# creating web sites



## Nel frattempo (Mar 29, 2007)

We want to set up a web site for our Farm. My 15 yr old knows a lot about hardware but not how to set up a site. We cannot afford to pay huge fees to anyone but hope we can do it ourself from software? Or is it a learn-to-do it project? Can anyone recommend software to build a web site? Or online instructions? We found a business near here that will be the "server" for $120. per year. Thankyou for any ideas and suggestions.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Nel frattempo said:


> We found a business near here that will be the "server" for $120. per year. Thankyou for any ideas and suggestions.


$10/month is pretty high for hosting. You shouldn't have to pay more than $3/month.

Sure, web site building can definately be a DIY project. There are a few threads on the subject in this forum. We really need a sticky on starting a web page. Here is one to check out, my suggestions are in post #2.

http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=181562


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## tweety (Oct 14, 2005)

I recently created a multi-page website for a local non-profit art organization using Yahoo's Sitebuilder. You can download the Sitebuilder program free and play with it all you like, and Yahoo has various cost schedules for when and if you decide to publish your site to the web. I won't say that it was easy, but for a sitebuilding virgin like me it was do-able. It has templates to use and lots of helpful instructions.


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## mikellmikell (Nov 9, 2005)

www.webbizbuilder.com

free to play with 20$ a month and really powerful

mikell


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## pixelphotograph (Apr 8, 2007)

dreamweaver and frontpage are two of the tools professionals use. Although i would stick with dreamweaver. I went to college to learn how to use it so its not just point and click simple. you need to understand it. So I wouldn't recommend it to a newbie by any means.
There are free sites if you just want to play around for a little while.
freewebs is nice easy for a beginner and free.
Some of the blogging software like drupal, or wordpress makes a nice professional site and is free.
For pay 10 dollars is cheap excuse me 3 dollars is rediculously cheap. it depends on how professional of a service you want. You do get what you pay for. I have worked for comapnies that use expensive monthly services and I have worked with companies that use cheap services. What you are paying for is tech support, uptime, backups, etcetc. if you are small just playing around use a cheap service but if you need reliability and service full time big business go with someone more expensive that offerers the services you need.


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## rabbitgal (Feb 12, 2005)

Hehe. I downloaded a trial version of Dreamweaver a while back. Now, I'm *reasonably* computer savvy, but Dreamweaver made my eyes cross.  

If you want to play around with a free (banner ad) site, Freewebs.com is pretty easy to use. Paid hosting packages start at $1.80 a month. Domain names (web address like "www.yourname.com") from them are just under $18 a year...which is rather pricey.

You've heard of the "For Dummies" book series, right? There's a "Building Webpages For Dummies". Despite the goofy name, it really is a nice resource - a great introduction to creating your own website.


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## lharvey (Jul 1, 2003)

I agree with pixelphotograph.



> For pay 10 dollars is cheap excuse me 3 dollars is rediculously cheap. it depends on how professional of a service you want.


You get what you pay for.

Uptime, support and features. If you want pro stuff, then it will cost you a bit more than 10 a month.

Lee
http://webmaine.net


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## steader (Dec 1, 2006)

Nel frattempo said:


> We found a business near here that will be the "server" for $120. per year. Thankyou for any ideas and suggestions.


What are the specs on your server? If it is anything newer and will be running Linux there are a few options.

If you're going to be updating content on a regular basis I'd consider going with a CMS system something like Drupal or Xoops. We implement new sites on Drupal for small to medium businesses and it is extremely powerful and you can make a site look however you want it to.

If you won't be updating the site often how deep would your son like to get into this stuff? For doing simple html pages with images I'd recommend using a piece of software like Microsoft's free tool called Visual Web Developer 2005 (Express). If you're going to get more into websites that require a database and/or dynamic content (like PHP, Python, etc) I'd recommend something like Eclipse.

I realize that some of the terms may create the huh response but I'm just throwing them out there for you to learn more.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

pixelphotograph said:


> For pay 10 dollars is cheap excuse me 3 dollars is rediculously cheap.


No, $1/month is ridiculously cheap. $3/month is about normal, unless your needs are extraordinary. Ladycat can take care of you for $3/month. 

The original poster just wants a web site about his farm. A few megs of web space should should be all he needs. He may need CGI, but I can't imagine that he'll need anything as advanced as MySQL.

There is absolutely no purpose in having a dedicated server for a small web site. A simple hosting account is satisfactory.


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## Nel frattempo (Mar 29, 2007)

Thank you everyone. I printed and my kids are going to check out the sites. When we called the man from the Internet Provider place he said he wanted $600 minimum just to set up one main page and we cannot afford that. He also would not show the boys how to keep it up or add to it.......so no for him. They want $120, a year to be the "server" and that seems like a lot too.

