Building a light website

[the_lone_wolf]

Hey all

Looking to build a simple website, initially just a page with facility to download a pdf copy of a CV, but will probably want to expand with a few basic things like a gallery, blog or other things

Looking at hosting and it's making my brain ache, my experience of building sites extends to probably the worst website ever on my old university's free hosting using MS Word html, nice... That was more of a collection of random thoughts for me to recall later, this is career related so needs to just work and look fairly professional

I can get as far as registering the domain name I want, godaddy seems to offer a decent basic hosting option at under £2/mo

So, any pitfalls I should be aware of? Any advice beyond "don't use MS Word"??

Stick WordPress on your hosting account. It's a very easy to use content management system/blog engine and you can install it from your godaddy control panel - should be under Install Apps.

Apart from ease of use there are also countless themes freely available so all you need to do is pick a design you like, create a page or two, and you're done. