To begin my year, for college and work, I need to set up my own domain on the web, but I got confused on the offers or what to look in an Internet service provider.
Here is what Star Logic offers for 4.95 a month for 12 months:
100 GB of storage 1,500 GB Transfer, FREE Setup, Web Statistics, vDeck 2.0 , E-commerce enabled, Front Page Extensions, Host 10 Domains in 1.
For comparison, a Deluxe Plan at Go Daddy for $6.29 a month offers:
100 GB Space, 1,000 GB Transfer, 1,000 Email Accounts, 25 MySQL Databases, Unlimited Email Forwards, Forums, Blogging, Photo Galleries, No ads
My confusion comes from wondering how good a feature is to host 10 domains in one or is it is better to get so many MySQL databases, of course the important item here is that no ads have to be sharing my website, an item that I did not notice on Star Logic, but isn’t that the case usually when you pay for a domain?
Those questions aside, I’m asking here for the advise of Dopers on what do you think or recommend as the best plans or companies for a domain for a small personal business that can be technological and graphics intensive.
This is probably a local thing, and I’m not local to you. But you might want to talk to your present ISP (i.e. whoever’s giving you broadband now). It’s often the case that they can bundle domain hosting with the services you’re already getting for a relatively low price – I run my business web site this way. It costs me about $20/month more than the broadband alone, but I get lots of options, and they’re actually knowledgeable about what they’re doing.
A domain is the actual name of the site, which is separate from what you’ve listed in your post (hosting services), which is separate again from an internet service provider. Could you be a little more specific about what, exactly, you’re looking for?
If you want to host a basic web site you will need to purchase a domain as well as a hosting package. The domain is the name of the site, the URL. Normally you pay for and manage that separately from the hosting, but some places will allow you to do both.
If you’re paying for hosting and for your own domain, you should not have any ads placed on your site. That’s normally reserved for places that offer free web site hosting and domains as a way to offset the costs.
When you say ‘technological and graphics intensive’, what does that really mean? Will you have a lot of pictures? If so, are they high resolution? Do you need static or dynamic pages? Will you be using web forms? Are the pages going to be interactive in any way? Do you need forums, blogging, etc? How many visits do you hope to get to the site on a regular basis? Will you be hosting downloadable content such as large files or images? All of these things will determine what features will be important to look for.
I use PowWeb and I’ve been very happy with them. Their basic plan offers most of the things someone with a personal or small business site will need. I’ve used it to host picture galleries (there is a built-in gallery software tool) and static pages along with forums and a blog (which utilizes MySQL) and administered several email accounts for several domains.
Mmm, I thought the examples would make clear that yes, I’m looking for hosting and for my own domain, Powweb looks good, but it offers only 400GB transfer a month and it asks for $7.77 a month.
Basically my web site at the beginning will include flash animation, hi-res graphics, and some video clips, in essence a portfolio, but soon I would like to add a front for a workstation and network repair service, (Animation is a tough field to get into, I’m getting a degree because I do like it, and because I always have a good job to fall back is that does not pan out, I have training on Network maintenance and I’m A+ certified)
The reason why I’m concerned with Data Transfer / Bandwidth is because I’m also planning to start a webcomic and I have seen examples of even obscure webcomics that run out of bandwidth very fast.
I’ve been with WebHSP in one form or another for the past eight years. While they’re not the cheapest around, their service has been excellent. If you ask really nicely, they’ll even give you SSH access - which may or may not be important to you. It is to me, but I like that they don’t just hand it out to everybody. I had to fax in a copy of my ID before they’d open it up for my account.
FWIW, they usually respond to my medium-priority helpdesk tickets in the middle of the night within a half hour of my opening them.