So I want to have a website...

[tamawrite]

I need to start a website for my horse breeding business. I looked into the free sites, but I can't stomach the lack of professionalism of having half the screen covered in ads. So, I need to know what's involved in getting a "real" website up and going.

I do have a good computer I can leave on and use as my own little "server," or I could purchase server space from a company. Which is better?

I've already designed the site in FrontPage, so I don't need help with that part -- I just need to figure out the best and most cost-effective way to get it online. The site isn't likely to be generating income as much as publicity, at least for a few years, so I don't want to sink big bucks into maintaining it if I don't need to.

Any suggestions, tech masters?

[Arete]

Hosting it through someplace like GoDaddy is the best option. It's really inexpensive and you won't have the worries about supporting a webserver. Plus, your basic desktop computer is not configured to be a very good webserver. It's really best to spend the little bit of money and get a real web host. I have several sites hosted on Emarkhosting.com, and have been very pleased. It costs $48/year for the basic hosting package, which includes quite a few email accounts. I don't recall the details of the HDD space and bandwidth for the package, but it's more than enough for these sites, one of which is a non-profit that gets quite a bit of traffic.

[tamawrite]

$48 per year? Wow -- cheap. Thanks, Arete. I'll definately check GoDaddy out. What would my web address look like? (www.nameofcompany.???.com)

[CompassRose]

Have you checked with your provider? Many major providers these days also provide server space for a personal site included in your connection fee -- it's not a lot of storage space or bandwidth, but it would be fine for a small low-traffic site.

[tamawrite]

Hmm, there's a thought -- I'll check into that. I'm not sure what size my site is. It has a lot of photos...

[Arete]

Your URL would be whatever you registered for... www.yourcompanynamehere.com :D

BTW, the $48/year is at emarkhosting.com. I know that GoDaddy has similar cheap hosting packages, but not sure of the details.

ETA: Both godaddy and emarkhosting do not put advertising on your site. They are just regular old hosting sites. If you find something that is free, it will most likely have banner ads or a funky URL for access. My understanding of the free sites from ISPs is that they usually have weird URLs and/or advertising too.

[Peweh]

If you have a website name in mind try putting it in your Browser - many hosting companies buy up names and if you want to use them you can pay them to host it for you. No idea on prices but worth checking out!!

[Triathlon13]

I am also looking into this and right now godaddy has a special for the "economy hosting" over the phone for $35.90 (or about there)-regular $43 or something like that.

But then I had already bought the domain name and I don't have extra emails so you will pay extra for these with godaddy--you would probably be better off upgrading and pay a bit more for this stuff and not necessarily pay extra.

Go daddy isn't too bad-but another one that my computer geek friend really likes is "purehost"--he says they are very user friendly and Go Daddy is a bit harder to move around! But Purehost is much more expensive.

I dont have pure host though-I have Go Daddy, but as long as you have all the necessary code numbers you can always change hosts.
Michelle