Domain name and site host - need some help

[Dave Stiles]

Greetings all,

I'm in the process of preparing to move my website from the college server, in anticipation of graduating within the next year.

I've already decided on a domain name - StilesWildlifePhotography.com, and am now trying to find somewhere to host the site.

Anyone here have some recommendations on a decent host site? I've looked at GoDaddy and am not sure they are quite right for my purposes. Eventually I would like to be able to sell images from my site, so somewhere that would support an online cart would be preferable.

I'm open to any ideas or recommendations ... the business side will be new to me. I guess I have been spoiled these last few years with having the college provide free website space.

Thanks in advance for any help or insight you may be able to provide.

[Rudi]

It depends what you want out of a site, Dave. I have found that photo-hosting sites although they are great for displaying my photos, and maybe even have a system for direct selling, do not usually have enough control so that I can set up the pages just the way I like. I do not always want to have galleries of pictures to display them, or even if I do, I might want to have additional info on the pages. This means that I need direct access to the pages, to be able to "roll my own" so to speak. A lot of the photo-only hosting sites have templates that cannot be changed and customised enough for my needs.

Because of this I am currently hosting my pages with godaddy. I am always looking for an easier, better solution, but haven't found a better way than writing my own web pages. :)

This might not be an issue for you, I am just pointing it out to save you some heartache in the long run. :)

As for recommendations, I am very happy with godaddy hosting. If you're looking for a simple, easy to use photo-only hosting, I really like (and still use) ZenFolio.com.

Hope this helps. :)

[Dave Stiles]

Thanks Rudi,

I do my own website work, so I'll look at GoDaddy some more, since as you pointed out it gives you more control over how the site looks.

I appreciate the feedback, you answered my question. Off to GoDaddy for some researchin'

[Jeff JTPhoto]

Dave ... If you can do your own webwork I suggest just going with your local internet provider. They will have webspace packages and will set up your account with your new domain name (once you have purchased it from a registry company).
As for the website set up and basic navigation I use MS FrontPage and for the sales photo gallery, I use a self modified version of PhotoShop templates. PhotoShop does all the work by automatically resizing the images, watermarking, and placing and linking all images into a folder with appropriate indexing pages. All one has to do then is FTP to webspace..

For an example, Click the link below for an index page, then click on one of the photos to see full affect of the modifications I performed..
http://jtphoto.ca/Proofs28/index.htm

[beaucamera]

Dave, I've been using Dreamhost for the last couple of years. They do hosting for $7.95/month. You can check them out here:
http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html

If you decide to sign up with them, please use my name as a reference.

Virginia
aka beaucamera

[Dave Stiles]

Dave ... If you can do your own webwork I suggest just going with your local internet provider. They will have webspace packages and will set up your account with your new domain name (once you have purchased it from a registry company).


Thanks Jeff.

I do all my own website work using Adobe GoLive. I've looked around the local area here in Olympia and there are a few internet providers that may be promising, although after graduation I'm headed to Montana for my MS and Phd in wildlife sciences.

I think for now I will work with GoDaddy to obtain the domain name and have it directed to the college server where my site is stored, until I graduate at the end of next winter and have to move the site to another host system. I don't plan to go 'commercial' until after I graduate, the extra income would mess with my undergraduate college financial aid.

Since I'm basically attending college at no cost (grants and scholarships are great!) I won't ruin a good thing. At the end of my BA & BS, five years of college will have run me a total of about $2,500 out of pocket, mostly related to field research costs.

Thanks again for the info and the link. I liked the young moose crossing the road in your animals section.

[Dave Stiles]

Dave, I've been using Dreamhost for the last couple of years. They do hosting for $7.95/month. You can check them out here:
http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.html

If you decide to sign up with them, please use my name as a reference.

Virginia
aka beaucamera

Thank you Virginia. I've book-marked Dreamhost as a potential host. If I do use them I will be sure to reference you as the referral.

[Schucz]

GoDaddy? Yeah, I tried godaddy once because they were one of the biggest domain registrar on the net aswell offering some cheap domains that I guess everyone's could afford. But being one of the biggest does not mean being one of the best.

Besides having an unforgettable name, GoDaddy also has an unforgettable site. This is one registrar that swamps your eyeballs with a plethora of offers and features. The problem is that is not a complement. GoDaddy's overabundance of content and offers tend to make the site appear to be more of a cookie cutter-style website, that can be regularly found on Ebay, than one of the largest domain registrars online.

This cluttered feeling does not go away once you open an account with them either. During orders, you constantly are being asked to buy cheap software products. Transferring a name to a different account at GoDaddy will also bring up offers of software products and you are lead through a maze of pages and procedures to accomplish the same process that can be done via a simple push feature at registrars such as Dotster, eNom, and Namecheap.

On the positive side, GoDaddy's immense size allows it to offer cheap backorders and a fairly cheap reseller program. However, the lack of user-friendliness hurts GoDaddy's overall value to customers.

If you are just getting into the domain industry, it is hard to do better than starting out with NameCheap.com. Not only does this registrar have one of the cheapest rates in the industry, but it also is one of the easiest registrars to buy and sell domains with. Want to change ownership of your domains with any hassles? No problem, just use Namecheap's push feature to put the name into your buyer's account. You do not need a password just for that domain or the buyer's contact info. All you need is the buyer's Namecheap account name. That's it! And hey, you know.. ? .. I moved all my domains to Namecheap.

[Josée]

Hi there,

Being a non-expert hobby site webmistress, I've used Homestead for the past 4 years...the drag-and-drop features are great for those of us who aren't fluent in HTML speak, and they do have a commerce package available.

www.homestead.com (http://www.homestead.com)

I've also heard lots of great things from Netfirms.com, althought I haven't really checked them out myself.

http://www.netfirms.com