I am in the process of writing a guide for the Members Area on how to go about creating your own website. In order to do this it would be a good idea to find out where people have their websites hosted?

I am trying to find out the following:
1) Did you purchase a domain name? (such as amdram.co.uk)
2) Do you pay for your hosting?
3) Do you use free hosting, if so do you have a problem with popups etc?

PLEASE KEEP THIS DISCUSSION RELEVANT TO THE QUESTIONS ABOVE!, IF YOU HAVE OTHER ISSUES YOU WANT TO RAISE, CREATE A NEW TOPIC!

Hi Simon

I'll start the ball rolling:

We have just moved from swiftinter.net to xcalibre.co.uk for a variety of reasons not least the cost.

We have always had our own domain and currently own amdram.co.uk amdram.com and amdram.org.uk

Does that help?

Jane

I've used the free accounts with Freeserve and more recently BT Openworld - both have been generally problem-free (and no ads or popups). A month ago I switched to 1&1 with the Microsoft package - ?6 a month, but you can host all your domains in one account. Apart from some teething troubles, it's run fairly smoothly, but they are a bit erratic about answering emails (phone support is OK), and I get the feeling that Microsoft servers are fairly new to them and they can't answer detailed technical questions yet.

webmaster@newburytheatre.co.uk
www.newburytheatre.co.uk

I use..

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/homeuser-info.shtml
10 quid a month... But I do treat it as a hobby..
Their Tech support is great... Never had a problem
I didn't cause myself.... *wink*
I'm not a "reseller" btw..
600mb free space. 3000mb bandwidth.
Space and Bandwidth is VERY important for me for my Photographs...

For Domain name stuff I use
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
Quick and easy. Can't ask for much more...

We use a local ISP (mersinet.co.uk) to host the website and register the domain name. It means the IP address points straight to the site content and not a frame-redirect page, and the domain name is in our name.

They're also kind enough to offer mySQL, php, perl and an email server gratis.


Ged

I am just designing a web site for the UK Pantomime Alliance and this forum is most useful as I have no idea at all which host to use. At present the site is hosted by beehive at http://beehive.thisisnottingham.co.uk/pantoUK.
I will follow further contributions with interest until I am ready to load my site.

The Cuddington Players website is hosted for free on Angelfire. We don't have our own domain name. On Angelfire, your site name has to be of the format "http://www.angelfire.com/xxxx/yyyy" where there is a limited choice of what xxxx can be, but yyyy can be anything. We chose "musicals" for xxxx. However Angelfire's webshell editor is the most user-friendly I have come across. Yes we do get the pop-up advert, but if you leave it open in the background, it doesn't pop in front again as you move from page to page.

Regards. Claire
The Cuddington Players

We use Supanames

Basic package is ?13.99 a year inc a free domain name.

35mb of webspace but you can buy more if you wish.

Unlimited bandwidth (within reason )

Unlimited pop3 email, autoresponders and redirects.

No I don't work for them but they are good and offer all sorts of help and lively forums.

As per my previous reply
Sudbury Dramatic Society use free webspace provider at yahoo/geocities with web diversion from www.uk2.net from whom we bought the domain name

http://www.sudburydramatic.co.uk

any feedback on our site would be appreciated

Simon,

The Colbury and Ashurst Theatrical Society website is hosted by Hampshire County Council (who offer a free 50MB of space to any non-profit activities in the county). This is a basic facility (more than adequate for 90% of the amateur dramatic websites) - if I wanted to operate a database on the site, or other server-side stuff, I would have to pay for it. (We looked at having a pass-word protected area for the use of the Management Committee, and decided it was not worth the cost.)
Their support is good, and I would heartily recommend the service to any other groups in Hampshire. (I think it is also used by the Hayling Island group, amongst others.)
We use a directory from their domain name (www.hants.gov.uk/cats) on the grounds that nobody is going to remember a domain name which includes ColburyAndAshurstTheatricalSociety and www.cats.org.uk is already taken (and we don't want enquiries about neutering).

For my scripts site (www.lazybeescripts.co.uk), the host is freenet (www.freenet.co.uk). They are one of the ISPs who offer a "local rate dial-up" service (i.e. they make their money from time on line). They offer a free 20MB of space for their customers. No pop-ups or other hassle. Again, this is free space, so no server-side program offerings.
I haven't used their support much, so can't comment.
The domain name is from LowCostNames.

Cheers,

Stuart

Crowthorne Musical Players is hosted by Supanames. We bought commercial grgade hosting, a memorable domain name, no stupid banners/popups for 2 years for only ?56. You can't beat that. It wasn't worth sticking with my own ISP webspace.

nope, I have to say that does sound like a b*****y good deal - name noted.

Damned fine site btw - professional design?

Thanks for the replies and thanks to everyone for keeping to the topic!

It seems like everyone wants to change topic mid discussion! in some of the other posts!, please don't change topic mid subject, it's so easy to create a new topic!

I have some handy tips coming soon, including how to get rid of the nasty popups from Angelfire and Geocities!

Watch for further information!

Nope, all my own work. But I used to run a web design hobby business ...

hope you're sticking around then, you're help / advice is going to come in useful

It's always been a good site at Crowthorne, it seems that web design hobby did
pay off with an excellent site being created.

I have always been an admirer of the design of Crowthorne!

Keep up the good work and as Ged says, stick around we may be asking for tips!

*cough*
erm, I helped Jane last year with some scripting problems ... course, she might say I was nagging and picking faults

Not at all help is always gratefully received - I think the ring runs quite well now!!

Jane