Which web hosting site do you use?

My renewal for my website is coming due the end of this month.

To be honest, my website is not good at all, but I also do not use it to attract new business. However that may change soon with upcoming plans for growth.

When I received the renewal notice I went to my host site "Domain Name Sanity" and attempted to work on my site.

The interface is (to me) very clunky and after several minutes of trying to even bring up my home page to edit, I failed.......which I still don't understand what I was doing wrong, it should be a very simple procedure!

I made the site back in 2000 and have since completely forgotten all the codes and such to generate the pages to my liking. Now they have all these templates you can choose from (which in my opinion, the ones they offer......suck) but even then, I was totally lost as to making anything come together and finally just gave up in disgust.

So I do a Google search for "Best Web Hosting Sites" and of course the majority of them (with the exception of "Go Daddy") I've never heard of, but I don't want to fall into the same pitfall as before, and be left unable to navigate an editing process that should (as one would imagine) be a simple point and click or drag into place process.

I consider myself pretty computer savvy and made my site back then using html code, but DAMN......I don't feel like going through all that learning the code again and I just know there has to be a better way these days.

So.......for those "Do-it-Yourselfers"........which web hosting site would you recommend?

I need to do something with my site.......I still have machines listed on there I either got rid of or replaced years and years ago!

Best Regards,
Russ

i still use godaddy for domains, generally cheaper than other people.

Ive recently switched my hosting to fatcow.com. only complaint from them is they don't use cpanel, other than that its been great.

-Jacob

I use Yahoo. Probably not the best, but it works and at $12.95/month isn't breaking the bank. I used their software to build my site the first two times, but now one of my kids is redoing it using Dreamweaver and complaining a lot about how the code generated by the Yahoo site builder program really isn't very good.

wrustle said:

..........

So.......for those "Do-it-Youselfers"........which web hosting site would you recommend?

I need to do something with my site.......I still have machines listed on there I either got rid or replaced years and years ago!

Best Regards,
Russ

Click to expand...

I've been with GoDaddy for many years (well over 10 at least) and I'm totally satisfied..

If the best website under your complete control is your desire, Dreamweaver (or whatever new name Adobe calls it now) is your best bet, with CUTE to upload/download your files to it..

Good luck..

Ok RJ.......since I'm sitting here still in my PJ's drinking a coffee at 9:17am and "thinking" about going to work, rather than doing it........I'm going to complete the lazy ass cycle and instead of looking up "Dreamweaver", ask you what it's about and "why" I would need it.

I've heard it mentioned before and as with any sales process, if I look up the site, they're going to tell me it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and I MUST have it.

You on the other hand have hands on experience with it and can most likely best describe in laymans terms why I need it.

Later,
Russ

Because it is simply the best program for building a website. Very professional and worth it. You'll pay a couple hundred up front for it, but since your time is valuable, it will save that for you quickly. :O)

One of the best things is that you have total flexibility. There's nothing you want to do that you can't do.

It's not one of the programs that take you by the hand with templates and lots of esoteric coding, but those programs are usually hard to alter.

If you do decide to get it and want a few tips, let me know and I'll give you a start.

It can automatically create the HTML coding if you are using that format. The great thing about that is that if you know a little HTML you can go into the source and tweak things.

My wife is even better at it than I am.. If you're lucky she will give you some help.

I use Webmasters.com and have been amazed at their customer service.
Very seldom are there problems, but when there are they either already know and working on it, or get right on it, as well as very fast about communication.

A few Christmases ago, I was working on an online shopping cart... and was learning as I went. We were out at the girlfriends folks, and something was wonky... So I thought for grins, that even though it was christmas day, Id email them so they would have it in the pile when they got in on monday, and I could start working on it then.

About 30 minutes later, I had a reply, and a solutions (turned out I didnt know what I was doing with permissions on the install of the cart)

And at 9.95 a mo with free domain registry provided you host with them... I dont think you can beat the service, the price, and utilities.

I have not used their webdesign software, as I started with FrontPage, and when that frustrated me beyond belief, I went to a CMS (content management system) call Etomite. Not as easy to get the layout where you want it (unless youre okay with using one of the templates available), but once you do... its very handy because all you do is deal with the content, the system controls the lay out and all the links for you. Its a bit like going from fanuc to okuma Its the same, but different.

If you decide to go with a CMS - and use Etomite, and need a hand holler Im happy to help.

Wade

I made the mistake of having Thomasnet host and build my first site. It was a mistake and I will leave it at that. I have since started a new site on wordpress which is free soft ware. There are many different themes, or templates that can be used or you can just build your own on wordpress. I purchased a theme that had good reviews and was very resonably priced from a place called True Themes. I am currently using Inmotion hosting for something like $65 a year.

Rodl

These guys are great Web hosting services from ICDSoft: Superior Tech Support and Super Fast Servers

They have IMAP email which is nice. Most don't provide this.

