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Building A Website And Getting It Online


mr ailsbury

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Right, I know a few of you guys have your own websites and i'm looking for a bit of advice.

I've started making a web page in Dreamweaver, checked all the links work and all that stuff and now I want to get it online, this is where I got stuck...

What I need to know basically is:

How much should I be paying to get a domain name and hosting? (a site I had recommended came up at £48 which seems really steep?) Can anyone recommend a good site to get all this from?

Is there anything I should watch out for when buying a domain name/hosting?

Cheers

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Buy your domain and hosting seperately. Can't stress that enough! If you buy them together then when the domain is up for renewal, hosts often charge silly amounts to renew. I get mine from 123-reg.co.uk for £7 every 2 years.

I use Vidahost.co.uk but I set my uncle up with tsohost.co.uk. Both are equally good and are recommended by the overclockers.co.uk forums. Both have UK servers and their shared hosting packages cost about £35 a year.

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Same as muel, make sure you get your domain seperately. I'm not a fan of 123-reg, domainmonster gets my vote.

For hosting take a look at hostingreborn.com - PAYG hosting run by an old work mate of mine who is pretty good. cheap cheap too.

Once you have both, you need to log in to the place you bought your domain from and change the domain nameservers to point to your new host (check the FAQ section on your host, look for "ns1.thehostsdomain.com" and "ns2.thehostsdomain.com"). That basically links up your domain name with your hosting - might take up to 24 hours to start working. After that, log in to your new host using an FTP client and upload your html files to the public_html folder. thats pretty much it!

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Don't use dreamweaver, learn to create one inline. It's fine to use their text editor, but don't use any of the visual editor stuff. It generates ugly code.

HTML and CSS should be pretty easy to learn, but don't try to create a website the very first time. Practise and mess around before making something real.

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Now I think about it, 123-reg has been getting some bad press on Twitter recently...

Don't use dreamweaver, learn to create one inline. It's fine to use their text editor, but don't use any of the visual editor stuff. It generates ugly code.

HTML and CSS should be pretty easy to learn, but don't try to create a website the very first time. Practise and mess around before making something real.

Or, if you just want a basic web presence, steal a copy of Dreamweaver and get a site working for free? Most people haven't got the time to learn how to build websites or the money to pay someone like me, who has already learnt (the basics anyway).

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Glad you said not to buy the domain/hosting together, i'd have just gone all in one if I hadn't known.

Same as muel, make sure you get your domain seperately. I'm not a fan of 123-reg, domainmonster gets my vote.

For hosting take a look at hostingreborn.com - PAYG hosting run by an old work mate of mine who is pretty good. cheap cheap too.

Once you have both, you need to log in to the place you bought your domain from and change the domain nameservers to point to your new host (check the FAQ section on your host, look for "ns1.thehostsdomain.com" and "ns2.thehostsdomain.com"). That basically links up your domain name with your hosting - might take up to 24 hours to start working. After that, log in to your new host using an FTP client and upload your html files to the public_html folder. thats pretty much it!

Sweet! will definitely go with that hosting site, really cheap and straight forward! A few people recommended 123-reg but once I found out a bit about them i've heard a fair few bad things (They were the ones charging £48)

Don't use dreamweaver, learn to create one inline. It's fine to use their text editor, but don't use any of the visual editor stuff. It generates ugly code.

HTML and CSS should be pretty easy to learn, but don't try to create a website the very first time. Practise and mess around before making something real.

I've already made the site in Dreamweaver, Basically wanted to get a site online by the time I leave uni so i've got somewhere with work/blog/links etc all in one that I can work on as I learn a bit more about writing HTML etc.

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I use Vidahost for all my hosting and they're incredible. Really reliable, decent speeds and very easy to get in contact with if you've got a problem (my website got hacked and they restored it for me within about an hour). Prices start at £17 annually and if you need more space in the future (which I doubt you will especially with things like Youtube etc available to you) you can upgrade to the £28 package easily.

The smallest package also allows you to have 5 sub domains (real sub domains, so you can effectively run 5 websites off it, rather than ones that only link to a main domain). That comes with a free domain name, but yer, get your main one separately (although I trust these Vidahost guys it's best to be safe) and then just get a variation of it for the free one.

https://www.vidahost.com/web-hosting/overview

Edited by Max Quinn
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Bear in mind that linux filenames are case sensetive (windows isn't, which is why it might work on your computer, but not on your server) - so make sure the file names and the references in your HTML match up. For this reason its usually best to stick to lowercase everything when doing websites :)

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Pictures aren't showing for me either.

This is quite an interesting thread for me, as I'm looking at the possibility of setting up a small business over the summer, and will need a site for it. I generally pick up computer stuff pretty quick, and I've got a pretty decent eye for design (I think anyway lol), so I'd be tempted to have a go at making the site my self if things are slow to start off with so I've got time. (Although they're looking like they may not be.) I'm sure this place will be my first port of call for advice, or to find someone to do it for me if I decide to pay someone, there seems to be a lot of knowledgeable people on here. Anyway, I'll stop hijacking.

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