Website hosting?

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 2 Aug 2000 1:06 pm

I need to find a new website host for my band's website. Our "webmaster" is a volunteer who offers the hosting for free as a service to local musicians, but is just not available enough to make changes when we need them made. I'm about ready to learn how to design the page myself, but need inexpensive web server space to host it. What do y'all suggest? Thanks,
Jim

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 2 Aug 2000 4:08 pm

What's your budget, Jim? We got space. E me.

Chas Holman · Post by **Chas Holman** » 6 Aug 2000 3:04 pm

Jim,

I hack a little HTML occassionally. What is the current URL of your band's WebSite..?

If it's not too involved, I could do your updates. etc., pretty much on a day to day basis via e-mail input from you. And I'll do it cheap, but I don't have any web hosting space available.

I've been thinking about an offer to the Forum Members for just this kind of thing, that is...if it's OK with b0b and company.., BOBBY LEE...?

To get an idea of the kind of stuff I'm doing you can look at my WebSite - it's very simplistic stuff . . but it get's the message across....

-Chas
http://www.cherokeechas.com

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"may the FORUM be with you"

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 6 Aug 2000 7:17 pm

Hi, Chas:
Many thanks for your kind offer. Our URL is www.beatswalkin.com I'm starting to think I ought to learn how to handle it myself, but I sure would appreciate any pointers along the way. Your site looks really nice!
Thanks again,
Jim

Mario Cuppetelli · Post by **Mario Cuppetelli** » 6 Aug 2000 7:49 pm

Jim,
If you want to do a web page I encourage you to use Frontpage2000. The learning curve is very easy and you won't have to learn HTML code. I do the webpage for our church with it and you don't have to be a guru to do it. Look at our website at
www.firstassembly.alpena.net [This message was edited by Mario Cuppetelli on 06 August 2000 at 08:52 PM.][This message was edited by Mario Cuppetelli on 06 August 2000 at 08:55 PM.]

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 7 Aug 2000 5:14 am

Thanks, Mario. I think I will indeed use Frontpage. I'm encouraged from your website to see that with Frontpage you can do those neat things like having buttons that light up when you just point at them, even before you click on them. I like that. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Best,
Jim

John Lacey · Post by **John Lacey** » 7 Aug 2000 9:11 am

I hate to be a critic but one thing I noticed about both your webpages was the length of time it took to boot them up. I would suggest simplifying somewhat and keeping it under 5 seconds. Surfers will bail out if it's much longer than that.

erik · Post by **erik** » 7 Aug 2000 12:47 pm

Frontpage has been known to be inconsistent across various browsers because it utilizes proprietary MS language. Jim, "mouseovers" are available with just about every web page building program. Many web page hosting companies also provide javascripts and CGI scripts for free. But, go ahead, use Frontpage.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 7 Aug 2000 12:57 pm

What's a "mouseover"? I like the term, whatever it means!

erik · Post by **erik** » 7 Aug 2000 6:02 pm

Jim Cohen previously wrote:
<blockquote>
those neat things like having buttons that light up when you just point at them,</blockquote>

= mouseover

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 7 Aug 2000 8:35 pm

Mario Cuppetelli · Post by **Mario Cuppetelli** » 8 Aug 2000 6:59 pm

Jim,
When you use Frontpage2000 you need to make sure that whoever is hosting your website has the Frontpage2000 extensions. I have as yet to find one that does not have them on their system.

In the past 11months we have had our page take anywhere from 35 secs to 10 seconds to load and have had over 1000 hits already. The surfers will wait more than what the experts say, after all there (we) are a curious bunch

Mario
www.firstassembly.alpena.net [This message was edited by Mario Cuppetelli on 08 August 2000 at 08:00 PM.]

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 8:45 am

If all you need is a place to put your HTML code, for free (which is the way I interpreted your message), then here's a site that offers free web-space, and it has no limit on the capacity.
http://www.xoom.com

It's fairly easy to set up and use, as demonstrated by the fact that I have a webpage there.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm [This message was edited by David Pennybaker on 09 August 2000 at 09:48 AM.]

Dave Horch · Post by **Dave Horch** » 9 Aug 2000 9:23 am

Yeah, but... All the "free" space sites require you to accept there advertising. And if you want a secured directory (.htaccess secured for instance), you're out of luck.

