Web Sites???

[JeffreyRichard]

A question/pole for those who have web sites ... to help us who are thinking about starting one. ::)

What do you use for a service? How do you like it? Costs? Ease of creation/maintaining?

Thanks :)
Jeff

[BlueTurquoise]

Hi,

For non professional websites, I'd have to say that free sites are way more than enough. Look for ones with minimal ads. Geocities will give you a few megs of space which is enough for hobbyists. My website is hosted for free by Gocities.

For more serious websites (ie. pay to be hosted) then I have no idea. I would use local Aussie hosts...

Chong

[brewmaster15]

Hi Jeff,
Simply discus offers website hosting for its members. For non-commercial hobbyist sites we charge $60.oo a year. thats pretty darn good at $5 /per month for hosting.

You can get it free at freeservers.com but you'll have ad banners everywhere. That site also has a site builder program . I used it to build CTdiscus.com Its painless. One of these days when I am not so busy with Simply I'll move my personal site to our server here. Kinda of funny. We own a server for this site, and I could have my site here with no ad banners ...yet haven't for lack of time.

If you are interested we can talk more. I'd actually like to set up a site for the northeast club and any other clubs out there for free here.

hth,
al

[Ryan]

Hi Jeff,

There are a couple of problems with free sites like GeoCities (now owned by Yahoo), Angelfire, etc. Several years ago when they first started they only required that you put a link to their homepage on your site. That was what kept it "free." Now they all have a plethora of annoying popup ads, and it's gotten so bad that people on slow connections (like myself) have trouble loading the "free" pages. I, for one, will avoid a geocities.com page if I see it on a search engine when I'm looking for sites because I know it'll be a bear to load.

Another problem is that most free places (like GeoCities, again) won't allow you to sell stuff on your "free" page. They request that you sign up for a commercial account, which ends up costing you out of your pocket, and to my knowledge you STILL have banner ads.

With the right software, websites can be painless. If you know how to use Microsoft Word or a similar program, you can make webpages. They have programs now that do everything for you, all you do is format the text, insert clipart and pictures, etc. just like with word processor programs. Then you enter your website login information into the program and it uploads your site to the web for you -- easy stuff!

Personally I prefer webhosting with a commercial business. Webhosting rates are competitive these days and you can get webspace very cheap. Then you don't worry about popup ads, or annoying limitations from user agreements, or exceeding your space and bandwidth quotas (GeoCities just put some restrictions in place that are very limiting compared to most paid hosting services).

Ryan