Thread: Good web hosts ? Oh, and cheap!

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We are going to start a web site for our haunted house.... I'm clueless!!!
Ideas, suggestions, do's, don'ts !

I use godaddy.com

If by "cheap" you mean "free" . . . 000webhost.com is a free host that I use. It is not bad for a free host, BUT I have to mention the fact that it appears they have recently deleted a couple of websites for no reason. There was nothing bad or illegal on the sites and the users (one of whom was myself) always followed the terms of use. I am not sure why they were deleted, but I have other sites hosted on the same account that haven't been touched. I think they may have deleted older sites that were built on their prior system, so sites built on the current system might be safe. It might not have even been their choice, but just a failure of the older system.

Other than that, they usually have pretty good uptime and everything, lots of file space, and they place no ads on your website. This is very important to me because ads on one's website ruin the entire layout and design of the site and make it look amatuer and poorly designed (unless you can place them wherever you want and make them flow with your design). Most free hosts place ads on your site and will not let you reposition them. As a designer, I strongly recommend not using an ad-supported free host. It just looks bad.


If you're willing to spend a few bucks to get professional hosting, I'd suggest looking at a host called Dot Easy (doteasy.com). $25 a year for a top-level domain name (.com, .net, etc.) and the hosting comes free as long as you have the domain registered. $25 a year for that is not a bad deal at all. You probably spend a lot more than that on decorating your haunted house.

I do recommend getting professional hosting if you have the financial means.

If your a starter I would use piczo.com. It's free, it's very easy, you can add music, videos and as many pages as you want. They have HTML boxes you can use. you can protect your photos so people can't right click and save them. You can creat your own text, buttons, page desiging. It's easy.

here's my start up site: boulderhaunt

needless to say I love it. Regerstation only askes for an e-mail address and takes about one minute to complete.

I think you need to consider what you are going to do with the site and how much info you plan on using. I have set up and maintain several websites. Knew nothing when I started and learned as I went along. At first we used the webspace provided by our internet provider for our sites with just a domain name. Very quickly it became obvious that we needed much more space than what came along with our provider and we ended up getting a host.
Photos and videos take up alot of space. So if you plan on using a free webhost or the space given by your internet provider, you might want to consider that.
There are many free and/or cheap web page programs you can use to create your site. Then just upload it to whatever host you choose. Joomla is also an easy to use content management system that's also free. There's also lots of templates to use with it and information/forums on the net on how to set it up and use it.
Can't really give you any suggestions for a good host since I have a dutch host (which I love!)

Good luck!

MsM

Thanks guys. I can see that eventually we will want photos and video of our haunt on our website so I suppose a host that provides plenty of space is important. I'll give a few of these a look see........ I'm anxious to get going with it. We already have a Banner layout ready ! Now I just need to figure out what we want it to say!!!

I use moonfruit.com. It's free, and has no ads, plus it comes with quite a bit of storage space. The templates are fully customizable, with a drag and drop editor, so you can move things wherever you want. It also comes with a lot of pre-installed features, etc.

Ok.

You can find free website design platforms all over the place.

Free isn't always good. Sites like this are free and it's ok. When you want free hosting and a free site and decide to MOVE your data somewhere else, it's another problem.

Free site design programs want to advertise and benefit from your creations.

There is NOTHING wrong with hosting your web-site on a free account for the first 2 years. If you get traffic, it's time to upgrade.

WARNING.............when you create a site on a sub domain you are under their control.

The only way for you to own yourself is to get a GoDaddy or other domain account. You can create your website and host it on a hosting account you want. It doesn't have to be GoDaddy.

Just make sure you own everything and have access to EVERYTHING.

Trust me, if you rely on "freebies" you might find yourself out of the loop with your own site at some point.

I've learned a little so far.... I am thinking that we will probably NOT go with a free site. We need to keep costs down, but I do want to have control also..... I need to look closer at Godaddy.... Thanks

Good luck with the site. For extras may I suggest creating a facebook page, myspace page and maybe twitter page? Those are free, a little extra advertizing with your main webpage.