Thinking about making my own website...

[shiato storm]

...and I have no idea where to start. its basically to show off my best pictures and be able to sell them[in theory], so its going to be a simple but effective, clean looking site thats easy to get around...and that I can update regularly with more pictures as they get taken, I feel if I did it rather than put it in the hands of a company to design it then I'd have total control of what goes in and how it all fits together, that said there is the ease of letting someone else do it that's appealing.
I had a look at some web-hosting people but to be honest haven't a clue, there's also these domain name people selling '.com's and '.co.uk's all over the place. I want the address to be mine not a "www.webhostingcompany.com/shiatos_website.html" sort of thing but a direct "www.shiatosite.com"
if I pay for a domain name is that it? seems like you can get one for less than £3 at some places, whats the catch? and I can have webspace else where so when someone types, for example, "www.shiatosite.com" they go to the webspace not just a blank page with the address at the top (that would suck!).
also whats the deal with linux serves vs windows ones? if given the choice, and since i use win xp, does that confine me to the windows servers?
whats DNS? whats this, whats that?....!!

aaah! lots of questions!!! I know so little about this but I feel I have to learn. any pointers gratefully recieved! [perhaps one of those: 'building a website for dummies' books would help?!]
ok, start with the basic stuff like - "it can be done"

[DavidM]

Actually I would recommend HTML for Dummies as it does cover a lot of your questions.

[DavidM]

(several of the cheaper companies can grab you by the personal bits if you ever wish to move, so make sure you don't rush out for the first company that charges a small fee...)

[subucni]

I'm looking into doing exactly the same for my music videos Shiato, gone a bit stale on the search for info lately at the moment for myself, but these pages might answer a few of your questions.

windows vs linux
http://www.ukhost4u.com/windowslinux.html

glossary
http://www.dreamhost.com/panel/features.html

Basic HTML tutorial
http://www.pagetutor.com/pagetutor/makapage/index.html

Off to get some supper, if i think of anything else i'll post again.


Bres

[Poppet]

Its best to buy your own domain name before you go for the hosting otherwise you might get tied to the host and cannot move your domain if they're rubbish. We buy our domains from

http://www.123-reg.co.uk

Really cheap for a .co.uk about £6 for two years.

I can recommend http://www.elixant.com as a host, we moved from a rubbish host over to them after a quite a few recommendations, they've been great and the support is second to none.

Another good site to check out is http://www.w3schools.com/

They have online HTML tutorials and there all free, hope that helps...

[BlueMagician]

Funnily enough, I've been meaning to do this for ages myself, Shiato. Thanks to some advice in another thread, I bought a domain name from 123-reg (as recommended above), for £6.08 inc. VAT for 2 years. The masked URL forwarding they provide is very basic.

It looks like I may end up paying someone else for some proper hosting too. We've used a hosting company called 'A Small Orange' at work. They've been pretty solid and stupid cheap: 400MB space and 10GB per month bandwidth with virtual domain support for $5 per month.

I've found a couple of good free 'photo gallery' scripts/builder packages - the best using PHP/MySQ if whatever host you choose supports this. I'm not at home at the mo, so can't access my bookmarks - but I'll add later to point you in a view directions.

If you do get around to selling the pics, you'll need a host with SSL/certificate support, and probably a 'shopping cart' script to make life easier on yourself.. Can't think of any off hand, but I'll add here if I come up with anything - as I said - I'm looking myself...


HTH,
S.

[DavidM]

I know gallifreyone.com uses One Small Orange

I use www.3dpixelnet.com myself - who have been great for domain registration and hosting

[Moby-Dick]

I'm sure we've covered the "What is DNS" and how do I connect my webspace to my domain name bits.


http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=51915
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=36138

The main difference between linux and windows hosting is if you are doing to more than host a few static pages ( ie do you want to use ASP or PHP )

[shiato storm]

er...ASP? PHP?... thats how novice I am. i guess if I don't know about it I don't need/want it.

[shiato storm]

Funnily enough, I've been meaning to do this for ages myself, Shiato. Thanks to some advice in another thread, I bought a domain name from 123-reg (as recommended above), for £6.08 inc. VAT for 2 years. The masked URL forwarding they provide is very basic.

It looks like I may end up paying someone else for some proper hosting too. We've used a hosting company called 'A Small Orange' at work. They've been pretty solid and stupid cheap: 400MB space and 10GB per month bandwidth with virtual domain support for $5 per month.

I've found a couple of good free 'photo gallery' scripts/builder packages - the best using PHP/MySQ if whatever host you choose supports this. I'm not at home at the mo, so can't access my bookmarks - but I'll add later to point you in a view directions.

If you do get around to selling the pics, you'll need a host with SSL/certificate support, and probably a 'shopping cart' script to make life easier on yourself.. Can't think of any off hand, but I'll add here if I come up with anything - as I said - I'm looking myself...


HTH,
S.

you're clearly one step ahead of me on what needs to be sought out but yes, I may eventually need a shopping cart sort of page, secure transfer and all that. if you manage to find all those things maybe we can have them plapped in a sticky? so can be easily found for all!

[Dav0s]

ASP and PHP are web programming languages....

DNS is horrible.....involves changing IP address into letter strings (ie. domain names)

linux vs window.....wont make a huge difference unless u are coding php/asp...

web design is as hard as you want to make it.....if you take the time to sit down and learn it using a big book and notepad.exe then you will be fine. important thing is to start small and work your way up.

[BlueMagician]

PBASE.
Bob Atkins on photo gallery software.
Bob Atkins on Website Search Engine Optimisation.
Freeware 'Gallery' project.
Setting up a shopping cart - perhaps here, and here.
Other freeware HTML photo galleries.
PHP Manual.
123-reg for domain names.
A Small Orange shared web hosting


That's all I've found in my bookmarks so far.
I guess as has already been said - it depends how difficult you want to make it.. I'm not quite sure how far to go myself. Like you, I'm looking for something simplistic in design, and don't really want to hand it off to someone else cos I'd never get exactly what I wanted, that way...

HTH,
S.

[DavidM]

Besides - best way to learn is to do it yourself, and to learn by any mistakes

[shiato storm]

PBASE.
Bob Atkins on photo gallery software.
Bob Atkins on Website Search Engine Optimisation.
Freeware 'Gallery' project.
Setting up a shopping cart - perhaps here, and here.
Other freeware HTML photo galleries.
PHP Manual.
123-reg for domain names.
A Small Orange shared web hosting

nice one

[Tiberius]

Html is very easy, it is just learning the other interface languages.

If you do want someone to design your site, there is alot of good designers I know personally at www.clantemplates.com.

Worth a go.

Else you should go about designing something in Photoshop and slicing it up in imageready.

Then take it across to your html program of choice, and just code it up.

It isn't too hard a process.

[shiato storm]

yeah might have to investigate it in PS...