I am looking for a place to host a web site I am starting. Nothing fancy is needed, but a user friendly backend would be nice. Any suggestions?

 

i have used host gator for years, and have had no problems. they are a texas based company with all USA based support.

they use a back end product called cpanel, it is feature rich but for a novice it may be to much, so they built there own install panel for things like blogs image sites and others.

they also have a WYSIWYG site builder and editor, i think it is a $5 one time charge for install.

 

Hehe. You just asked us the equivalent of, what's a good car to get w
Hearted seats...

Dreamhost and 1and are also in the ubercheap hosting market. About 5-10/month with referrals codes and what not, but it depends on what you want to do. Simple, static webpages would he well served by the cheap places. If you're focusing on a blogging platform then hit up wordpress or blogger. If you want joomla or other cms then there are many who specialize in those apps as well but at a slightly higher cost. Media temple is also a top notch general hosting service as well.

So tell us more about what you want to do and we can point you in the right direction.

 

Business venture Tom?

 

Tom is confused already with all the technical jargon you guys have thrown at him.

Tom, I haven't forgot about the seat .....

 

Thanks guys. The site is going to be a storefront for a couple of products right now, maybe 10-15 down the line. Maybe a 'Contact' and 'About' page behind that. The biggest concerns are credit card or Paypal payment security and ease of implementation. I cannot see this site using a ton of bandwidth (but this should be easily upgradable in the future if needed). Thanks again.

 

Wow, I had a lot of typos in my last post. That's what I get for typing on an iphone in bed, half asleep.

So for what you're trying to achieve there are many many routes to achieving what you desire. I will outline some paths that I know of.

- Path 1: DIY/Do it with consultants ($$$$) from bottom to top: Steps would include: Design & code your own custom website. Get a Credit Card Merchant Account (difficult) with a bank (Can't let any joe process credit cards). Set up a CC processing account with a CC processor such as authorized.net (Typically takes 1 to 5% off the top of gross transactions), and write custom software to interface your website to the authorized.net API to process CC transactions. This would be the hardest and most time consuming way to go about such a process. The benefit to this path is that you control every aspect of your website.

- Path 2: Use a free or commercial store-front software package. This would include software such as pinnacle cart, shopsite, dragdropcart, etc etc etc. This would still require a significant amount of time and expertise, CC Merchant Account AND/OR may come with Paypal integration... The benefit here is that you save time and effort, but lose a little control over the backend (order processing, CC processing options, database layout with customer information, etc), but you can still use webdesigners to customize the front-end experience for the customers. Still would cost $$$$.

Path 3: Use an already existing online storefront. I know there are more but I know of Yahoo Storefronts off the top of my head. Here you just sign up for an account, upload pictures and create products and with a couple of clicks you have a storefront to go. You may have a store like: http://tinkfistsWidgets.yahoostores.com. This option will cost you 1-5% of your gross CC processing plus $30 to $100/month in storefront-type hosting.

Path 4: You can also use Etsy (very popular for selling artsy stuff), eBay & Amazon.com as storefronts pretty much for free or on a per product sold basis. Ebay/Paypal OR Amazon stores will shave off 5-10% of your gross revenue.

The difference between path3 and path4, is that path3 is a dedicated website to you. Path4 is just a big listing of a ton of various products by a ton of various people.

Path5: Slum it version of Path1. Buy a $10 to $100 template off of the hundreds of website template sites and get cheapass hosting at 1and1.com, dreamhost, hostgator, etc for $5-$15/month. And copy/paste the code that Paypal gives you. Paypal will take ~3% off of Checking account transactions and 5-6% off of CC trasactions.

General costs to consider with any website:
$15/year for domain registration.
$30/year for an SSL certificate (This is what lets you do https://website....
$10-$100-$200-$1000/month for shared/virtual/semi-private/dedicated/clustered w/ high availabilty Hosting.
~30 to 50/month for webapplications that give you a DIY storefront.

You may be able to find some package deals out there, but of the paths presented, I guess you'd have to choose. Of course you're probably thinking, wait, I don't know which one I want to choose. If so, I would recommend the $30-$50/month DIY storefront. You'll sign up for an account, choose a general template for the look of the store, fill out a bunch of information about the store, upload pictures and product descriptions and be up in a day or two. You may have to pay extra for SSL and your own domain name, or they may handle that detail for you and include it in the monthly cost....

Thanks, That will be a $200 consultation fee.

 

http://www.webhostingshow.com/2010/09/17/f...ommerce-stores/

 

Has anyone dealt with Godaddy.com for hosting services? They seem pretty cheap as well.

 

Yea, Godaddy is another cheap place for stuff. I have my domains through them, but i despise their interface and checkout process.

In some ways, it'd be better to go with a smaller hosting company as you'll get a high quality support. But all-in-all if you want great support from any hosting company, you've got to pay to play. don't expect much for 2.99/mo hosting, except that you'll be service pages.

You've purchased a domains, next page
Would you like sitebuilder and seo service? next page
would you like to host it here? next page
email special! get email hosted for your domain at godaddy! next page
are you sure don't want the email & hosting combo? next page
even better pricing and an added 25 gigs of transfer per month!!!! million dollar value for 2.99/mo! next page
Are you sure you don't want these value added services?, next page
We have seo optimization, next page
Our value-added partners offer Fruits and template designs! next page
Please verify CC information, next page
Okay, you've completed checkout.