Posted by: "Danny Meltzer"
> Ok I finally have my site and my MP3's ready to put up online. Perhaps t=
his is slightly off
> topic? but as it relates to me posting all my recordings I don't quite th=
ink it is. Any
> recommendations for cheapish web hosting?
Welcome to the world of the tar baby. To do it right takes planning and
time. Though once you get a website up and running well maintenance is
easier (if you planned it right). Time spent planning at the beginning
will really pay back later.
Don't know if yahoo provides web space. My account provides me 100 megs
of server space as part of the account. It's divided into 10 separate
spaces each associated with a email address. That has been enough so far
to provide quite a bit of web stuff including the heavily used Frogs and
Toads of Georgia website. Biggest problem is I'm limited to 10 gigs of
bandwidth per month, 1gig per each 10meg space. Just two days ago I had
to do a quick shuffle and relinking of my website as two of those
sections were going to bandwidth limit, I last had this happen when the
CD came out. Because my site is well organized there was no down time
evident to users and only a couple hours work. Every webpage on my frog
site was edited to do the relinking. If you have webspace provided with
your account you are set. Organize some suitable pages for your stuff
and put it up.
If I need it Earthlink does have commercial web hosting. The smallest
account is $10/month and provides 2 gigs of disk space and 20gigs of
data transfer per month (plus 30 mailboxes). There are similar setups
available all over the place, shop around. The cheapest accounts are
generally ones where you generate all your content and manage the site
yourself. You can pay more and have someone else do that too. Be sure
and check out who owns what goes on your site. Some cheap and free
setups you give them rights to your stuff to pay for the service.
Note that soundfiles are big. If your site is popular and you have small
bandwidth limits that will be a problem. Any host you are considering be
sure and check bandwidth limits. I can get away with it on the frogs of
GA site because most folks don't listen to the call files and they are
deliberately very short. Though that's part of what I was splitting and
relinking the other night. (the other part I had to redo was the photos)
We do own a domain name, though it's currently inactive. Hosting
services can take care of that too, at a additional fee. Owning a name
is a rental arrangement, you don't permanently buy it. Think if you want
to get into this. It's biggest advantage is you can move your entire
site to a different host without end users being inconvenienced. The
name just gets a new pointer. Most hosting services can provide a name
that's generally associated only with their service. Like I'm running on
now. If I moved my site to a different server host my URL's would all
change. That would be a big problem as my site has become a reference
site for SE US frogs.
If you happen to have a high speed connection, you can check if they
allow you to run a server through it. Though it's a bunch more work,
this can be a way to go. Set up your own server. Disk space becomes
virtually infinite, though you still could have bandwidth limits.
Note make sure and check that your site is widely compatible. If you are
using windows don't use windows specific software or formats, same
applies to using mac file structures or some mac software. Stick mostly
with standard html and it's limitations and you will be most compatible
with everybody. Remember that the majority of users still hook up with a
modem, not high speed. I do no longer cater to those that insist on
using the web with only a text browser, but I pay close attention to
file sizes and download speeds. If you put up pages that don't work
right expect to receive complaints. It's your site and is what people
will know about you. The entire world can look at your stuff and listen
to it. Put your best face forward.
> The big holdup has been that I only just have gotten my creaky old Imac h=
ooked up to the
> internet.
You will need Fetch, in addition to a page editor to put your pages and
etc. on a server via FTP. If you are using web space provided by your
ISP they will generally have instructions. There is a huge body of info
on all this on the web.
I use Claris Home Page to build my pages. But I'm not sure you could
even find it. It runs under Classic only and writes standard html. If
you know html coding very well you can just use a text editor. Beware
that much web page builder software writes code that's very hard to
edit, troubleshoot, and is inefficient. Some even writes non-standard
code (particularly true of microsoft products). That sort of stuff can
be quite a headache down the road.
You can build and edit pages with netscape, though I don't consider it
the best editor.
Walt
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