wheres the best place to buy web space from?

[addictedtosuckingblood]

hi, i'm not very computer/web literate, so i'll appoligise now!

my dh is designing me a web site, i tried doing it through a web hosting sites (like freewebs, web eden, etc) but i was limited as to how big the pages could be and how many i could have.

so now i have a web site that dh has designed but no idea where the best place to buy web space from is.

so anyone know? thanks

[MitchyInge]

I like CJ Hosting .co.uk

[addictedtosuckingblood]

mitchyinge, thst doesnt seem to be working!

[BadgersPaws]

Who do you get your internet connection from?

In my experience ISPs often give you some webspace with your broadband connection so you might already have some space without having to pay any more money out.

[WebDude]

While an ISP might offer free space, I'd say it depends a bit on what one wants to use the web site 'for'.

I've seen people spend years working on their website, getting more and more visitors and then find

a) that search engines all know about the ISP-based webspace (eg youruser.plus.com/ if user was on Plus.Net) and
b) the ISP has a limit on how much web traffic is allowed (in the case of Plus.Net it was 250 MB in a day)

the consequence is that when the site is very popular, the ISP might have a policy that "suspends" it for excess traffic (admittedly an ISP might be protecting itself - if someone put up 200 MB of MP3 music tracks and then told every one of their friends "oh yes, new album is online at username.plus.com/music" then the traffic load could go through the roof.

However, suspending the site might mean the user wants to get hosting elsewhere, and then all the search engines will not be pointing to the correct pages, so they lose visitors.

Use ISP space for testing the website, perhaps, but I'd recommend registering a domain name (.co.uk and/or .com or .org.uk / .org if it is non-commercial) and getting hosting from some other company (not the domain registration firm) so if you get into a dispute, you can switch to some other web host easily (via changes to the registration firm).

If you are planning to use it for business, then one firm I've used is Hostroute.co.uk and another is HeartInternet.co.uk.

Hostroute offers a widely used "standard" control panel called "cPanel" which allows the user to set up POP mailboxes (and/or mail forwarding into a Google /Hotmail/ other mail service), gives usage statistics showing graphs of how many visitors per month and per day, etc, and offers plenty of other features.

Heart Internet has its own control panel, and offers similar features (free hosting if the web traffic is below 100 MB a month, for a domain registered with them, so you can start off free, and then when visitor numbers increase, you would need to rent hosting from someone - eg Hostroute)

If you're just getting started and it's not intended for business, more as a hobby site, consider looking on Ebay. You can find some bargains - in the past I've put websites up on hosting costing US$ 10 for a year - averaged out this is about the same as you'd spend on a (small) bar of chocolate each month! OK, small risk of "pay peanuts" syndrome, which someone will no doubt warn you against, but it's not costing much and allows the chance to try out different control panels.

I've used a number of different control panels now - LXAdmin, DirectAdmin, Ensim, Plesk, and cPanel... (plus a few from different companies which have built their own control panels).

Can recommend cPanel as it is perhaps the easiest yet gives lots of extra features if you/DH want to explore them.

[BadgersPaws]

Good point, if you do have web space from your ISP check the limitations in your contract.

However I've known more than a few people run both hobby and small business from web sites from their ISP provided Web space and they've never had an issue.

So don't discount it, there's often no need to go spending extra money.

[BadgersPaws]

PS: For a personal web site, for example about a Wedding or hobby, I'd probably not even worry about checking the limits other than how much space you have.

[nannynick]

I like www.34sp.com. They are not the cheapest but I find that their Support is super, I can send an e-mail to them at 9pm and have a rely in 15 minutes... sometimes quicker. They seem quite happy to let you start small and then expand later on if you need to do so - either by paying for extra services to bolt on, or to upgrade completely to a different server package. They update the backend systems quite often, such as version of PHP, which can cause issues with old scripts - but that will be an issue with any webhost as it is often better to upgrade the software (due to security improvements) rather than keep old software running.

