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Website design and webhosting

Joined
Jul 1, 2004
Messages
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Location
Claxton, Georgia
My wife and I are currently working on creating a website. We are now at the point of trying to figure out hosting. I have read an article posted by YoYospin(Ed Davidson) on making a website and it was very well written. And at this point am thinking of going witht he company he uses becuase of his comments. But I have a couple of questions that the comany's site doesn't address. If I use my own site to create a webpage. We have Microsoft frontpage and are currently designing a page using it. Will the hosting company in this case www.hostway.com accept this format(or any host for that matter) Or do these companies only accept certain formats? Thanks for the help.
Stacey
 
I've never used FrontPage, but it's my understanding that a server-side file or files are needed to use FP for uploading your site--looks like this particular host has what's needed by going to the plan details at:
http://www.hostway.com/web-hosting/gold/linux_webhosting.html
Microsoft® FrontPage® Extensions 2002 are enabled, I believe that's all you need.

This plan is overkill for a personal site, even a small business site or anything where less than a million visitors per month are expected. You can find hosting for $5-8 per month with equivalent features besides the high visitor capacity, which is measured in monthly bandwidth (monthly traffic in this case).
The monthly traffic/bandwidth is the most common determinator of hosting cost, so shop for a plan that suites your expectations and you can save a few $$ in a year's time.
 
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Well I was wrong I don't have microsoft front page I have microsoft publisher but it allows you to build webpages as a .pub file. So I guess I should reask my question. What to I need to look for in a hosting company to know if they support this format or not? Or do I need to goahead an look for some other webpage building software?
Stacey
 
Publisher

I've used publisher for a web page and Host Excellence.com accepted it without a problem. Most programs allow you to export in fp format. You may consider yahoo.com for a server. They have free software for developing websites and some great tutorials. The software is free and the service is about $11.95 per month.
 
Stacy,

Depending on the type of website you want (selling items, informational, blog, etc.) there may be easier ways to do it. I hosted through GoDaddy.com and chose their quick shopping cart system. I fill in various information, add the products with their details and pictures and its ready to go.

For me it works really well. The payment system is tied to PayPal, although I'll eventually have my own merchant account. I can print invoices, the system calculates shipping based on weight and size. I have the ability to notify the purchaser of the delivery confirmation number and it interfaces with USPS and UPS automatically.

I can assign costs to each product and then import my sales into quickbooks. Whomever you choose for your provider, they most likely have something like this. Check these options out before you spend a lot of time on creating multiple one off web pages.

I used to develop websites and maintain them for a large insurance company, so I speak from experience when I say, you should seriously consider a system if its available. Make changes, assign coupons, running a sale on a product for a specified period of time, tracking inventory, all of these things a cart system normally offers. They even tie into Ebay and allow posting there.

What you don't get through a cart system, is anything really unique. If you want more than 1 picture for a product, you will need to upload additional pictures outside of the cart system and your description will have to call for that image for it to be displayed. Its not a big deal, but if you were to say sell bowls, you might be inclined to provide 2-4 pictures so the buyer sees all the aspects of the bowl. That could be time consuming since there will be manual editing of the description involved. While time consuming, its nothing on creating a whole new page, changing the information, and then making sure all the other links on the page work correctly. The templates, allow different ways to display your information and different colors. I chose what I wanted, uploaded my logo, inserted additional information and details on the products and policies and methods and I was done. Relatively quick. Unfortunately you still have to write something that provides good information about the product and that can be tough.
 
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