[jduke44]

Does anyone have any suggestions for a web hosting company. I need to know the pros and cons of both.

I went ona site that listed a few of them and compared them. What do you think of these if oyu know them:

Powweb - www.powweb.com

Ipower - ipower.com

Blue host - bluehost.com

Dot5hosting - www.dot5hosting.com

I may have afew mopre questions as the time comes as this is sort new to me. Just for info sake, I am looking to sell things on this site. I haven't ironed everything out yet, I am just in the starting phases of this. Thanks for any input.

[RickJ]

I have 11 sites at Lunarpages.

Been with them 3 years now.

Don't take my word, though. Check out their plans, then Google for

lunarpages AND reviews

And by the way, they have an awesome Webmaster's forum too.

[jduke44]

Ok, so here are my questions. The only thing at this point I am planning on doing is accepting people's personal info (name, phone#, address, etc) and probably go through paypal or something for cc transactions.

1)Do you think I would need a secure site for this? After looking at different sites, I am now confused at what features I absolutely need and what ones I might need later.

2) There are some sites that only have unix systems and don't support ASP. I don't know anything about ASP. Do you know the advantages of using this?

To give a little background: I know HTML fairly well. I am learning the advanced web page things as I go.

I will start there and probably ask more later. Thanks Rick

[RickJ]

1. If you go through paypal you won't need SSL at all.

2. If you gather personal info on your site, you'll want security. Lunarpages offers free SSL (which I use for small transactions here) or a personal one for $60 a year (which I use here).

3. I don't use ASP for anything. There are a zillion things that will be beneficial for you to learn over time, but ASP should not be near the top of your list.

As for design, go easy on yourself. Pick up a copy of Microsoft Front Page for $80 and you'll be loving life. I started with Front Page and even though I now use Dreamweaver, it's expensive - and Front Page will do everything you want for at least a couple years is my guess.

You might be able to find a deal on DreamweaverMX used, since Dreamweaver8 just came out.

[ScottGem]

The advantage of ASP is being able to connect your pages to a database. But ASP isn't the only solution to that.

[jduke44]

Rickj - thanks for your sites. This gives me a good reference point for web hosting as to what I might need. I need to weigh the pros and cons of each company I am considering. As far as Front page or anything, I guess I am a glutton for punishment and may do this strictly from scratch. In the future I may get tired of it and do it from Front page or dreamweaver.

Scott - thanks for your input. I wasn't sure what it would be used for. If that is it, then I won't worry about it. Unfortunately, I don't know what I will need in the future.

Thanks guys for your time.

[LTheobald]

Just thought I'd add my answers although this has been covered...

1) Do you think I would need a secure site for this?

If you are not storing anything sensitive like credit card numbers then you won't need SSL. If you are using PayPal etc. to process transactions you probably won't even need their address. As well as Paypal, take a look at WorldPay too.

2) There are some sites that only have unix systems nd don't support ASP.

Unix systems will very rarely support ASP. ASP is a Microsoft technology and therefore is for Windows systems. On Unix, you're more likely to encounter PHP instead.

I think it may be worth learning a little PHP or ASP. From the sounds of it you are trying to make some kind of online catalog, store etc. Things will be much easier if all your products are contained in a database which you can update. Just putting all the different products straight into several HTML pages is messy and will be a pain to update

[jduke44]

If you are not storing anything sensitive like credit card numbers then you won't need SSL. If you are using PayPal etc. to process transactions you probably won't even need their address. As well as Paypal, take a look at WorldPay too.

Yeah, my wife and I are toying with the idea of selling things on the internet and doing other online business type stuff for extra income. We just thought to do this so it is in the very early stages. I may have to do it the messy way right now until I learn PHP though. I appreciate your thoughts as this gave me another angle to look at.

Unix systems will very rarely support ASP. ASP is a Microsoft technology and therefore is for Windows systems. On Unix, you're more likely to encounter PHP instead.

I didn't know PHP was UNIX technology. How hard is this to learn? I do know some light programming if this helps to learn PHP.

I think it may be worth learning a little PHP or ASP. From the sounds of it you are trying to make some kind of online catalog, store etc. Things will be much easier if all your products are contained in a database which you can update. Just putting all the different products straight into several HTML pages is messy and will be a pain to update

I may ask you how to do this in the future when I am ready.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. How would you guess how much bandwidth you need?

You guys are great! I knew I could count on you to point me in the right direction.

[LTheobald]

PHP isn't a just UNIX technology - it's been built for both Windows and Linux. So you can quite happily get PHP running on your machine.

As for the question, is PHP easy to learn? Well I found it easy to pick up but I had been programming for a few years before this. It's also similar to other languages I have used. But I would still say it is pretty easy for somebody to pick it up. All the commands are very close to English (e.g. mysql_connect() to open a database, strcmp() to compare two strings). Here are some good sites to help you learn PHP with tutorials etc.

PHP Freaks - A personal favourite of mine. Lots of useful tutorials and an extremely active forum to ask questions in.

Dev Shed's PHP Area - The articles here ar eprobably a bit more advanced than what a beginner would need but the site is still worth a mention. Also has a fantastic forum for getting your questions answered.

