Looking to get a domain name and start a webpage for family...never done this! help! (1 Viewer)

[Brian Price]

My wife and I have decided to start a blog/web page as a way to keep in touch with all of our friends and family scattered throughout the county. One of our friends has their own page and they got their own domain name also. We thought that would be cool as well but I really have no idea where to start with this.

Any help or ideas would be great. We're just looking for an easy way to start and we can get more advanced later. I see all kinds of places advertising that they sell domain names and will host things for you etc. It can get a little confusing. Any experiences or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Brian Price

 

[Harris_C]

First thing is to pick a domain name..

brianprice.com for instance.

You can search and purhcase these at what are called registrars. I use www.godaddy.com they have very reasonable prices. After that you will need to find a webhost, they usually run anywhere from $5-20 bucks a month depending on your needs. Once the site is set up via the hoster and DNS is configured you can upload your site with an FTP client and be done with it.

That is the quick and easy explanation, if you have more detailed questions please ask.

 

[Parker Clack]

Brian:

I would go to a place like http://www.blogger.com. They can set you up a blog site with a username, etc. that you choose.

Parker

 

[Scott L]

Domain registration: Godaddy.com
Hosting: 1 | 2 | 3

Take your pick on a hosting package. For what you're doing I wouldn't pay more than $5/mo. I have to say though service usually suffers with the uber cheap hosts (worth it imo ).

Blogger is a great recommendation too. I think you can even slice out the code from their site and put it into yours so your entries will show up on your own page. I'd do Blogger first to see if it's all you need.

 

[Brian Price]

Thanks for the help!

 

[Keith Paynter]

Are you a frames-savvy programmer?

If you want to reduce the costs due to the amount of monthly bandwidth and storage limitations every month, you can use your host site exclusively for your home page HTML code's index page (as a frame master page), and place ALL your relative images, HTML files and frames as links on your OWN computer, and using a free program like AnalogX's shareware-free Simple Server and your own computer's static IP with a specified folder on your HD as the server host for 99.9% of your web content, and you no longer have to use the webhost's e-mail server (which sometimes prevents attachments from being accepted). Your content is available as long as your computer is on and Simple Server is running, and an FTP uplaoding program is no longer required. (I have an older machine running 24/7 for this purpose)



Using frames, your index page would actually be a single frame, and its content will be your site's home page (also a frameset) on your static IP ("httq://xx.xx.xx.xx/index.html" - 'q' is really 'p' to avoid a confusing link here), and your bottom/right can be your relative content (target=bottom/target=right). All the viewer will every see up top is the home name of your blog site, and not the frame content or IP address - unless they want to read your HTML code on the page)

Standard rules of thumb re:internet security apply.

 

[Tekara]

I use 1and1.com they have great prices (I paid like 6$/yr per domain name) and have been easy to work with. I host my own website / email server / chatterbot / random other servers. I have a dynamic IP through cable internet, so I use a dynamic IP hosting service called zoneedit (there are many others as well). I use some software on one of my pcs to update my ip information periodically so that the domain name I have always points to my computer.

If you are interested in hosting your own webpage an easy way to start would be to use a pre configured web server like xammp ( apachefriends.org ) it comes with everything pre set up for you so it's really easy to use, just download and run! make sure you read the security tips on the website to set the security up properly.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Hi - I too am looking to create a website. I understand all of the information about how to obtain a domain name. Once I do that, I'm interested in a bit more information about hosting your own webpage. My daughter (the web-page-savvy one in the family!) used a program called Wampserver in the past, for web design projects for college. This program allowed her to create web pages(using html, php, and Apache databases), and just view them as localhost pages. That's the only use she knows of the wampserver program, but this last post has made her think that maybe it could be used as a hosting program if a domain name was purchased. Thanks for any information!

 

[Parker Clack]

Mike:

I am not sure of that particular program but once you have purchased a domain name then you have to find a server to host it on. If that program allows you to point the domain name you purchased to a local server (PC) at home then that will work. Otherwise you are going to first have to find a remote server to host everything on. Then you would upload all the files to that server and run it from there. Whatever the case you are going to have to have the domain name you purchased point to some IP address on the net. If the DNS can be pointed to a local host with this program then that would be the way to do it. You are also going to have to find out though, if you are running it locally, if your connection to the net has any type of bandwidth restrictions for data in and out of your connection.

Parker