Setting up a Website -- Where to start?

[d70girl]

I'm trying to set up a nice website for my photography, as I'm already starting to get some requests for portraits, etc. I downloaded something called Simpleviewer, but I have NO IDEA what to do with it or how to use it. I'm completely dense when it comes to this stuff.

Does anyone have any advice? I just want a nice flash gallery and possibly an online order form.

Thanks in advance!

[Steve Wynn]

Have you looked at www.godaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com) ? They have a good low price, and it is simple to use.

Steve

[dewey]

Hello,

You are right on track with SimpleViewer - I just posted instructions on it's use on your other thread. Godaddy.com is cheap - and they seem reliable. (What do I expect for $4 a month?) :lol:

You can register your domain and purchase hosting at Godaddy. You can use a cheap HTML editor like coffeecup HTML editor (there's a free trial on download.com) and then use Internet Exlorer to upload to your website.

If you setup your website so that the only thing that changes often is your galleries, with simpleviewer it'll be VERY easy to change galleries without too much trouble.

Any specific spot you're stuck on?

- Dewey

[bantor]

I have a question to add about Godaddy.com, how much space do you get. It may seem like a silly questions but the free ones give you like 500mb or some random number like that, but does godaddy actually give you 5GB to load up with pictures and online stuff?

[dewey]

With the smallest plan Godaddy gives you 5GB, but I don't know of any small photo website that needs NEAR that much space.

The free services aren't really free - they put ads on your pages which are so tacky and unprofessional that you'd be better off with no website IMO. A photo gallery with a LOVE.COM banner above it is just awful.

Bandwidth will be your problem with cheap hosting once your site becomes popular - I don't nearly use 5GB but with some traffic and some photo viewing my website hits the max, at which point you have to buy more bandwidth.

For a smaller website Godaddy's cheap plan works just fine... once you start advertising your website on national TV you may want to upgrade. :)

-Dewey

[bantor]

Thankst Dewey, muchly appreciated. I might just have to go and buy one right now.

[Steve Wynn]

We had a guy build a website for our local chamber of commerce and he used godaddy. It's only been about 6 months but there hasn't been any problems.

Steve

[Adam E]

our website, at firsthourmovies.com, is through bluehost.com. no problems with them at all!

[nitefly]

Well you could hire me to design you a really great website for really cheap.. or you could just register hosting with eastsolid.com, buy a domain name from namecheap.net and then read the instructions from the SimpleViewer site.

Obviously the first one is way more efficient :p

[photochic]

I go through ifp.com (http://ifp3.com). They offer flash and a lot of other options. Very user friendly...I had my site up and running in hours. I pay $20/month and a shopping cart is included.
My site is at fine art photography by Tracy Reehal (http://tracyreehal.com)

Tracy:wink:

[JTHphoto]

if you want to use simpleviewer, google's picasa has a plugin that creates the webpages for you...

i've bought a few domains/hosting through godaddy.com, and haven't had any problems. Someone just told me about 1and1.com. They are even cheaper than godaddy.com, has anyone else had any experience with them? i bought a domain and hosting for 6 mos through them for only $22. I haven't had time to check it out, or get a site up yet though, so I can't comment on quality...

[L146705]

I use to do website design for clients. Now I just run sites as businesses as well as photography. You can probably get a good website for around £300-500

[Inverness Photographic]

I use a company called Photium.

Easy to setup and has e-com using PayPal.

Different levels from £7.27 per month, you get your own domain name and the support is great.

See my website as an example, Photium link at the bottom.

[kkart]

Well.....
I used freehostia.com http://freehostia.com which is 100% free with no adverts anywhere. I am VERY impressed to say the least. They offer a ton of scripts including Coppermine Gallery and Wordpress...so I went ahead and have my entrance page powered by WP and the gallery by Coppermine. I went thru 1&1 for my domain which was like.....$5.99 a year cuz I wanted email from it. If you don't want email, yahoo has domins right now at $1.99. Here is what freehostia offers, seriously check them out!

Overview
Absolutely FREE
No setup fee
Data storage: 250 MB
Monthly bandwidth: 5 GB

Customer Support
Free 24/7 technical support
Detailed video tutorials
Extensive documentation
Integrated ticketing system
Response time: 24 hours

Domains and Subdomains
Hosting for 1 domain
5 subdomains

Free Features
Elefante free scripts
FrontPage Extensions

Site Statistics
Detailed bandwidth stats


E-mail Features
3 POP3 accounts
3 Email aliases
SpamAssassin protection
E-mail filters
Webmail service
POP3 access/no SMTP
"Catch-all" e-mails

Scripting and Database
1 MySQL database
10 MB MySQL DB space
Perl enabled
PHP enabled
PHPMyAdmin
Over 3,000 Perl modules

Site Management Tools
Advanced Control Panel
Multi-lingual control panel
1 FTP account
Web-based file manager


Misc Features
Instant account activation
SSL with certificate gen
SSI (Server Side Includes)
RAID secured data storage
Easy upgrade options

OS and Backup
Stable Linux with Apache
UPS & diesel generator

Server and Connection
Dual P4 XEON 2.8/1GB RAM
2x160GB HDDs in RAID
100 MBits conn. per server
320 GBits data center conn.
99.9% uptime guarantee

[JohnMF]

i've used 1and1 for a couple of years and i must admit theyre pretty solid.

but if you just want a basic website with a gallery then i would just find a free host and use them. there are plenty to choose from

the above post looks like a pretty good offer. Alhough i would beware of registering a name with yahoo, Im sure i heard that the first year is cheap for your domain name but after that is around $9.99 a year.

There are some domain names which you can register for free. Such as the .tk extension (eg. www. mywebsite .tk).

[kkart]

i've used 1and1 for a couple of years and i must admit theyre pretty solid.

but if you just want a basic website with a gallery then i would just find a free host and use them. there are plenty to choose from

the above post looks like a pretty good offer. Alhough i would beware of registering a name with yahoo, Im sure i heard that the first year is cheap for your domain name but after that is around $9.99 a year.

There are some domain names which you can register for free. Such as the .tk extension (eg. www. mywebsite .tk).

Wellp I have my forum site registered with yahoo for almost a year now and have no issues at all. May switch it to 1&1 after it expires just because it's cheaper. .tk is free except that if you don't pay for it, you now get a frame on the top of your page. You don't wanna use a free redirect either as it still looks very unprofessional. Freehostia which I listed above is rock solid....I am VERY happy with them

[JDP]

Max bandwidth a month of 5GB? Sure, sounds huge right? Get the details though - odds are by GB they mean 5GigaBITS, which is only .625 GigaBYTES or 655360 kilobytes, or roughly 6553 views of a 100Kb photo.

Anyway, I seriously recommend www.webhostingtalk.com - go to the offers section. Many of them have free trials and you'd be surprised - I had a very fast, reliable host from $1.99/month and a really slow crappy one for $35/month.