Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Create website - domains, hosting etc..

S

steveOooo

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 30, 2008
743
89
UK
I want to set up a website, the domain is available (mainly wedding videos),

I want to have some video on it (I could just embed a youtube video to start - so negate this feature), few slideshows, and maybe a 'buy copy of this video' section so people can buy dvds of the videos - so a add to cart / 1 shopping cart option / pay with paypal option.

I want to have all this as mac :apple:freindly as pos - ive been to godaddy.com but its linux/xp (i have xp installed ok on my mac though).

I have iweb but have never used it. Was thinking using a auto we build it option? generic template to kick things off.

Any solutions / ideas ?
 
Most web hosts use Linux, and that's what you should get. Don't expect to find Mac web servers. I don't recommend iWeb, for what your site is going to have on it. You'll run into a number of issues and limitations. You might want to take a look at RapidWeaver, which has templates you can buy or create, and is more flexible than iWeb. It sounds like you don't really know about web design so that will limit you on what you can do on your own. You may end up needing to hire someone depending on all the features you want.
 
I would also vote for Rapidweaver, it's more customisable for what you need. It does mean you will have to buy it though (Its a dang lot cheaper than Dreamweaver).
 
It's pretty straightforward, or can be. Personally, I can't recommend iWeb enough for exactly the things you want to do.

I just put up a site. It literally took me about an hour using iWeb 3.01 in iLife 09. Entirely drag and drop, widgets for slide shows and movies. Embedded Youtube, RSS feeds...and site updates are absolutely simple - make your changes and click "update site".

The one I wrote is here FYI. It's a site for our Haiti relief organization.

The whole process was very easy - I went to iPowerWeb and bought the domain through them then bought two years of hosting - 300 gigabytes for about $70 per year. Wrote the site, FTP'd it through iWeb to the server. Good to go. iPowerWeb does have, as part of their site tools (in addition to all the usual statistics on your site's hits etc and 2500 email accounts) tools for eCommerce.
 
i plan to get the pro version on ipowerweb, this has some shopping bits to it..

Can i use this on a different domain - different to the domain im ordering with on ipowerweb?
 
steveOooo said:
i plan to get the pro version on ipowerweb, this has some shopping bits to it..

Can i use this on a different domain - different to the domain im ordering with on ipowerweb?
Click to expand...

You can transfer a domain to your iPowerweb server. Would be simplest to call their customer service and ask how to do it.
 
When godaddy says they're using linux/win xp, that just means that's the platform they're hosting your site--it does not mean you need linux/win to use godaddy. I couldn't tell by your tone if that's what you were confused about.

As for what IDE to use, I believe I won't be of much help. I'm a "developer" not a "designer" so I use Netbeans.
 
Bostonaholic said:
When godaddy says they're using linux/win xp, that just means that's the platform they're hosting your site--it does not mean you need linux/win to use godaddy. I couldn't tell by your tone if that's what you were confused about.
Click to expand...

Yeh, good point. Managing the server space is all done with a your browser interface, so Mac or PC doesn't matter. Writing the website is done via whatever application on whatever computer you use (I use iWeb) and publishing the website to your domain is done via FTP, so all you need is an FTP client for your machine. I use either CyberDuck or FireFTP/Firefox for some things, but iWeb has a built-in FTP client. You enter your site's info once, click "publish" and away it goes. Most convenient for me is that iWeb retains that FTP info, so making changes to the site is as simple as making the change in iWeb and clicking "publish site changes".
 
1) I wouldn't recommend godaddy. Unless you're near a datacenter, their service is quite slow, and they'll try to steal/lock your domain name if you try transferring it.

2) You don't need to buy any kind of "ecommerce" package or a package with a shopping feature. Any host worth considering will allow you to run any shopping cart script you would like on their service (unless it's a custom script with a bug in it taking down the server, of course).

I run a small webhosting company that deals with mostly ecommerce sites and college students/professors. Roughly 75% of my customers have switched from godaddy (and a few from 1and1 and jaguarpc).

If you're interested, PM me and I'll setup an account you can use for free for a month or two (using a subdomain to test things out). This should be enough time to learn about what is involved in setting up your site.
 
Godaddy is pretty bad for web hosting (unless you expect really low traffic). They'll nickle and dime you to death too, extra for everything including email. Their domain reg. and SSL certs. are fine though.

Get linux hosting. OSX is essentially linux. In fact if you pick up a book on Linux, you'll not only know more about your hosting, you'll know a great deal about how your mac works.
 
quixotic said:
Godaddy is pretty bad for web hosting (unless you expect really low traffic). They'll nickle and dime you to death too, extra for everything including email. Their domain reg. and SSL certs. are fine though.

Get linux hosting. OSX is essentially linux. In fact if you pick up a book on Linux, you'll not only know more about your hosting, you'll know a great deal about how your mac works.
Click to expand...

+1 GoDaddy was terrible. I bought around 2 domains with them before moving away to another registrar. Took a whole lot of time trying to reclaim my domains that were chained at GoDaddy. Terrible.

Linux hosting is quite complicated if it comes without cPanel. Using Terminal is a headache for beginners.
 
quixotic said:
Godaddy is pretty bad for web hosting (unless you expect really low traffic). They'll nickle and dime you to death too, extra for everything including email. Their domain reg. and SSL certs. are fine though.

Get linux hosting. OSX is essentially linux. In fact if you pick up a book on Linux, you'll not only know more about your hosting, you'll know a great deal about how your mac works.
Click to expand...

rekhyt said:
+1 GoDaddy was terrible. I bought around 2 domains with them before moving away to another registrar. Took a whole lot of time trying to reclaim my domains that were chained at GoDaddy. Terrible.