So! The boys are going to check out the sites you all mentioned and see which will work best. Thank you very much.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Nel frattempo said:


> Thank you everyone. I printed and my kids are going to check out the sites. When we called the man from the Internet Provider place he said he wanted $600 minimum just to set up one main page and we cannot afford that. He also would not show the boys how to keep it up or add to it.......so no for him. They want $120, a year to be the "server" and that seems like a lot too.
> 
> So! The boys are going to check out the sites you all mentioned and see which will work best. Thank you very much.


Depending on what he's offering, $600 to build the site and $120/year may not be a rip-off, but if it isn't its a whole lot more than you need for a basic farm web site. 

Go to Goggle and search for "free templates". You'll find lots to browse. Once you find one that suits you, download it and edit it with Nvu:

http://nvu.com/download.php

Using a graphic web page editor like Nvu is like using a clumsy word processor. Your boys will get the hang of it. When the web site is the way you want it on your hard drive, post back here for some suggestions for hosting. 

I suspect that with your boys customizing a free template and finding an inexpensive host it will cost nothing to create your web page and cost somewhere between $10 and $35 per year to host, depending on your needs.


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

600 for one web page is a ripoff no matter what you get...A local place was asking that much and I laughed..canned templates...nothing at all for any interaction...co CGI no php..Something my 8 year old could whip up in Frontpage.

120 a year isn't bad if you've got a bit of traffic.
I pay 25 a month for 3 sites and have a few hosted for free at directnic.com, their banner isn't as obtrusive as some free places.

If you're paying for the server space make sure you get CGI and MySQL..almost all php aps require MySQL and a lot of cgi aps are leaning that way.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

sammyd said:


> 120 a year isn't bad if you've got a bit of traffic.
> I pay 25 a month for 3 sites


Man, I gotta get back into hosting!


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## sammyd (Mar 11, 2007)

My problem with hosting is the number of people who run some sort of Microsoft server and haven't a clue as to how to fix things when they crash.
Or have absolutely no tech support or 24 hour hotline.

I would never sign on with someone unless they ran some sort of nix. And I prefer Apache, but have worked with others that weren't too bad.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

sammyd said:


> My problem with hosting is the number of people who run some sort of Microsoft server and haven't a clue as to how to fix things when they crash.
> Or have absolutely no tech support or 24 hour hotline.
> 
> I would never sign on with someone unless they ran some sort of nix. And I prefer Apache, but have worked with others that weren't too bad.


Apache on command prompt Redhat Linux is the only way to go for a web server.

There is no way to have a Microsoft server without the huge overhead of the graphical interface. That creates a dimension of instability that I'm not willing to accept.


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## steader (Dec 1, 2006)

Although we're getting off topic I'd encourage people using Apache to check out nginx. All of the testing I've done it smokes Apache by a huge margin. We've been running it in production for 2 months now and it is running well. None of our sites have Slashdot type traffic but they're not slouches either.

Nevada, maybe with your experience in MSFT technologies that may be true but I've worked on some medium scale MSFT installations and they run pretty well. We had one intranet site for an emergency call center that was managing thousands of hits (don't have access to the metrics anymore but if I recall it was actually in the tens of thousands) per minute and it ran with only a slight slow down. The problem for the average web developer is they don't understand how to develop for large scale sites and don't use properly designed multiple tiers. I will agree that for the average web person designing on MSFT is probably not a good idea, nix based OSeS (BSDs, Linux, etc) are much better at compensating for bad design.


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## donsgal (May 2, 2005)

Nel frattempo said:


> We want to set up a web site for our Farm. My 15 yr old knows a lot about hardware but not how to set up a site. We cannot afford to pay huge fees to anyone but hope we can do it ourself from software? Or is it a learn-to-do it project? Can anyone recommend software to build a web site? Or online instructions? We found a business near here that will be the "server" for $120. per year. Thankyou for any ideas and suggestions.


I don't know what kind of requirements you need for your site, but I pay about $8 a year at bigbytes.net and I have been very happy with the service I have received during the four or five years that they have hosted my site. The idea of paying $120 a year makes me sweat.

There is a pretty decent free website authoring tool at http://www.bluevoda.com/ that might be helpful. 

good luck

donsgal


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

steader said:


> Nevada, maybe with your experience in MSFT technologies that may be true but I've worked on some medium scale MSFT installations and they run pretty well. We had one intranet site for an emergency call center that was managing thousands of hits (don't have access to the metrics anymore but if I recall it was actually in the tens of thousands) per minute and it ran with only a slight slow down.


My problem with running a server with a large permanent graphic overhead is not performance, it's stability. Performance problems can be overcome by installing additional resources (more memory, faster processor, etc.). However, regardless of the resources available the instability risk of a huge graphic overhead still exists. In my experience I have never seen a multi-user server environment as stable as a command-line Linux installation.

However, I have recommended Windows server environments in the past, but that was for ease of use at the cost of stability. For example, a rural school might be better off with a Windows server because a teacher could be more easily trained to maintain the server. Windows servers have a familiar interface, making the learning curve less steep.


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