Computers Discussions

I use In Motion hosting for Yes You Can Grill.

I went with them, because they are a smaller company with good tech support and a good record of being up and online vs. down for "whatever."

I don't like the ads that come with the free spaces. I'd rather pay and have control over what comes up online under my name.

I did get the domain names from Go Daddy. They also host. But, they are a big company. I wanted a smaller host site. So, that's how I got that all set up.

Well after I posted this, I started to reminded myself that it's not worth the money for what I want to do with it. Like Jo said, it's not a serious endeavor, but it used to be.  When I used to pay for my site my main reason was that I was learning. I would practice things on my site and try to learn new code for whenever I got a job.  So in my mind I wrote off the cost as something that would help me learn more for my resume.  Since I have a job now, I learn enough just working on Work sites so I don't think I need a practice site anymore.

So I found another free service that rocks... review coming soon, but if you want to try it now it's Shutterfly sites.  I love it!!!  And there are no ads other than shutterfly marking that you can order pics that I post.  Of course it isn't as customizeable as having my own site, but it works for my purposes of sharing photos and blogs with my friends and family.

I'll never give up my domain name though :)  I think I already paid to have vivasuzi.com for 5 more years anyway!

I use yahoo hosting and the domain name -- all because it's just so easy to have the one package and there are so many different ways to build my site and include forums. 

also you can even set up a store, donations, and affiliate links easily so you can try to earn some of your money back.  depending on what you do though as a rule I don't think you should have ads on your business site.

it is a little hefty though - 12.00 a month but it seems to do the trick.  changes are definitely coming to it as soon as I am not writing or creating websites for someone else!   

I used yahoo way back when it was geocities and it was free (my first website!!)  I then tried many many free options.  Eventually I moved to a low priced "educational" subscription at an ASP/SQL host so I could start practicing code.  That then became upgraded until I hit the 240$ for 2 years mark! 

I do not do my website for business, just for sharing with friends and family AND for my own memory as well b/c I have an awful memory. When I had a paid website, I used to have a page to link to my reviews or to programs I was in, but I don't find that I got that many additional hits because of it.  I see a lot of people with paid websites that are just for sharing memories and I wonder how much they pay.  As much as I love sharing memories, I can just as easily copy them to a CD and pass them around that way so it's not worth it to pay anymore when I can get it for free.

My first personal site was geocities too. Then I moved over to angelfire. That one's still there, although I've long forgotten the log in ID/Password for it.

For the DUI Racing League site, I first used Yahoo, but there were many things I disliked about their service, so I moved everything over to Ipower. It was cheaper too, something like $95/year. They were great at first, then they sucked big time. (They were "upgrading" their servers and nothing worked right, the sql servers were slower than molassis in Alaska in January, and their support people were clueless). I was going to switch to a different hosting service, but lately the site has been reasonable, speed wise, and none of their tech support people have deleted my whole site in about 6 months..... d;-). I guess I'll give 'em another year and see if they straighten their $#!+ out before going through the major hassle of migrating to a new host.

I did the angelfire thing too.  I usually dont keep them loaded after I decide to move though, I did a download and delete of all those accounts. 

The reason I decided to move to free was primarely b/c brinkster suddenly did something that made all my photo gallery not work (with 1000s of organized photos already uploaded and lots of customizations already implemented).  I couldn't handle the stress of recreating it (their suggestion) and that's when I started to wonder why I paid for a service when I could do this free :)

The biggest trouble with choosing a host is finding a name that is trustworthy.  I've never heard of lpower, and I've never heard of many of the ones I see when I do searches for top hosts. I think companies like Yahoo and Google are really missing out because if they would make a really advanced web hosting platform, I bet many would pay for the name alone.

I use Webs.com.  It's very easy; you can add a blog, store, forums, guestbook, all kinds of stuff.  It's really easy to use.

we had one at webs.com -- actually are just now turning it into a site site -- with domain name etc. but were very happy with it too. 

godaddy allows you to purchase a domain name for like 10.00 then you can use their free website tonight service to set up a website.  or you can use the free blogging tools. as far as free goes (and even for some of the paid sites) this one is pretty nifty!  you can do photos, videos, html coding and it is also easy to customize from their over 800 templates.  

I have my domain name already so I'm all set with that.  I use namesecure which is cheap, especially if you sign up for a bunch of years at once.  I decided to go with shutterfly as my website. It doesn't do EVERYTHING I had been doing on my paid site, but it is FREE and it's pretty darn cool too :)

I'm using justhost.com. I'm paying around $5 a month paid annually and they have a very feature rich interface. The site has unlimited memory. I have my music web site up there (www.jazzobsession.com) a website and blog related to my accounting career (nfp.financialmanagement.com) and I could have more. I do need to buy the domain names after the first one and GoDaddy does well with that.

Reliability has been fine as has been service. The only annoying thing is that they keep trying to see me premium services that I do not need/

www.365-hosting.net

I've been using the hosting company for my churches sub-sites as well as my own sandbox hosting account. Completely free, not a bad amount of space and bandwidth. They are looking to upgrade regularely.

NO ADS!

It's easily the best free hosting plan I've seen.
They don't have a huge staff or anything but it's good stuff. If you want to do a site that you don't want to pay for but would like to have free run with go with them.