Linux hosting is quite complicated if it comes without cPanel. Using Terminal is a headache for beginners.
Click to expand...

I've been using godaddy for a year now. I bought 2 years unfortunately. I haven't had any problems with them. It is really good for beginners but now that I've gotten more into customization, I wish I had gone with a different hosting provider. I hope it's not a pain to leave next year.
 
Hmac said:
It's pretty straightforward, or can be. Personally, I can't recommend iWeb enough for exactly the things you want to do.

I just put up a site. It literally took me about an hour using iWeb 3.01 in iLife 09. Entirely drag and drop, widgets for slide shows and movies. Embedded Youtube, RSS feeds...and site updates are absolutely simple - make your changes and click "update site".

The one I wrote is here FYI. It's a site for our Haiti relief organization.

The whole process was very easy - I went to iPowerWeb and bought the domain through them then bought two years of hosting - 300 gigabytes for about $70 per year. Wrote the site, FTP'd it through iWeb to the server. Good to go. iPowerWeb does have, as part of their site tools (in addition to all the usual statistics on your site's hits etc and 2500 email accounts) tools for eCommerce.
Click to expand...

How did you get the donate / pay by credit card bit at the bottom of the page?

heres mine http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html

(very much work in progress!) was looking to buy second hand dreamweaver to wack some flash animations in

Also, with my website, i some how have two different home pages? type in fitzhugh-media.com and your greeted with a different home page to that from above link?
 
steveOooo said:
How did you get the donate / pay by credit card bit at the bottom of the page?

heres mine http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html

(very much work in progress!) was looking to buy second hand dreamweaver to wack some flash animations in

Also, with my website, i some how have two different home pages? type in fitzhugh-media.com and your greeted with a different home page to that from above link?
Click to expand...

When I go to http://www.fitzhugh-media.com it automatically redirects me to http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html. This page looks different but same. I'm guessing it's because the css stylesheet is different for http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html than http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhugh-media/HOME.html.

In fact, looking at the source for both pages, the css stylesheets are different hence the style differences in the two pages.
 
steveOooo said:
How did you get the donate / pay by credit card bit at the bottom of the page?
Click to expand...
Set up a business account with PayPal and they give you the HTML code for the button, which takes them right to a PayPal page with your name on it. Just add the code to any page on your website.
 
Bostonaholic said:
looking at the source for both pages, the css stylesheets are different hence the style differences in the two pages.
Click to expand...

how to i correct - do i delete something on ftp? how can i make my home page just 'www.fitzhugh-media.com' instead of the weird 'http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhu...hugh_Home.html'
 
steveOooo said:
how to i correct - do i delete something on ftp? how can i make my home page just 'www.fitzhugh-media.com' instead of the weird 'http://www.fitzhugh-media.com/Fitzhu...hugh_Home.html'
Click to expand...

You need to tell your webserver which page to use as a default. Usually Apache will look for files named index.html, home.html, etc. You can add to the list whichever file you want to be the default so anyone who goes to your root www.fitzhugh-media.com the webserver will serve up /Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html instead.
 
Bostonaholic said:
You need to tell your webserver which page to use as a default. Usually Apache will look for files named index.html, home.html, etc. You can add to the list whichever file you want to be the default so anyone who goes to your root www.fitzhugh-media.com the webserver will serve up /Fitzhugh-media/Fitzhugh_Home.html instead.
Click to expand...

That won't work. This is a iWeb site. iWeb creates a redirect meta tag inside a index.html file, which points to the user's home page.
 
Godaddy

I agree Godaddy is not great for high bandwidth sites. Our clients have SSL certs through them, and their 24 hour operation is great for support.
 
check out webhostingtalk They're a forum dedicated to website hosting and domains. A great resource.

Here's a couple of points to consider when choosing a web host.
In general you get what you pay for. Unlimited bandwidth/storage for 5 bucks means you may have performance/support issues.

  • Don't have your webhost register/maintain your domain. Use a separate registrar.
  • "uptime" metrics are worthless, even the worst webhosts advertise 99.99% uptime even when that's patiently false
  • support ticket turn around time. You want a service that responds to your tickets very quickly, because if you're having problems you're not making money on your site
  • Backup your site, that is don't expect any webhost to keep backups, they do, but I've read things where some sites were lost because the customer didn't have any backups

I've used Medialayer and now ICDSoft both are not the cheapest but both offer great service. I've had my tickets responded and addressed in around 5 minutes for both. Both offer fast servers and I've never experienced an outage.
 
Create website - domains, hosting etc..

As a fellow newbie working way through building site on iweb ....any recommendations for iweb tutorials beyond what iweb intro offers.

I want to link a list at the top of the page to products further down (like FAQ) ... understand how link to other pages, websites, files, etc.... but can't find this option.

IS there a venue to find and contract someone that writes html to send me snippets to create a form or other needs? I am venturing out of my learning curve .... no plans to create other sites once this one is launched.
 
centerphi said:
As a fellow newbie working way through building site on iweb ....any recommendations for iweb tutorials beyond what iweb intro offers.

I want to link a list at the top of the page to products further down (like FAQ) ... understand how link to other pages, websites, files, etc.... but can't find this option.

IS there a venue to find and contract someone that writes html to send me snippets to create a form or other needs? I am venturing out of my learning curve .... no plans to create other sites once this one is launched.
Click to expand...

Sounds like W3Schools will be your friend.
 
Check out serverlogistics.com. They are Mac hosting...their service has been great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back