Hosting and managing a website?

T

Thomas Lew

Well-known member
Pretty much I'm looking to host and manage a website as my online portfolio of the film works I've done, bio, contact information, etc.

I really don't know anything about web design and I'm trying to figure out an easy way to get a nice and simple looking site up.

Does anybody have suggestions on doing this? website builder programs? hosting companies?

all advice is apprecaited. Thank you and happy holidays! ^_^
 
Almost everyone uses a CMS these days. There are hundreds to choose from, of varying complexity.

Your best bet is to get an account from a provider that has C-Panel (back-end configuration) and Fantastico (many varieties of CMS's pre-installed and pre-configured). I use Total Choice Hosting. It'll cost you about $5/month for a simple but useful account.

With a lot of experimenting and Googling/reading, you should have something figured out and up-and-running in six months. After this you'll be able to whip-up a simple site in just days (if not hours), and a complex site in a few weeks.
 
Alright thanks. I'll check those guys out. I was dabbling around with iWeb. Seems like using that I can get a simple looking but clean site out of it.
 
Hi Thomas, IWEB is fine for simple sites and they can look great. You can embed video and also Flash and WMV by getting Iweb Enhancer and you can Google for other scripts that allow you to embed other things into you pages. With I web you are limited on what type of things you can do to pages but you can create a very clean site in a couple of days. They have some great templates and you can buy others from vendors on the web, just Google and you'll find others available. Most people use Dream Weaver form Adobe to handle more complex websites. It gives you more sophisticated tools to interface with your site while it is live on your server and much better tools to manage complex sites or simple sites that let you make changes to all of your pages globally with one click of the mouse. You can make a change to 20 pages without handling each page separately.

For hosting I use DreamHost and feel they are the best for the buck. They let you subdomain and this is very important if you ever want to host more than one site. I have several sites hosted under my main account and can add as many as I want. I will have ten to twelve sites up next year and some are customers that cover all my costs. It only takes one customer to cover even the code monster deal that I take advantage of. I have unlimited storage and unlimited band width and thats worth a lot of money if you get much traffic to you site. Nobody beats these guys and gals with there offers that I have found but you have to educate yourself a little to see why I say this, but I love them and their service.

Good luck
 
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I use iweb for my site (link below) and have been very happy. You can create a lot of your graphics in photoshop, then just drag and drop them on to the pages.
 
I tried out iWeb about six months ago and the resulting site, which looked okay, fails to load and function 100% correctly in any browser except Safari. IE is a nightmare with iWeb. Has Apple fixed that yet?

Dan
 
I would assume so. Most of my clients are PC people and I have never had any complaints. I've been using it for 2 years.

And actually, I don't even use Safari most of the time. I use Camino.

I know that older versions of iWeb also didn't allow you to embed video preferences, like having a vidoe start automatically, loop or show controls. Newer versions allow you to do that. It sucked having to go in an rewrite .js files everytime I uploaded videos.

EDIT. I just opened my site in IE on my G4 and although the site opens fine, the links acroos the top that are supposed to get you to other pages doesn't appear. Weird.
 
Jim Brennan said:
EDIT. I just opened my site in IE on my G4 and although the site opens fine, the links acroos the top that are supposed to get you to other pages doesn't appear. Weird.
Click to expand...

Same issue I have had since I began using iWeb. If you go on the Apple forums, everyone complains about it since 90% of the world is on PCs with IE.

I have been thinking I will have to go to DreamWeaver instead.

Dan
 
I use godaddy. Works well, guaranteed, allows you track your site, and I've never had a problem with it.

They like to bundle all these things with your purchase, so I got one of the cheapest packages and came out of it with free advertising, free tracking, free search engine checking, tons of email accounts, and all sorts of credits towards a second website. That worked for me, but if you don't need any of that, then you should probably check out some other, smaller company that doesn't push advertising so hard, like icdsoft.
 
Wow. I didn't know that problem was so widespread. I have heard that that menu is one of the hardest parts of code to write for a site. But you'd think the big brains at apple could fix it.

I'm really surprised I've never heard a complaint from any clients...

I also use godaddy to host my site, and although they have other services available I never felt pressured to get more. I bought a second domain name for a movie and they even showed me how to host it on my current site with a pointer instead of getting another hosting package.
 
Has anyone heard anything about Google offering a hosting service at some point in the future? I use Google for my email, calendar, etc, and I really wish I could streamline everything.
 
Big Bad said:
Has anyone heard anything about Google offering a hosting service at some point in the future? I use Google for my email, calendar, etc, and I really wish I could streamline everything.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised. They would probably be very successful at it as well.
 
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