I use Webs.com for my business also, like LisaCarey & Brittanyls have posted here.  I don't use hardly any of the features there and I like it that way lol.  If I ever decide to, I can do that also.   My husband uses MSN hosting.  Mine has always been free and his has too.  He'll have to pay starting in February though, it's $14.95 a year.  That's pretty good for having it free for over 3 years already.  That includes the domain name.  It's all a tax write-off anyway as a business expense. 

I asked him, are you sure it's $14.95 a year and not a month?  Then we looked and it's per year.  Even if it's $14.95 a month, it would totally be worth it.  He has the exact domain name he wants.  His is always on the first page of Google ~  Mine can be found on the first page or two, which is fine by me :)

And yes, these are "serious" websites that we sell through.  We only take customers in person and by appt. here at our home for his PC stuff, which is under monitored surveillance 24/7.

He won't ship PC's and I won't sell my photos unless I'm emailed and paid personally through Paypal or in person.  They have to email or call me though, then I can email them lots of "low-res" sample pics that won't get jacked/copied.  They'll look like crap if they do try to copy ~ I have to protect my copyrights.   I do sell them at shows alongside my handmade jewelry as well. 

I tell potential customers that it's best to come here.  I have a huge collection so when pple come into town and are serious buyers, they actually have to come to our home, and that happens quite a bit, so that works for me.

I also get emails stating they aren't anywhere near here and want to purchase.  I then email them the aforementioned low-res samples, and a good percentage do buy that way.

I did many of the free web hosts but have my personal site, Shekinah, hosted by Elysium Gates.

I also have a graphics site hosted by Bravenet.

I am more than happy with both.

I now have my own Web site up: bobkovacs.com. It's hosted at GoDaddy, and I'm paying something like $93 (total) for two years, including purchasing the domain, hosting and e-mail. I think that's a special deal but it seemed really cheap.

I had trouble getting my site up and had to use customer service, both e-mail and phone. I was blown away -- GoDaddy's customer service was completely amazing. It was Americans speaking English as a first language, and they were knowledgable and patient. That was worth the fee right there. Review coming up!

--Bob

That is really cheap.  In the end, when I was with Brinkster, I was up to around $120 a year.  I paid more because I initially wanted to use all the database features and such.  I cancelled because I wasn't using them.  Although for a few years having those features really helped me practice things which I now can use at work.

When I left brinkster, I moved my domain name to namesecure and it is cheap per year, but even cheaper if you pay for x years in advance.  I'm never giving up vivasuzi.com :)  So soon as it is close to expire I might just buy it for 10 years.  

Well I have been very happy with Shutterfly since I posted way back in May about that.  It let's me put unlimited photos and pages on my site.  Sure I cannot make it completely customized, but I've let go of the need for a customized and it's all for free!  To top it off, they send me deals all the time!  I just created vivatravel.shutterfly.com (work in progress) but the reason I created it is because I earned 30 free prints by doing so!  I'm going to make that a site for all my vacations and travel photos and reviews.  Since I print a lot of pictures for my memory book and photo albums, this Shutterfly thing is really working out great.

Bob I love the action shots you have on your pages of you writing and taking pics :)  Now we see what it looks like when you are writing all kinds of stuff.  Thanks for sharing!

Bryan and I are using godaddy too and for the money it can't be beat. We actually got the domain name then just use the free web design tools to create our site. it's a little limiting but it's a good place to start it.  all for 10.00 a year per site.  I also like that I can direct my name have email for the domain name and free storage too. It's a bit cumbersome to get started but again for 10.00 a year I can't beat it. 

Do any of these sites you all are talking about allow you to upload and playback streaming video?  I do now pay 29$ a year for Shutterfly Video - unlimited HD video sharing.  I can't live without that now :)

vivasuzi said…

Bob I love the action shots you have on your pages of you writing and taking pics :)  Now we see what it looks like when you are writing all kinds of stuff.  Thanks for sharing!

---

Thanks! I hope to fill the site out with more little things in the next few weeks. I hadn't thought about hosting my own video playbacks but that sounds like a great idea. Maybe I'll send a note to GoDaddy and see if that can be done with my account.

I assume that you want to share your videos with a limited number of people. You can do that on YouTube, although it's a little awkward. On YouTube, you can limit videos to certain people by listing them as friends and entering them into a list. As many as 25 people can be in the list to view a certain video. They have to be YouTube members, but anyone can sign up for free.

Dunno if that helps. I've uploaded many HD videos to YouTube and they look pretty good.

--Bob

Has anyone used officelive.com? I was looking for a feature rich site with free web hosting and liked what I saw. I have my own sandbox where I play but I did a site for a Doctor's office and registered a domain for $6.99 using 1&1 and will pay $8.99 per year there after. The web design software is rather intuative and similar to using a word processor. Many feature rich objects can be incorporated. The site for the doctor's office totaled $6.99 first year just because she wanted her own shorter domain name. I have not tried to do any streeming vidio so not sure if supported on officelive.com. The doctors site is: www.otobgyn.com or www.otobgyn.health.officelive.com both links go to same site.

Hope this was helpful. I feel office live could do most site layouts with a little creativity.

--Bob C.