Thread: Setting up a website

We can do that for you - design, registration, hosting, etc. We are a bit quiet at the moment so could help you out. PM me with more details, and what kind of budget you are working to and we should be able to sort something out.

There are many cheap hosting companies now and most give you a free webpage design into the bargain.

One of the several we use is www.daily.co.uk most practically give the domain name away with the package, but for some reason Australia is relatively expensive.

Dave

Derek,

ServersAustralia.com.au have a free hosting option, depending on the amount of files and traffic, but free is a good way to start.

Most hosting offers include CPanel, which lets you install software from a menu.
If you google for CPanel (or CPanel hosting) you can see what's available.

Have a look at the various CMS packages, because they can make life a lot easier than trying to deal with individual web pages.

The website I did for my daughter's dance classes is now 90% managed and updated by the non-PC-literate dance school owner. She doesn't need to know about HTML etc. etc., she just logs on, and types in her new article.

Cheers,
Andrew

Derek,

Another possibility is to have a blog, rather than a website, as I do, see below. You can have your articles hosted online for free at http://www.mediafire.com/ . And you can insert links in your blog to enable people to download the files stored there; you can also edit the stored files if you wish. It is very easy for you to set up your own blog at www.blogger.com. You need no expertise to set it up and it will cost you nothing. The only restriction on a blog is that it is not to be used for commercial purposes; so I have a separate website for my rocker plans.

Rocker

Hello Derek,

A blog is one way to go, but there are other options. Registering your own domain means no adds and pop ups to annoy people. (Sorry Rocker, I just tried to view your mortise jig and ended up with two pages of irrelevant adds and a chance to dress my own "Zwinky" I was unsure and there was no way of checking what I was downloading via the download button.)
For writing your own page with easy text/image/linking, I would wholeheartedly recommend Perfect Website Creator from Coffee Cup software. (http://www.Coffeecup.com I think.
The advantage of having your own domain is that you can if you wish, sell from it, can define subdomains for other purposes and have access to many other features such as Joomla, Fantastico and other useful software. You can also get stats packages.
I use http://www.webhostsaustralia.com/ as my IP and they have been excellent. Cost me A$170 for a domain name and 12 months licence. (They give you the domain for 12 months free.) Their service is second to none.
The cost of their domains is about average, but a lot less than some (e.g. Melbourne I.T.)

Regards

GLS

Originally Posted by LGS

A blog is one way to go, but there are other options. Registering your own domain means no adds and pop ups to annoy people. (Sorry Rocker, I just tried to view your mortise jig and ended up with two pages of irrelevant adds and a chance to dress my own "Zwinky" I was unsure and there was no way of checking what I was downloading via the download button.)

LGS,

Mediafire shows the filename that is being downloaded. All my files for download are in PDF format, and are scanned for viruses by Mediafire, so you should be perfectly safe in downloading the file. The filename is RMjig.pdf, by the way for the morticing jig.

Rocker

Derek,
It all really depends on what you want out of your website.
I believe in keep it simple, no bells and whistles, no flashing banners and eye irritants.

For simple clean efficient site you don't need to spend any money on software, there are heaps of excellent free programs out there and more than enough online help for whatever ones you choose.

At least enough to get you started, so that when you are a little more knowledgeable you can make your own choices.

If you are willing to learn a bit about HTML, you can use a simple text editor to make your pages, checking how it looks on your browser.

There are free WYSIWYG that do a good job. You probably already have MS FrontPage (heaven forbid) on your computer already. You could use that to do your first pages to get a feel of it all.

Whatever you do, get your own domain name. Don't get conned into putting a lot of effort into some blogger type hosting package. You must control your own site. Why do all the work for something that may change next year. The site you are currently showing your articles on, is, with all due respect, making money out of your efforts.

If you want ads on your site OK, your decision not someone Else's.

It's a complicated subject Derek, and one way or another you are in for a lot of fun.

Rocker, you have obviously got some good stuff on your blog, but to send a visiter off site straight away, especially to that mediafire thing is a big put off to me and I suspect most others. Why not keep it on your blogger pages?

Cheers
Bill

Originally Posted by billbeee

Whatever you do, get your own domain name. Don't get conned into putting a lot of effort into some blogger type hosting package. You must control your own site. Why do all the work for something that may change next year. The site you are currently showing your articles on, is, with all due respect, making money out of your efforts.