Having your own domain name is handy, as then you can use if for all your e-mail and not have to change your e-mail address if you change ISP... you just redirect the e-mail from your domain to your ISP (or access all the e-mail via webmail / Google Mail).

Consider what your budget is on a per year basis. Consider what features you need - for example scripting languages.

[addictedtosuckingblood]

thankyou for all your replys.

tbh none of this is making any sence to me i didnt realise it would be that difficult!!

so i'll show this to dh when he gets home and hopefully he'll understand more.

[WebDude]

Just to clarify one aspect - if you rent web space, one of the first questions you'll be asked is your domain name.

As nannynick says, having your own domain name means you won't need to stay with an ISP mail address, and looks more professional.

Sorry if you feel you've opened a big can of worms, but without knowing what you plan to have on your website, we've covered many of the possible issues "just in case".

While I agree with BadgersPaws about a personal website, another 'negative' against some ISPs is that if they offer domain hosting (so your "ownfamilyname.org.uk" website can be hosted there) they might have high fees if you switch ISP and need to transfer the domain (one had a fee of 80+VAT, which I feel is excessive) "FreeNetName" was the ISP, from memory.

You should be able to register a .co.uk or .org.uk for under a tenner (at 123-reg.co.uk, for example), while .com/ .org may cost US$ 10/year. .info is available at about $2 from www.GoDaddy.com or $4 from www.name.com (and with name.com, your home address can be hidden from view... with most domain registrations, your home address is generally visible for anyone to see by doing a "WHOIS" lookup)

[BadgersPaws]

If you get a UK address (e.g. www.badgerspaws.co.uk) then you can opt to hide your address if you're a private individual. The details for your domain simply says "The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service."

So if anyone trying to sell you a UK address says that they can't do that they're lying and possibly breaking the law. Either way don't trust them and go and find someone else who will do it.

No idea about .com or other addresses though...

[BadgersPaws]

PS: You can only opt out of having your address shown if the site isn't for business.

So www.badgerswedding.co.uk could have my address hidden.

While www.badgersellsthings.co.uk couldn't.

If you see what I'm getting at.

[WebDude]

For .com etc, many registration firms offer "private registration". Name.com offers it free, while many others charge for the service.

For a business, it rarely makes sense, as some get suspicious about a "firm" offering products while not having contact address either on website, or verifiable as the same as the domain registration. I pointed out this aspect about some baby camera website being linked to in "Products" the other day... could take US$ 100K in orders via PayPal and disappear completely, just giving e-mail addresses on the website...

In my view, it's also dubious if a website designer puts the registration in their own name (or with their own address) as that limits the chance of the end user "proving" ownership if there is some dispute. It's pretty much "blackmail" in my view.

Some website designers claim they are "insuring their work" but in my view it is better to hand over control to the customer once they've cleared any outstanding bills, and to register in the customer name in the first place (it costs money to change this for .uk domains, because Nominet imposes a fee and wants all sorts of documents. .com changes are easy but blocked within 60 days of registration or transfers).

I try to avoid any .uk domain registrations and get the customer to do it. Any typo or wrong company number then becomes their responsibility and cost, not mine! Have been hit for a domain name type once where the customer wanted xxxxxxdesigns and xxxxxxdesign was registered, and a renewal (costing several times the lowest going rates)

[addictedtosuckingblood]

sorry i should have said its for my business, i'm setting up as a cake decorator.

like i said this doesnt mean much to me but dh says its all really usefull.

thanks again

[WebDude]

Aha... so if it's a business, you'd best look at .co.uk (/.com etc if keen) as .org (.uk) is normally linked to not-for-profit organisations.

I did a few searches on easily.co.uk and 123-reg.co.uk These are available

cakedecor.eu
cakedecorator.eu
cakedecorator.info

cake-decor.eu
cake-decorating.eu
cake-decorator.eu

cake-decor.info
cake-decorator.info

cake-decor.co.uk
cake-decorator.co.uk

If you don't spot something you like, you could use an area name eg surrey-cakes.co.uk Obviously you will consider what name to choose, but in general the shorter the better (hence my use of "decor", but others were there first!) and though I've used hyphens above, it was because the names without had already been registered (according to the websites I used).

