ecommerce site I depend on down for about 18 hours.
The sysadmin for the ecommerce site didn’t seem too impressed with their tech support.
Echo Exapno and the others supporting GoDaddy. I had a couple dozen domains listed with them in the recent past, still have a half dozen.
They can get a bit ‘insistant’ with their marketing at times, but I’ve learned to click through the clutter.
I particularly like the reminders I get about renewing domain names, having lost a killer name in the past from lack of attention. Over the past 5 years I’ve found the customer service to be first rate.
I host with LunarPages.com however. Great prices and a ‘ton’ of features and services. They have tools that would make building a site easy, but I design in DreamWeaver. My sites are fairly simple, no e-commerce. The service there is excellent.
It’s the web designer who’s in charge of what a site looks like, not the host. When designing a site I would suggest a newbie find a website that is serviceable and copy the layout. (Often you can go to VIEW>SOURCE, copy the code and transfer it to your html program. Layout cannot be copyrighted.) Modify to fit your needs, substitute you graphics and, bingo-presto, you are in business.
I’ve been with Godaddy for years. So long that when they pull up my account they invariably say “wow, you’ve been here forever.”
I’ve never, ever had a problem with them that wasn’t rectified quickly. I have always been able to be helped by whoever answered the phone and I’ve never been on hold long. I’ve registered multiple domains, multiple hosting accounts, handled stuff for other folks and have never ever had a complaint about them.
The single best anecdote I can give you:
My mother decided she wanted a website/domain name. She went to godaddy.com and just started mashing buttons and entering her credit card. She had no idea what all she had signed up for and was completely confused. She of course, called me. (I used to run an ISP) I confidently gave her their number and they had her fixed in no time. That even amazed me. She can be extraordinarily thick at times.
I’ve referred them to many people always with great success. Fantastic support is worth a lot.
I’m curious… Is there a way to have google page creator upload the pages to your site, or did you just copy and paste the generated source? I couldn’t figure out how to make it publish the pages to anywhere but myname.googlepages.com. This seems like something my wife could use, but if it involves copying and pasting source and FTPing files around, there’s probably no chance. Too tedious and nerdy for her tastes.
Yes. Go to https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/[yoursitename].com/Dashboard , and click the Service Settings tab, and select Web Pages. On the Web Settings page, find the Web Address setting, and click change URL. Change it from http://www.[yoursitename].com-a.googlepages.com/ to http://www.[yoursitename].com . That should do it.
The way your site is designed, the way your site looks and the way your site works has nothing to do with who hosts it. Well, the way it works kinda does when it comes to speed. A host is just that, they host your site to the world wide web. First you build a site, then you find a host such as go daddy, then you upload the files of your site to godaddy’s server for them to host your (already completed, hopefully) site.
Now, that being said, I have used godaddy for the last two years. I have a Virtual Dedicated Server and have never had any trouble with it. The only trouble I’ve had is with their tech support not being as helpful as I would like them to be.
I’ve also noticed that if you want to upgrade anything on your server, you’re on your own. Godaddy doesn’t do any upgrades to the Virtual Private Servers. They do in fact upgrade their shared servers, though.
That’s what you should look into getting, a shared server for 3.95 a month. This site below is a great resource for hosting, site design and anything that has to do with running a site. Join it, learn it, love it and live it. So find the proper forums and don’t be afraid to ask these guys anything. Remember, a good answer requires a good question.
Thanks so much everyone. My Go Daddy fears have been put to rest.
I just need to know why anyone would want to devote a web site to handicapped parking signs…