Bought a new website

[yk2366]

Hello,

I used to play around with html back in junior high and nearly 13 years later, here I am trying to create a professional website to show my portfolio. I have completely forgot everything and I've been trying to relearn from the w3s tutorial website I found on here.

I have total beginner questions I want to ask.
1. I see people talking about web hosting. I just bought my domain name, is there something else I need to purchase to "run" the website also?
2. I read on here that people by from godaddy.com because "their website and tools are easy to use," but I'm curious on what "tools" they are referring to when isn't it only possible to create a website using other programs, such as dreamweaver and iweb?
I want to learn dreamweaver but from the looks of it it looks IMPOSSIBLE. I have no idea what to click when the welcome screen opens. Where did everyone start in learning how to create webpages?

Any responses will be greatly appreciated!

 

[HomeBru Studios]

Yes, a domain purchase only gives you "license" to use a specific URL. You need to purchase some sort of "hosting" which will give you an account on a server where you will upload your web files to.

Hosting prices vary anywhere from too cheap to be worth the price to "are they crazy?"

Most people choose a "shared hosting plan" as that is generally the cheapest way to go and is usually more than sufficient for most cases.

I advise anyone I talk to to avoid GoDaddy like the plague. They are slow to configure changes to an account or create an initial account. They tend to take more than 24 hours when you create an account whereas other hosts are nearly instantaneous. Their web interface for your account is a pain in the butt because just about every click you make opens a new window. They also change how they manage web tools (e.g. Mail handling) without a word of warning (they broke several sites I was maintaining for people because they changed how they manage their SMTP service and their change provided their users with a horrendous system for managing email attachments).

Also, GoDaddy is sales oriented (i.e. All they want to do is sell you this and that add-on or service to your account).

As a final GoDaddy note, they claim to be huge (and probably are), so you have to wonder how severe your bandwidth is affected by their overselling their available space!

I find cPanel as a superior interface to account management over GoDaddy's obnoxious GUI layer.

With either GoDaddy or any other hosting provider, you are free to create your web site using any tools you like (Dreamweaver, Coda, NetBeans, whatever), build everything locally, then upload the files to your hosting account using FTP. It is things like Website-Tonight that you want to stay away from - they are very inflexible and build ugly websites.

Good luck and have fun!!

 

[yk2366]

thanks for the reply! ah I should've waited a little longer. I just purchased my domain at godaddy.com(thinking thats all I had to buy) for 10 years for 75.00, which is pretty cheap I'm hoping. Then I realized I had to buy a web hosting plan, and went to ipage and found such a great deal! it was only 4.25 or something a month that includes unlimited GB space and bandwidth AND a free domain.. but because I already bought my domain and I wanted to stick with the same company, I bought the $2.99 deluxe plan at godaddy.com (they are having a deal. usually it's 4.99?) for 48 months for around $145.00. but it's not unlimited GB like ipage.com

I first thought websites were so cheap nowadays but I realize they add up!

Had anyone tried ipage services? I will proabbly have to stick with godomain for few years but after that, I want to change.

 

[Laird Knox]

I would say $2.99 is pretty darn cheap. You don't have to pay for and maintain a server, pay for electricity and cooling, etc.

I have mixed feelings about GoDaddy, but I've been with them for years. I have never used their hosting services. For a long time I ran my own server. Lately I've been developing a site on Google App Engine. It has been a bit of a learning curve but I'm happy with the results so far.

Keep plugging away and it will come together. It sounds like you have all the pieces, now comes the hard part. Keep in mind that there might already be parts of what you want already built: blogs, photo albums, shopping carts, etc. It's OK to use canned pieces instead of reinventing the wheel.

 

[ryketech]

I would say $2.99 is pretty darn cheap. You don't have to pay for and maintain a server, pay for electricity and cooling, etc.

I have mixed feelings about GoDaddy, but I've been with them for years. I have never used their hosting services. For a long time I ran my own server. Lately I've been developing a site on Google App Engine. It has been a bit of a learning curve but I'm happy with the results so far.

I have been "toying" with the idea of running my own servers, but as you outlined there are too many variables and expenses involved to even come close to just using a hosting package at a data center. Electricity alone for running and cooling a server would cost more than $2.99 a month! As for GoDaddy, I ONLY use them for domain purchases and then point them to my hosting nameservers. They always have good deals on domains, especially in bulk!

 

[Cromulent]

thanks for the reply! ah I should've waited a little longer. I just purchased my domain at godaddy.com(thinking thats all I had to buy) for 10 years for 75.00, which is pretty cheap I'm hoping. Then I realized I had to buy a web hosting plan, and went to ipage and found such a great deal! it was only 4.25 or something a month that includes unlimited GB space and bandwidth AND a free domain.. but because I already bought my domain and I wanted to stick with the same company, I bought the $2.99 deluxe plan at godaddy.com (they are having a deal. usually it's 4.99?) for 48 months for around $145.00. but it's not unlimited GB like ipage.com

I first thought websites were so cheap nowadays but I realize they add up!

Had anyone tried ipage services? I will proabbly have to stick with godomain for few years but after that, I want to change.

Don't worry. When a web host sells you unlimited bandwidth or storage or whatever you won't really get it. They'll either get you to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server or they'll kick you off their servers and you'll have to find another web host.

Rest assured that if your websites become popular you will be paying a LOT more than $2.99 or $4.99 a month.

 

[notjustjay]

For someone just starting out I highly doubt you'll have any real problems.

If you're running a high-traffic site like MacRumors where you need lots of system resources and your users get mad at you if your site goes down for any reason, then you may (or may not) have more reasons to complain about the service.

 

[yk2366]

cool thanks for the replies guys. I learned a lot the last few days.

I was wondering though, does anyone have problem with iweb updating? for instance, sometimes when I link my text to another page, it says it is linked but it doesn't work on my website. Or, it doesn't save the work I've just done and when I open up iweb again, it goes back to the orignal format before I altered it. SO I ahd to do some steps few times over. Is it just only mine? Because of htese issues, I've been changing only a few at a time and uploading, then quitting the software, bringing it up again and making more changes.

 

[talmy]

I've had a website since 1997 on five different hosts, GoDaddy for the last few years. I don't like Godaddy's interface cluttered with advertisements for add-ons, and I hate their advertising campaigns, but the price has been right and uptime has been 100% with only one lapse. I use their $8.00/month plan (before the inevitable discounts) to host four domains. I'm using about 4.5GB of disk space and run about 20GB/month bandwidth.