PHP Resource Index - Index of various tutorials, articles, code snippets etc.

W3School's PHP Area - W3Schools is always a great place for beginners. Well worth a look.

Not to mention your local library/bookstore is bound to have a lot of books on PHP.


The best way to learn PHP is to get it working on your Windows machine. That would mean downloading and installing Apache (a web server), PHP & MySQL (a database) then getting them all working together. Now that sounds like a pain but luckily it isn't (hurrah!). You can download things called WAMP packages. WAMP stands for Windows Apache MySQL and PHP. It basically will install all three for you in one go. The WAMP package that I use can be found here.

So if you do start to learn a little PHP (and I do recommend it for creating an online store - to access a DB containing your products), feel free to post questions here and we should be able to answer them for you.

[simplysrujan]

I personally use and like this hosting company.
They have excellent plans
Type price total domains free domains storage data transfer

Unix $3.95pm 2 1 10GB 100GB
Unix $6.45pm 6 3 20GB 300GB
Unix $12.95pm 10 5 unlimited 500GB
Windows $8.95pm 6 3 20GB 300GB
Windows $14.95 10 5 unlimited 500GB
Please visit ixhosting at using my referral link
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1799731-10388525

Thanks
Srujan

PS: I personally am looking for a hosting company with a dedicated server that can handle 2000GB band width or more per month. Any recommendations? I googled a lot but couldn't find any

[jduke44]

LT, I knew about W3Schools but didn't think to look there, duhhh! That is an awesome site. I will look at the other sites you gave me. Thanks.

Srujan, thanks for you input. I will look at this along with some other companies. If I choose these guys, I will definitely go through your link.

Also, Rickj gave me the site he uses called www.lunarpages.com. It seems to have what you are looking for. Go to the dedicated hosting plan. I hope this helps.

I have a question about bandwidth for anyone to answer. Is this used mainly for streaming video or audio or is the bandwidth usage for any type of site?

[LTheobald]

PS: I personally am looking for a hosting company with a dedicated server that can handle 2000GB band width or more per month. Any recommendations? I googled a lot but couldnt find any

I think I know a UK based company that might be able to help: FastHosts. They are the #1 hosting company in the UK I feel. It says unlimited bandwidth but I'm sure there's an acceptable user policy on that. Hopefully the level they deem acceptable is greater than what you need.

One question though - 2000 GB!! What on Earth do you need 2 terabytes of bandwidth a month for? That would be enough bandwidth to electronically transmit all the books in an university library each month.

Actually, thinking about this. Is you want that kind of data transfer, I really think you may be looking at needing your own leased line.

[jduke44]

Another quick question. Does shared SSL give the same protection as dedicated. I believe the difference is how I access this, correct?

[psi42]

Ok, so here are my questions. The only thing at this point I am planning on doing is accepting people's personal info (name, phone#, address, etc) and probably go through paypal or something for cc transactions.

To give a little background: I know HTML fairly well. I am learning the advanced web page things as I go.

I would definitely consider either doing some hardcore reading or hiring someone else when it comes to the part of the site where you are collecting personal information. Even though the running and securing of the server is going to be the hosting company's problem, a vulnerable or buggy CGI script could really spoil your day.

To give you an example of "such mistakes":
http://www.hackthissite.org/

I would suggest you have some work cut out for you: make sure any CGI scripts you write are as secure as possible.

PHP and friends are very easy to learn. I have some knowledge with regards to them, but I don't really feel up to writing the CGI behind financial transactions. You sort of need to Cover Your *** here, because if something causes something to go wrong during transactions, or (worse) someone manages to get other people's information, you don't want to be the one blamed for it. ;)

[jduke44]

Hmmm, very good point. I will consider those things. It seems the webhosting sites I have been looking at provide a lot of scripts or even shopping carts for that matter (ie. Os commerce shopping) do you think they are secure or is there still something I would have to do? Thanks for helping me cover my ***.

[Fr_Chuck]

We collect money every month though paypal and have had no trouble at all. We use it for eBay buying and selling plus use it for international donations for our church.

I have tried various web hosting companies but I have found Fortune City one of the best. They have good support and you can talk to real people for issues.

[STRANGER_OF_UR_DREAMZ]

Hi pals
I have used some free webhosting site's. I don't think they are meant for you are business. I think they can be used for your personal pages,like home pages.if you want to use it for business I would rather say you would buy a website and develop it yourself , and to make it more easy you can post your website as a project to some sites wer some developers will work out for you provided they charge for the work they have done for u,some of the sites are

Rentacoder.com
Codercc.com
Guru.com
And I think php is better for developing webpages than any other technology's

jµ$† $hå®îñg mý kñºwlèdgè

[erichss]

I have a page hosted at www.geocities.com and www.1and1.com I like both of them.

[Wendy225]

I use Dot5hosting

I did a lot of research 3 years ago and at that time they had the best pricing for what they offered, and if you want to use MS Frontpage, which I do, to build your website, it's a snap to use them, also they have excellent Tech support, by email or live online anytime of day or night.

I would definitely recommend them.:D