Hosting

For hosting I use:
Laughing Squid - http://laughingsquid.us
midPhase http://midphase.com

Best domain reg and DNS management hands down is
https://dnsimple.com/

FYI - most of us 'professional' internet types look at godaddy the same way most of you look at Mfg.com & china. Cheap products produced by an immoral, totalitarian regime.

My 2¢

When you rewrite the website I highly recommend using a CMS rather than doing it all in something like Dreamweaver. Just getting the site to look like your potential customers expect things to look is so much easier, as is managing the content. Of these, Wordpress is by far the most popular (of the million most visited websites, 55% are done in Wordpress) and easiest for a novice to use. It is just the shortest path to a competent looking website without jobbing it out. Seriously, things have come a long way since 2000.

No useful opinion on where to host it, I'm afraid, I use a small local company. godaddy is probably just fine. OTOH, I did register a couple of domain names with them recently because they were pretty cheap. Had to ignore like 10 different upsell options, which was pretty annoying. Someplace less aggressive might suit you better since you don't know exactly what you want/need.

I use Justhost. IMO, a bit dodgy for the neophyte, but inexpensive and high performance. Excellent up-time and tools. I still do everything in xhtml, but am not into anything fancy. Speed, maintainability, affordability and simplicity are what I'm after.

I also use dreamweaver but I sometimes have to go back and figure out how some of the functions work.

The nice thing about it, as RJ said, is that you have complete flexibility.

If you do use it make up a couple of extra frames and other features for later use. All you have to do later then is go in and modify them.

Get yourself a copy and spend a day going thru the manual and doing the stuff. Once you have it figured out you can upload it using something like filezilla.

Can't give advice on hosting tho, I still use access to servers from when I was in the ISP business.

The important thing is not to panic, if you need help give my web designer a call.

Do the rankings shown HERE have any merit?

Wrustle, will you be doing this all yourself or will you involve your college-attending minions?

PixMan said:

Do the rankings shown HERE have any merit?

Click to expand...

I'd say it depends on the needs of the client. As in - does one need templates and DIY interface, does one need an e-commerce site, is technical support important, etc.

The infrastructure costs (server space, email accounts, etc) associated with web building are small potatoes in the long run. Other criteria are more important. There have been many times when a super-bargain web hosting site has gone under, and the dreaded "you have 30 days to move your files to another web hosting service" email arrives. The work involved in the migration isn't worth any $$ saved.


G

I use INMOTIONHOSTING. Doing your search, I see they are in top 10 according to many different sites. They, of course, have different hosting options to choose from. I think I was paying like $9.95/month for e-commerce business class hosting. Support has been there the few times I've needed it. They have a setup which will install a number of different templates of ready to personalize and use setups from shopping carts to forums and photo albums and such. Don't recall what all there was, but it made things a breeze. I used a free open-source shopping cart, which while reading through the shopping cart support and forum, others seem to have a heck of a time getting things up and running installing it themselves through other hosting. I just had to tell it what directory to put it in and provide a username and password and it was done. They had a few options to choose from for basic page design, but never messed much with that.

I can't complain and don't see myself looking to switch

I used Intuit - the Quickbooks people when I did mine.

Did mine in a cpl days...

I think it does OK, but you are stuck with their page addresses and 5 pages AFAIK. They prolly have other options for additional charges I s'pose. ???

http://websitebuilder.intuit.com/get-a-website2-stpc?channel=ppc&cid=IG100467



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I use dreamhost...They deal with a bunch of content management systems really well, so I was able to get a wordpress site running in about a day.

I screwed around with code and stuff enough to completely customize the wordpress 'look', so it doesn't have a blog feel, and the banners and graphics are all customized to my liking.

I host 3 sites on my dreamhost account...$95 or so a year, plus domain registrations. No problems at all.

I might add too, for those that come across this thread looking to start a website, I learned a lot of basic HTML and such at w3schools.com. Was quick and easy for basics, but I didn't bother getting into more detail stuff.

Also, if you download the firefox browser, you can use web developer add-ons. It can help you find errors, letting you highlight elements and find what code and what line generated each. You can also change the code that the browser has pulled up, just for a quick view of adjustments before changing them on your site.

in the end, w3schools.com and firefox were a huge help for a beginner in my opinion.

annoying said:

I might add too, for those that come across this thread looking to start a website, I learned a lot of basic HTML and such at w3schools.com. Was quick and easy for basics, but I didn't bother getting into more detail stuff.

Also, if you download the firefox browser, you can use web developer add-ons. It can help you find errors, letting you highlight elements and find what code and what line generated each. You can also change the code that the browser has pulled up, just for a quick view of adjustments before changing them on your site.

in the end, w3schools.com and firefox were a huge help for a beginner in my opinion.

Click to expand...

Yes, these are good tools and w3schools.com is a good resource. But these days a beginner doesn't have to get into any coding whatsoever to put up a website that looks better than probably 90% of what was out there 10 years ago. And if you forsee ever using your website for advertising (OTOH I don't know what else you're using it for), pretty much every aspect of this is 100X easier this way.