Various names are available as somename.uk.com but I'd avoid them - not only are they expensive (pay no more than a tenner) but some time ago every .uk.com domain disappeared for a few hours / days when they had a problem. It's a cheeky use by some intermediate web consultancy to milk people by registering .uk.com .uk.net and some others.

easily.co.uk is celebrating 10 years and are offering .eu for 10p - beware the renewal will cost much more, but you have 8 months to hunt for best deal - and oh yes, you have to do their 1999 crossword to work out the codeword to get the discount!!

I mention "eu" so you could try cakedecor.eu if you wanted ! It might be found on European search engines (eg someone living in Europe wanting a cake as a gift back in )

If you go for .com then GoDaddy may be cheaper, and same for .info...

[WebDude]

Using www.godaddy.com you could register all these for under US$ 10

cake-decor.info
cakedecorator.info
cake-decorator.info

check the small print on easily.co.uk and see if they allow more than 1 .eu at 10p and either register 1 or more of those

When you look for hosting, you can normally "park" additional domains on the server, so that the same content appears for them all

(sorry, will have to check - cPanel offers "parked" domains and "add-on" domains and I cannot remember off the top of my head which is which, but the idea is so that you can have several names showing the same website.

If you wanted to measure how well different advertising methods work, you could monitor what pages people visit from search engines (Ask.com, MSN.com, etc) to see which domain name gets most from using a business card or small newspaper advert, craigslist, and any other free / cheap methods of getting your website listed.

[whomovedmychocolate]

I've just switched mine to www.clook.net - for business use £5 a month and domain name management for £12 a year - pretty good. I've used their support services and they have been really fantastic (even geeks get stuck sometimes, but they were so straightforward even my husband understood and was able to change the DNS server redirection - this means nothing to you I know but it could conceivably be hard if you had to do it and didn't know how).

[WebDude]

Incidentally, nameroute.co.uk offers .co.uk for a fiver inc VAT and gives 10 MB of webspace (small, perhaps, but if you plan to have photos of cakes, then making them 320 x 240 pixels rather than a 2 megapixel image makes sense for the website as big pix slow down the downloading (and someone on dial-up will go search for someone else before it finishes downloading).

123-reg.co.uk offers their "InstantSite" service at different levels. InstantSite Plus at (2 quid +VAT a month, possibly charged annually in advance - need to check the small print!) (giving 10 web pages) gets you a 50 quid Google AdWords voucher

NB with Google AdWords you can "suspend" the advertising campaign when the voucher runs out, if you wish, and can set monthly limits on how much gets spent, so you don't get stuck with paying out month after month if business is sluggish.

Check the 123-reg site - you can only use the promotional code (aka "voucher") within 14 days of opening the Google AdWords account, so steps are something like:

1. search for suitable domain name(s)
   
2. open an account with 123-reg
   
3. register domain name(s)
   
4. after 14 days, Google AdWords code can be obtained from 123-reg
   
5. open Google AdWords account
   
6. use 123-reg AdWords voucher code within next 14 days.
   
   Hmmmm, they don't exactly make it easy for you, do they!
   
   123-reg also charging 1.23 +VAT for .info as a special offer until 30/10/2009. Just make sure that during the summer you do a transfer to some other firm, as transfers are typically cheaper (to grab market share).
   
   A transfer adds a year to the expiry date, so you can transfer a couple of times during the course of a year and then forget about the domain fees for a year or more...
   
   Heart Internet are charging 99p for a .eu and 4.99 for .com
   
   (which is quite a bit lower than the norm for UK firms and competitive against the bulk of USA firms too for once.... Some UK firms just swap a $ with GBP - see Hostway: US prices and UK pricing (but at least the UK prices have come down from 18.95 +VAT - I made a fuss about their rip-off prices by e-mail and got a friend in USA to register some domains for me around 6 years ago but later found other US firms which are both cheap and usable from this side of the Atlantic)