By “poor” I mean I don’t have much money right now, although I admit to sometimes being hapless as well.
I’m job-hunting so ideally I’d like something where I can have a dignified front page with links to some of my graphics work, and then a link at the bottom to a couple of personal pages; or even better, a slightly different address for the personal ones so employers don’t stumble across them, even though my baby nephew is mucho cute and nobody would get upset seeing a dozen aunty pix of him.
My e-mail is in the rocketmail domain, which was taken under Yahoo a few years ago, and therefore the easiest way for me to start is to use one of their packages.. However, this would give me a Geocities account, and, no offense to those who have them, I get the impression industry people know right away it’s an amateur(ish) thing. If I’m wrong, I’ll start with them.
What works for you guys who have websites? I’d need one big enough to load .psd and .qxp and Illustrator files. On the personal one, I’d like to have .jpgs and maybe a blog. I can only spend less than $20/month or so. TIA!
$20 a month?? That’s more than enough to set yourself up with a decent host and plenty of space. Alternatively you can use a yahoo or geocities host, and buy a domain with url forwarding. No one will know that it’s being hosted by Geocities (until it’s too late ).
I like my host: brinkster.com. It came recommended by another doper. Good, fast customer service, and lots of features for well under your price range.
Who is providing your internet access? Your typical ISP will provide you with ~20M of space just because, with an address of something like www.yourispname.com/YourEmailAddressName. The advantages of that are that it’s no extra charge to you, and won’t have any annoying ads or popups or whatever. Since most ISP will give you at least 5 email addresses, this means you can have 5 separate sites.
I use my real-name-email site to host a small website, and re-direct people to my Linux box where I host pictures, and my other one to store pictures in case I need illustrations for my SDMB posts or something.
(You wouldn’t be able to host the blog though, 'cause that requires that the server in question be running special software.)
I’d forget Yahoo/Geocities. You can get an account with a real host for $5.00/mo including free domain name registration and have all the bells and whistles you will probably eventually want if you get into web building. Domain names are so cheap and easy these days, I would consider it required for anyone not wishing to appear amateurish. Obviously, it is mostly the look and feel of the site that will determine the impression you make, but having your own domain name is also part of the picture. Here is the provider I use: http://www.vbdigital.com/?action=hosting
$20 a month can send you straight to the elite range of web hosting for private type web sites. I am not kidding. It is an extremely compettitive market and you can easily get a web site with several gigabytes of web space, point and click web building tools, databases, message boards, unlimited e-mail accounts under your own domain and lots more for <$10 a month. The only issue is that you may have to pay for a whole year up front and you may have to pay to register your domain. Still, the whole thing should be well less than $100 for the year and you can do anything with it.
I won’t recommend my host because I think there are better deals out there but I know that others will chime in with suggestions.
I’ve been using Dreamhost for a few months and I’m pretty darned happy with them.
They offer:
-4800 MB space (+40 MB a week, free)
-120 GB (+1 GB a week, free)
-600 email accounts
-unlimited MySQL databases
-CGI/Perl/PHP/Ruby support for any blogging software you might want to install
-75 shell accounts
-1 free domain, along with hosting for an unlimited number of other domains that you register yourself
All for $22.40 a year. If you want to use them, just sign up for the 12-month L1 (Crazy Domain Insane) plan and use coupon code “Reply” at Step 5. Update the total price before you finish the process to make sure the code went through.
(That’s a referral code with a discount, but I applied the maximum amount so I don’t get anything from it. See this thread if you want proof from other dopers who signed up.)
The only thing Dreamhost doesn’t offer is the friendly “site builder” type wizards that other services do. You must be familiar enough with HTML or web site programs to make your own pages.
Also, if you’d like, I can make a free account for you on my own Dreamhost account. I can give you a gig or so of space and your own domain name. Both will last until June '06 unless I decide to renew (I’m not sure if I will yet). I’m only offering because I signed up for a 1-year plan and I found myself using it much less than I thought I would, so somebody else might as well make use of it. If you’re interested, just email me by clicking on my name.
www.nearlyfreespeech.net has a really great pricing structure for small web sites, and fantastic customer service, in my experience. You plunk a few bucks (say 20) in your account and they bill you based on exactly how much bandwidth and disk space you use. You can never rack up huge charges, because they just disable your site if the funds run out (after sending you a warning when you’re getting low, of course). You can literally run a small website for months there without even spending a whole dollar.
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