I might be able to help you here. I provide web hosting for a couple of other small businesses, and developed their web sites. It's what I used to do career wise.

Depends what you are after really. Setting up a little web site can be done for £100. Something more adventurous would obviously be more expensive.

Hosting, £60 a year +VAT. That includes maintaining it. You can get cheaper but you'll have to beware people who will take your money and then run away when it needs fixing.

You really need a domain name because that will give customers a good feel - running a web site on the back of an AOL or btconnect URL is really tantamount to saying you ain't serious. I can get a domain name for you easily enough (unless it is already taken in which case hard luck!). Don't go squirting domain names around here and elsewhere because it's a known fact that sometimes people buy domain names then try to flog them to you at a premium (the used car salesmen who moved into the Internet age).

Web space - not likely to be a problem. 10 Mb is easily good enough to get you started.

Bandwidth IS a problem area. It's directly coupled to the amount you pay - the busier the web site the more likely it is you will hit the bandwidth limitation. Plan on getting 1Gb a month from your ISP, that'll be more than enough - if you've got that much bandwidth going thru the web site then you won't have any problem buying more.

You can set up and maintain a web site yourself if you want, it isn't rocket science but if you aren't into anything IT then getting someone else to look after the details can be the best option.

HM

Thanks HM. Can you give me the website addresses so i can have a look.

Ken

yeah upgrade to a hosting account with one&one or transfer the domain(if allowed) to the host of your choice.  I'm stuck with the same thing here m8, wish i'd  reg'd with someone else. When it expires next year I'll be reg'ing elsewhere, with a full host.. I dont know how SS does it, but his server is at home so he owns the domain and is his own webhost, might be something to do with shell accounts from his IP.  SS?

Seems like the business to be in if you can advertise well (hosting).

I will look into transferring the domain to pipex.  Pipex is the cheapest for net access.

I have two domains, private and business.  The business one is billed to my boss.

[quote author=Lectrician  link=1105871323/0#4 date=1105907789]What software do you use HM? [/quote]

TopStyle3 Pro:

http://www.bradsoft.com/

It's the mutts nutts, but kinda advanced for a beginner. There's a completely free (non-pro) version.

Quote:


Get a cheapo ISP account and stick the domain on there. You are making it more complicated to manage by having two companies in the loop.

However, because I'm an "advanced" user my setup looks like this:

I currently have about 20 domains which I've registered over a period of time. I'm only running 2-3 though, and the others can lapse without any problem to me. I also control some customer domains on their behalf - they aren't Internet savvy and they pay me a small fee each year to look after it for them.

I use http://www.freeparking.co.uk to manage the DNS. DNS stands for "Dynamic Name Server". Basically when someone types in a URL your internet connection heads off to a DNS server on the internet and converts the URL to an IP address (which looks like 123.123.123.123). The internet can only work with IP addresses, the URL's are human-friendly and have to be converted.

Most of my web sites are hosted with OpenHosting - http://www.openhosting.co.uk. Those domains have been transferred into their DNS servers, which means that if the ISP loses a server they can stick another one up quickly and change IP addresses in their local DNS server without me having to do anything.

However, if OpenHosting went out of business tomorrow (they won't, but bear with me) and took their DNS servers with them, I'd have probably months of effort to get my domains transferred somewhere else.

Whereas having the domains controlled from FreeParking means that if OpenHosting goes tits up I can switch to a new ISP immediately. OpenHosting could get hit by a nuke and it wouldn't put me out of business on the Internet (unless I happened to be under the same mushroom cloud in which case it doesn't matter).

I have a server under my desk here on which I host some test domains. It's very much like these forums in the way it works. But the DNS is handled thru Freeparking.

The major problem with having your own server on a broadband connection is that the broadband is typically not covered by a service level agreement - so if the supplier takes your line to the internet down you are completely stuffed - no backup routes. Whereas hosting somewhere like OpenHosting (or yell.com) they have backup routes to the internet covered by very expensive backup routes - you could nuke their main feed to the Internet and the servers will figure out how to get to where they want to go instantly. OpenHosting have their servers based in Docklands in London - a huge complex which many hosting companies use, and they've got massive great pipes connecting them to the Internet.

They also have hotswitch servers, meaning that if a server goes down then a backup can be brought online very quickly. Not quite instantaneous, but downtime is measured in hours worst case. If you are hosting on your own box under your desk and the box blows up, it's goodbye for several days whilst you figure out how to rebuild it etc. Plus the cost of repairs etc.

Freeparking don't offer web hosting as such. I think they just started doing so recently but it's not at the serious end of web hosting, so I don't use it. But for controlling DNS they are top dog for me.

HM

[quote author=Lectrician  link=1105871323/0#7 date=1105908876]Seems like the business to be in if you can advertise well (hosting) [/quote]

No chance. I took a serious look at it as a means of bringing in an income. There are quite literally hundreds (if not thousands) of little guys doing this in the UK and the market ain't big enough to make a profit out of providing hosting. It has the potential to be a serious drain on cashflow.

I am a member of another IT organisation with thousands of members in the UK. Their forums are choc-a-bloc with people offering hosting services. And those are guys who know what they are up to on a techy level. Unless you've got their sort of expertise it's a high risk strategy to try and compete one on one because they can add things like shopping carts, online credit cards and so on easily. And it's still a high risk game even if you can compete knowledge-wise.

And you can't compete with the big guys, so it's you vs the other little guys who are trying to make a few bob.

HM

Oops! I just remembered something....

Advertising isn't allowed on these forums so I'm not going to try and offer services in that direction.

Beg forgiveness from the big guys holding my nuts in the mole grips....

HM

[quote author=supersparky  link=1105871323/0#14 date=1105911327]ill overlook it on this occasion   [/quote]

Thanks. Now about those mole grips....

HM