Looking for advice on setting up a website

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, I’m in the process of building a pretty simple website for the softball team I run. I am looking for advice about how to host it and about setting it up, including aquiring the domain name.

I guess the main reason I’m making the site is just for the heck of it, or to kill some time or for a hobby or whatever. The second reaosn is that I am a recent college graduate looking for a job in the IT field (not web design though). I would like to make the site into something I could possibly show a potential employer as an example of my work. I’m not expecting to blow anyone away with this site, just a decent site that looks pretty professional.

The site itslef is probably going to be real basic, at least to begin with. Some things it will include are a team roster, player profiles, stats, that kind of thing. I may or may not want to make it more detailed sometime in the future.

I am NOT looking for free hosting or anything involving ads or stuff like that. I would like to keep the cost down to a point, but I’m willing to pay for reliability and having my site hosted by a reputable company.

I am thinking about either now or in the future, trying to sell some team items (like hats, shirts, etc.) from the site. There wouldn’t be very many orders at all, and the transactions would take place via email only. No shopping cart or anything like that. Would that affect how I’d have the site hosted? Would that make me a commercial site or something like that?

Another think I may consider adding in the future would be some dynamic content. Right now the whole site would be static, probably created in FrontPage. But, in the future I may make some of the content dynamic, probably using ASP.NET. Would this greatly affect my options of hosts for this site? If it were that big of a deal or a big price increase, I’d probably just scrap the dynamic content idea.

What about email? I’ve seen some hosts offer a certain number of email addresses or stuff like that. Would setting up a few email addresses be that tough or costly? How would I go about doing that?

Any advice, suggestions, or warnings for me? Anyting I should look for, or anyting I should try to avoid?

Thanks.

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Domain name registration: godaddy.com
Host (the one I use): dixiesys.com ($35/year, IIRC)

FWIW, Dixiesys and a lot of other hosts use UNIX machines, so there may be issues with ASP implementation (as UNIX ASP implementations obviously won’t be as…native as those on Windows host machines).

As far as merchandise goes, check out whatever the hell service our very own Jin Wicked uses - it looks like it may do the job for you, both in terms of production and selling.

If you already have your own routes for production, PayPal has simple e-commerce capabilities (though with huge security exploits - e-mail me for details). For something a little more robust, try something like paysystems.com. It’s what I’ll be using for my own e-commerce site (look for it in February! :wink: ) and it looks like a pretty solid service to me.

3

Try one of those graphic programs that let you make baseball cards of your players & post them on the site too.

But having the right name for the site is most important, otherwise people won’t remember what it is.

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Alright, I thought I’d reserect this thread because I have actualy began work on the site and am looking for additional advice now if possible.

I registered the domain name through godaddy.com for a year for like $10. I also set up hosting through goddady.com for the next month, but I am still not sure that they are long term answer. My current hosting plan is their “deluxe” package which costs $9.95/mo. But, I am looking to add their “deluxe w/ASP” package because I want to add a database into my site. That cost would be $12.95/mo. Is this a reasonable price, or should I look elsewhere? If so, where?

As far as designing the site itself, so far I’ve been using Front Page just because its easy. I have heard many bad things about Front Page, but it is the only program I have access to, and although I know a little HTML, it still seems like I can do more with Front Page right now. Is this a bad idea? Is it really a big deal to not use this program? What are my other options? The main knocks I hear about Front Page are that it isn’t always understood by browers that arent IE (so far this hasnt’ been a problem), and that it is hard to work with the code outside of that program. But, if I work on it in Front Page all the time would this really be a problem? Just how hard is it to work with the code outside of the program? Any other issues to consider?

As for what I’m working on right now, its pretty much a typical website you’d find for a sports team. Player bios, schedules, stats, that type of thing. I am tyring to make it as professional as possible. I get a lot of my ideas from sites of minor league baseball teams and even the mlb ones. But, of course my site doesn’t compare to those proffesional sites (at least not right now).

Well, that’s about it for now. I think I may have some more questions come up as I work on the site more, but I can’t think of them now. Any suggestions would be greatly apperciated.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - FrontPage sucks. But it’s still better than not having a site. It’ll be a royal PITA, but you can always go and clean up the code later, when you learn more HTML.

That being said, if you have the time (season’s not starting up soon or what have you), do NOT design the page in FrontPage. Do what you can in HTML, have dopers help you with the rest. Through this thread, through e-mail whatever. I can’t imagine a functional design for what you want that I, or any other savvy doper, can’t whip up in a few minutes or tell you how to do yourself.

I also can’t imagine any of the HTML savvy dopers being unwilling to help out. FWIW, my e-mail is in my profile.

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I second what KKBattousai said - don’t design your page in frontpage unless you really have to. If you do then make sure you at least check it on all the various browsers to make sure it looks okay.

At the end of the day if you want to use it as an example of what you can do, then the last thing you want is to be showing it to potential employers only to find that it doesn’t look right on whatever browser they are using, or that when they view the source its covered in frontpage-isms.

I’d say treat this as an opportunity to build up your html - use frontpage if you like, but keep it in the html view. Then if you get really stuck you can always dive across to the WYSIWIG mode to do something then dive back to the code.

Plenty of us dopers are web professionals and are always happy to show off our knowledge by helping you with any problems - big or small.

And don’t worry about asking a question that “makes you look stupid” - there’s no such thing. Its all part of the learning curve.

If you want any advice direct, or even just someone to glance over what you’ve done or bounce ideas off of then feel free to email me. Although i don’t do ASP :slight_smile: