Setting up a website

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Perhaps not the most appropriate forum to ask this question, but I might possibly understand any answers – when I ask on tech forums I'm overwhelmed by jargon I don't understand. I could cope with this stuff 15 years ago, but things in this area move so fast that's ancient history.

I would like to set up a personal website, but don't really have a clue how to start from a home computer without a static IP address. I've built sites before using Apache, but that was when I had access to static addresses on JANET, so I could use the machines in front of me as servers, register the URL on the University DNS, job done.

I guess when you have to go through an ISP it's different, but it's a bit hazy how it all works – must be possible though!

Any advice most welcome.

Robin

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

[OldironParticipant @oldiron]

Hi. I use http://www.freeola.com. They have a great web builder. Its £3.45 a month with unlimited bandwidth and web space. You can get a URL for a few pounds per year. No need to get broadband from them either. Runs on their servers so always up.

If you want to run a server from home you will need a fixed IP unless you go through someone like **LINK** where you can point your dynamic IP address to a static hostname for free.

regards

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

I can understand your problem. The provider my club uses is either deliberately trying to make their sales site obfuscating to catch you out or designed a geek with no clue about communicating in simple English.

You do not need a static IP if you use a suitable web hosting service provider. ISPs who provide your access to the Internet through a modem like Virgin Media and BT used to offer a web hosting service as a free part of the package. However most have stopped this now as they didn't make any money from it and some people were misusing it as a business.

Beware of some of the 'cheap' services which offer a hosting service with some software that claims to make it all easy for you. These are for kids and are extremely restrictive in the format that they let you use in the basic package. Then when you are forced to upgrade it gets rather expensive. Also don't use their software package. It is designed to trap you so if you try to move to another provider your exiting site is unmaintainable with the new provider's software.

Beware the current offers of hosting for peanuts for the first year. The second year is extortionate and more than the regular minimum cost package. They alos like to off huge storage capacities. This seems good for all the photos you want to put on your site but hang on, if you use even 1% of that 99% of you photos will be absolute crap.

Another way to get a static IP is to use a DDNS service and host the service at home. Make sure you are allowed to by your ISP and it isn't so popular that everybody and their dog is accessing it. Also understand you will have to pay the electricity bill for running the server and rebuilding it every few months when it gets hacked.

[Enough!Participant @enough]

Posted by Robin Graham on 04/11/2017 22:22:20:

I would like to set up a personal website, but don't really have a clue how to start from a home computer without a static IP address. I've built sites before using Apache, but that was when I had access to static addresses on JANET, so I could use the machines in front of me as servers, register the URL on the University DNS, job done.

I guess when you have to go through an ISP it's different, but it's a bit hazy how it all works – must be possible though!

 

First thing to do is establish whether you can be assigned a static IP from your ISP. I have one from mine which costs $4 per month (which is peanuts). If they have their Tariff on their website it should tell you there, otherwise a phone call should elicit the information.

Be aware that they may frown on website hosting on private subscriber services so it would be better not to mention it. Be aware also that if you have data limitations with hefty fees for overages, it could get very expensive.

Also if you have adsl, unless you have a fast connection it may not be that practical.Your up (from you) speed will probably be around 1/10 of your down speed – not usually noticeable in normal use because your outgoing data is a tiny fraction of your incoming data. But running a website both the up speed and down speed are crucial.

 

Edited By Bandersnatch on 05/11/2017 00:18:11

[clivelParticipant @clivel]

For some time I hosted my site at home with an Apache web server running on Linux. A hard drive crash about 10 years ago prompted me to re-evaluate the situation and I ended up switching over to a hosting company (1and1.com) and have never looked back. Although I have occasionally seen negative comments about 1and1 I have found them to be completely reliable and have been very happy with their service.

For US$10 a month they provide me with three domains, unlimited storage and all the web technology I require including PHP, MySQL etc.
I no longer have to worry about exceeding my home ISP monthly data limits, or hardware crashes or backing up my database or installing the latest security patches, etc. it is all done for me by 1and1.
As I chose a Linux hosting package, I can use FTP to upload my website files, or simply login to my host shell account which is probably not that dissimilar to how you would have done it at the university.
And if anything in the end it actually works out cheaper than what I was paying for a static IP plus the annual registration fee for three domains.
Hosting is now so cheap and reliable (and there are of course cheaper packages than the 1and1 package I use, both from 1and1 as well as from other hosting companies), that it really makes no sense to try and run a web server from home, other than as a learning experience.
Clive

Edited By clivel on 05/11/2017 07:11:27

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

I use 123-Reg, just bought a low-end package, found the website builder was too restrictive (an no undo!) so rebuilt evrything using Joomla. Other suse wordpress and Drupal.

Be aware that almost no-one codes in plain HTML any more, they all use database driven CMS systems.

The problem I have is all my pictures are too big I really need to upload reduced versions.

[richardandtracyParticipant @richardandtracy]

I use a web host. Write the site in Notepad/Notepad++, test it with IE and use the upload tool supplied by the web host. All very simple, all very easy. The tool provided by the host is 'CPanel' and works through IE.

That way I have a mirror of the site on my USB stick and can upload it again if something goes horribly wrong. The actual machine hosting the site is someone else's problem.

Regards

Richard.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Depending on what you want to do it might be worth looking at a Blog site provider. There are some, rather clunky, options that are free. You could try one out and when you get fed up just drop it.

Are you intending to produce a model engineering related site?

[David JuppParticipant @davidjupp51506]

One option would be to use a Dynamic DNS service to point to your own system, then work just like you have done previously. Check first if you are going to run into bandwidth or monthly data allowance restrictions on your internet connection.

[James AlfordParticipant @jamesalford67616]

I built my first site using a free Serif programme, having it hosted by a third-party based down on the south coast. The programme was incredibly limiting and frustrating. With the help of the provider, I migrated to Word Press, which I also used to build and maintain a friend's business website.

The host company is a small firm, offers very reasonable rates, are easy to contact and provide simple, clear support without charging and are reliable.

I did look at hosting it all locally on my own equipment, but the reliability and support from the provider made this less attractive.

James.

[Iain DownsParticipant @iaindowns78295]

To follow on from Neil's post, you might find that wordpress gives you all you want – and it's free unless you want to get clever.

I'd advise against hosting the site on your own hardware – too many things can go wrong in a domestic environment.

There's also a possibility of the site getting hacked. If it's on your network, then that means your network is hacked.

Give someone else the problem of security.

Iain

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

You can go basically one of two ways. A free hosting company like Wix, Weebly, Freeola, WordPress.com to name but a few or you buy a hosting package from one of the many hosting companies, 123reg, BigDaddy, 1&1 etc.

I host my website Journeyman's Workshop with 1&1 using a cheap package, I have never had any problems with them and have been up and running without interuption for many years. My site includes both static pages and a WordPress blog all covered in the package. Bandwidth is unlimited you get e-mail addresses and they offer free domain names with some packages. I have a few domains registeed with them and the auto renewal works without a hitch.

Downside of the free hosting is adverts on every page, limited bandwidth and usually limited layouts.
Downside of buying hosting is the monthly fee.

As to actually writing web pages you can go for Serif or similar web editors. Most of the free hosting outfits have their own editors as indeed do most of the hosting companies. If you like code mangling you can be a dinosaur like me and hard code it using something like Notepad++ I upload using Fire FTP from Firefox maintain a copy of every page locally and the WordPress database is backed up weekly.

John

Edit: Typo

Edited By Journeyman on 05/11/2017 10:29:21

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Thanks. I wasn't really thinking of hosting a site from home, the stuff about using Apache when working was just to give an idea of my 'mental model' of how this stuff works. There are layers upon layers of abstraction in computing (as in science in general) and each new layer has its own language – and in computing things move fast! I guess I need to get up to speed with the latest – eg Neil's 'database driven CMS systems' meant nothing to me, but Googling 'CMS systems' revealed:

IBM® Watson® Content Hub is a cloud-based content management system (CMS) that powers digital experiences. It allows you to content-enable applications, from mobile apps to single-page applications, billboards, embedded devices and more. Rich application programming interfaces (APIs) let developers place content wherever it is needed, and the zero-configuration, embedded content delivery network (CDN) ensures high performance and global scale. An intuitive user interface (UI) lets marketers make updates more quickly. IBM Watson services such as cognitive tagging help transform disorderly assets into a searchable library.

Good God! What does all that mean? I just want to make a website! Anyhow, I now know what CMS means (or stands for at least).

Thanks for all the suggestions of hosting companies – I'll be looking at them. I'm OK with paying a fee, in fact I'd prefer to – free stuff often comes with a hidden overhead.

Bazyle – thanks for your warnings about apparently cheap offers. I actually had a look at GoDaddy, but gave up because I couldn't find any technical info about what they were actually offerring, just marketing hype and 'try it for free' buttons. And, no, not another ME site – I don't make models myself, more a general-purpose home workshop type, but I come here for the great range of experience/expertise. I daresay if I asked how to make earplugs for dogs someone would have cracked it. Bloody fireworks, bah humbug.

Thanks again to all for advice, Robin

 

 

 

Edited By Robin Graham on 05/11/2017 21:11:32

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

Worth looking at the Mike's Workshop site, run by Mike Cox who posts here. It uses Weebly which claims to be free – see the link at the bottom of the home page. Looks pretty good to me.

[NishkaParticipant @nishka]

Robin you may like to look at this site for Dog earplugs!

dog-ear-plugs

More useful to the original question I use a company called 34SP who are based in Manchester. They have always been good for me and you can actually call and speak to them on the phone.

[Brian HParticipant @brianh50089]

I've been following this with interest as I'd like to set up a webpage. I have had a couple in the past but they were closed down due to demands for payment or from lack of use.

I don't want to sell anything, just make a page of my modelling activities for anyone who is interested.

Brian

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

Further to John Haine's comment above I have used weebly.com for many years and it is easy to set up a website and there are no charges. I was pointed in the direction of weebly by Andy Franks who used to post on this group and many others. His website is http://www.andysmachines.weebly.com. Sadly Andy passed away a few years back and joined the big workshop in the sky.

I do not understand their business model or how they make money but weebly works well and there is a good support team if there are any problems.

Mike

[FarmboyParticipant @farmboy]

Having the 'benefit' of slow and erratic broadband I am very conscious of the bandwidth-hungry nature of many web sites. It is still possible to build very simple sites using html, php and mysql.

Although I'm no expert I have created a very basic family history* site which I hope will display properly on any device. So many people browse the web on their smartphones and tablets these days.

*The underlying layout would work for any simple site, such as model engineering projects.

Edited By Farmboy on 06/11/2017 10:08:06

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Posted by Michael Cox 1 on 06/11/2017 09:50:31:

I do not understand their (Weebly) business model or how they make money but weebly works well and there is a good support team if there are any problems.

Mike

Weebly sell hosting packages, their "free" starter pack is limited in storage space and has adverts although the adverts don't always seem to show up! When you start to pay there are no ads, you get unlimited storage, can connect your own domain name etc.

That said for a startup site it seems to be quite a good solution and 500MB of storage is a lot of pages even with plenty of images. There is an awful lot of "extra" code in their pages so I guess they are keeping an eye on you

John

 

Edited By Journeyman on 06/11/2017 10:23:36

[MuzzerParticipant @muzzer]

I've used GoDaddy for a few hosted servers (sons' gaming interests) and they were a bit of a PITA. It was all terribly exciting and spiffy but the staff seemed to be pretty silly and ineffectual. I suspect most of their customers are teenaged gamers who don't care or know any better.

I've been using freeparking.co.uk for hosting my own website the last 15 years and they are simple and pretty straightforward. Like most hosting providers, they offer a range of free and paid-for products including Weebly etc. I seem to be paying £16 a year currently, which doesn't seem unreasonable, although this simply entails domain forwarding as it stands. At one time I also used 1&1 but for some reason I let that lapse.

I don't bother creating my own website any more. At one time I even used Dreamweaver to create a really flashy one, mainly to understand how to do it properly. Nowadays I simply use Blogger to maintain a blog. It's connected to my domain name by domain forwarding, which is a another standard service most hosts offer. So when you type in my domain name http://www.murraye.com, it forwards you to the Blogger page and masks the messy web address. If you are simply making periodic update postings that show what you are up to, a blog is simple and quick. You can make a post in seconds with minimal buggerage.

You can usually do everything through one provider ie buy a domain name, set up a website (Weebly, Blogger software etc), get it hosted and set up domain forwarding etc.

Murray

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

CMS is just a 'content management system'.

Essentially it provide lots of customisable templates that get their content from a database.

Your create pages by putting various elements (banners, articles, blog entries, categories) where you want them.

Example:

I have a website template with headers etc.

I have a category 'model engineering'

If I create an article on model engineering subject, I assign it to that category.

I decorate the article with images from a 'media library' that i have uploaded.

If I go to the 'model engineering' category they category-specific information appears and it also lists as many of the articles as I want, a few as short excerpts and more as short links, automatically generated.

Click on one of the article excerpts and it then loads the full articles inside the overall template. The article includes a link-back to the categories.

I can also have a page of categories.

I can freely link to pages as well as using this automated system

There are other types of content – banners, ads etc. as well

Everything has sensible defaults.

This makes creating a usable website as simple as populating and basic page template, then adding categories and adding articles. If you don't change the templates this is as simple as typing in text, adding links and uploading images.

Everything appears neat and tidy automatically in the templates and re-organises to fit screen size (even adapting to phones).

If I change a template or style, it automatically 'rolls out' through the whole website, so a major style change only needs to be done once.

If I wanted other people to contribute, I can set permissions so they can add articles but not edit categories or change templates, for example.

This is how a CMS works, it make it very easy to have a consistent feel through your website but also allows a huge number of editors to add content without 'breaking' the design of a website.

Neil

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Web-sites are like machine tools: you can get anything between a Seig C0 and a factory full of automatics and robots. So, step one, as always in Engineering, is to specify your requirement. Don't expect to run the equivalent of ebay on Weebly! Don't buy a Data Centre and CMS to publish Parish Council News.

Things to think about:

• How many concurrent users do you expect?
• How much bandwidth do you think will be consumed? (Videos are much more expensive than plain text.)
• How much data will the site host?
• Do you expect the website to grow and if so by how much? (Can be expensive!)
• Do you want to run a shop or otherwise take money? (Complicated, fraud protection, etc.)
• Do you just want to serve documents and pictures, or do something more complicated involving a database, form filling, collecting personal detail or active content etc.
• How much does it matter if your website gets hacked?
• How much time and effort do you personally want to put in.

Some examples:

• My ISP provides a simple free web-hosting service. It cannot support more than about 10 concurrent users, is limited to 512Mb of data, and there are no tools or server-side scripting. To use it I have to write HTML and manually publish it; there is no technical support and backup/recovery is my problem. It's useful if you are technically savvy with a small user base interested in simple information. Otherwise, it's very basic and hard work.
• My ISP also provides a range of more heavy duty facilities. These come as packages, adding stuff like more data storage, tools, scripting, bandwidth, security, support and other services. The basic package is suitable for something like a club, at the high-end small businesses are catered for. None of these options are particularly cheap but publishing and maintaining the website is much easier; they do most of the work.
• There are a several 'free' hosting options like Weebly. Typically these come with a tool to simplify building more-or-less sophisticated web-sites, will support a decent number of users, and a reasonable amount of data. Like my ISP, there may be a range of packages on offer. Their business models vary, but hooking customers often features. Sometimes they insert advertising into your content; another method is to start cheap and then increase the cost later. (If you invest a lot of time and money in the content, and have many people using a successful website, it can be very painful to move. This is particularly true if their 'free' publishing software is proprietary. ) Another model relies on the web owner needing to grow. Charges apply when more storage or bandwidth or facilities are wanted. Don't be too put off by these comments; choose the right option in the first place and prices are competitive. Just have a think about how you expect your website to evolve (or not!) and read the small print. Don't be the man who buys a knackered secondhand Seig C0 when he really needs a Hardinge, and only eventually gets there by upgrading via a mini-lathe, Super 7, and BH600.
• If you have a moderate requirement (hundreds of users, Gigabytes of data, Content Management etc.), then usually better to go straight to a straightforward paid service. These are more likely than their free brethren to be unencumbered with complications like advertising and costly expansion deals.  It will be necessary to read small print.
• Hosting at home is generally unattractive unless you already have the necessary skills, time and inclination to do the work.  Quite expensive too.
• If your requirement is high-end the best way forward is to send for the professionals. If you don't already have an IT Department, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many others offer the necessary consultancy. Be prepared to pay big bucks!

Dave

 

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 06/11/2017 11:08:33

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Thanks for the clear explanation of CMS Neil. Realistically, I suppose I need something like that – no point in re-inventing wheels. It does worry me though that I'm writing this in Firefox which is apparently occupying 1.2 GB of RAM – must be a lot of redundant code sitting there doing nothing. But I guess memory/cpu time is cheap now.

Dave – thanks for taking the time to write your detailed reply. I was recently tempted to respond to a question in another place from someone who wanted to buy a first mill – should he go horizontal or a vertical? I didn't post, but if I had I would have asked what he wanted to do with the machine. I suspect his ideas would have been hazy. Often people don't have a clear plan of precisely where they're going when they start something new. Certainly the case for me when I bought my first lathe. I guess one needs to find a jumping-in point which won't lead to disaster or discouragement, learn, and buy a better suiting lathe – oops, I mean web hosting package. Or guitar. Or whatever. There's enough real-life experience in the replies on this thread to enable me to make a relatively safe jump into the unknown I think.

Having said that I confidently expect around 1 million (+/- 1e6) hits daily, so possibly I should buy a Hardinge – er I mean a Cray to meet the anticipated demand…

Thanks again for advice, Robin.

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