B0b, I for one would be interested in renting some securable disk space, not much, perhaps 10 or 15 meg. I would probably not put html there, but rather jpegs and mpegs which would be referenced from my earthlink site. Would you e-mail me and perhaps we can work something out? Thanks, -Dave

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 10:19 am

Yes, that's true. The "advertising bar" at Xoom is pretty minimal, though. It's better than most I've seen. And, no, you can't have secure access, either.

Another negative is that the site is sometimes slow to respond. But, as the old saying goes, "you get what you pay for".

If you need LOTS of space (I'm using 100 MB so far), want it for free, and can put up with a little bar across the top for advertising and not-so-spectacular performance at all times -- then XOOM is worth a look.

But it's definitely not the solution for everybody. I wanted a way to share my pics with fans, and not have to pay for the space. I already spend enough on film and developing, not to mention the camera equipment.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 9 Aug 2000 1:17 pm

Thanks, guys. I don't mind the little XOOM advertising bar on top; it's pretty minimal. But I would insist that we can retain our own domain. So people MUST be able to get to our site by simply typing "www.beatswalkin.com" I won't accept having to go to www.xoom.com/beatswalkin/whatever That's a non-starter for us. Can you do this with Xoom, or not?
Thanks again for all the good info!
Jim

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 9 Aug 2000 3:25 pm

Dave, we've got our image hosting business up and running at PictureHost.net and we'll be launching a similar site at SoundHost.net using the same business model (pay per file, and we handle the upload). I'm not real anxious to give people FTP rights to the server, because of the administrative overhead and technical support it would require.

Lori's also working on deal to offer web site design to Forum members, with hosting on our server thrown in as part of the bargain. She's a bit distracted moving into her new house this week, though. Be watching for that offer later this month.

In the meantime, you might want to take a look at her site: Atlas Peak Designs.

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<img align=right src="http://b0b.com/Averybob.gif" width=64 height=81>Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
Sierra Session S-12 (E9), Speedy West D-10 (E9, D6),
Sierra 8 Laptop (D13), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (D13, A6)

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 4:56 pm

So people MUST be able to get to our site by simply typing "www.beatswalkin.com" I won't accept having to go to www.xoom.com/beatswalkin/whatever That's a non-starter for us. Can you do this with Xoom, or not?

Jim, I'm not sure if that's possible or not with Xoom. You should be able to use this link to ask about it, though.
http://xoom.com/helpcenter/feedback

My guess is that you cannot, but it's probably worth your effort to find out if it appears to meet your needs otherwise.

PS -- the index.htm isn't really necessary. But, without it (sometimes), the link results in a list of my files and directories, instead of showing the HTML code. I've seen this on other sites, too (not just ones on Xoom).

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm
[This message was edited by David Pennybaker on 09 August 2000 at 05:58 PM.]

erik · Post by **erik** » 9 Aug 2000 6:40 pm

David,
Yes, the ol' "index" spy trick. Those free web sites don't warn you about that.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 9 Aug 2000 6:47 pm

Erik:
What's the ol' index spy trick?

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 7:26 pm

Those free web sites don't warn you about that

I've seen that happen on non-free sites, too. It's never very frequent, but it does happen occasionally. I'm not sure why. As long as you're using the right name (normally index.htm or default.htm), it's not supposed to do that.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 7:28 pm

BTW, Jim. Many ISP's provide at least some minimal amount of space for a website. Usually 2 - 10 MB.

You might check into that option, too.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 9 Aug 2000 7:30 pm

Yeah, David. AOL provides that but you can't use your own domain. By the way what is it that they don't warn you about?? Curious minds want to know!

David Pennybaker · Post by **David Pennybaker** » 9 Aug 2000 7:39 pm

I'm not exactly sure what Eric is referring to. But I do know that every once in a while, I've gone to a site, and instead of seeing the usual webpage, I see a directory listing of what's on the site instead.

Just like looking at the HTML data you have through Windows Explorer (or other file manager).

It's probably some sort of security type issue with the servers. I'm not much of an expert in that area.

I just noticed that using "index.htm" in my URL seems to make the problem go away. That may have been just coincidence.

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The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://members.xoom.com/dpennybaker/index.htm

John Fabian · Post by **John Fabian** » 10 Aug 2000 12:15 pm

It is NOT a coincidence.