All of Bill's advice is sound, except that there are many free blog hosting packages, with no strings attached.
www.blogspot.com is one (owned by yahoo)
and www.wordpress.com is another

it's easy to register a .com domain name and for a small fee you can have a redirect ($5.00 per year from www.dotster.com)

Here are some examples:
http://www.julianlewis.info - "masked" redirection, so you don't know that this is a standard blogspot site and template. (this is how we stay in touch with our kids!)

http://pdracer.blogspot.com - a custom page using blogspot and no custom URL.
http://bitingmidge.wordpress.com/ - a standard wordpress template.

As you keep a copy of all your articles on your own machine, if your circumstances change, or the rules change, you can reconfigure them somewhere else and simply redirect your domain to the next address.

Having more than my fair share of "hobby" sites, Derek I'm inclined to agree that one of the blogs above would be adequate for your needs, and the address would do for the time being as well.

If you need more, you can create it once you are out there doing it!

Cheers,

P

Hey Derek,
my partner is a Jewler/silversmith. She approached a couple of Uni Students who are studying web design (2nd or 3rd year I think), and got three of them to design and maintain her address totally free of charge. Only one of them is still doing it now (over two years later) and she looks like she wants to continue it for a while yet. It is not quite exploitation, or anything like it really- it is sort of a win win scenario. The up and coming web designer uses it as part of her ongoing folio, and practice for real working experience, etc, etc.. It is worth thinking about, as there are lots of young computer wizzes out there just waiting to cut their teeth on some interesting projects.
My partner has been more than happy with the results.
I'll PM you the address, you can check it out.

Hans.

P.S. what I meant to say also was that it is a great help to the designer close at hand. My partners web designer comes round with her computer, once a month or so, they sit around and have tea and cookies and chat and recreate/freshen up the website.

Hi guys

Many thanks for the input and offers so far. I am still taking in all this. However, I am fairly sure that I do not want a blog. Every one I have seen (including one I began building via Google) offers information in a sequential format, that is, you have to scroll through everything to get to a specific section. At this time I have upwards of 40 articles to upload. They will require an index on a face sheet as a link to individual pages. Each article runs between 1 - 5 pages, with some several pages longer.

Regards from Perth

Derek

G'day Derek

Coming from the point of view of some one who has very little exeprience with setting up web pages and is learning as they go....this is a couple things I have learnt from putting together the start of my website.
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/browndog/

At the moment I am just using the free user account with my bigpond account to host the page...cause its free . Though as I develop it further I intend to register a domain and transfer to a proper hosting service....after some advice from other forumites and a little bit of research. I am planning to go with :

http://www.serversaustralia.com.au/index.php

they have a free package that will probably suit me, but also have quite a few reasonbly priced pakages to upgrade too if the need arises. From my research I found good and bad comments about seversaustralia but the feedback seemed to be mostly positive.

As far as software goes...I agree with billbee about the free stuff. I trialed a couple of programs all claiming to be the easiest WYSIWYG software around . However most seemed to be designed for people who knew what they were doing .

The one I ended up choosing was no harder to use than a word processor, everything is cut and paste, just select an element and plonk it where you want it . Easy even for some one with no HTML knowledge. From memory you can do quite a bit with the free version but I ended up forking out for the full version (about $60) so I could use the Dynamic HTML features and other features that the free version doesnt have. Plus the full version has a large selection of ready made templates ( I decided to start from scratch). One thing I found particullarly good about this software was how easy it is to set up many different pages and have numerous ways to link to those pages.


The one I used is called Web Easy and is available at:
http://www.v-com.com/


hope this helps

Cheers
BD

Have a look at http://whatsinaname.com.au/ to check the pricing variation for domain names!

I've used Intaserve - can't see any reason to pay the "official" Melbourne IT prices.

Have you looked at the website I did? I used Drupal to build
http://www.cathymakindanceacademy.com.au

A whole lot of things are customisable with Drupal, and there's a whole library of add-in modules available.

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi Andrew

I thought that I might report that I have registered a domain name - it was cheap enough ($14.95) so that the money was not an issue if it is not useful. Name? "thewoodworker.net"

Regards from Perth

Derek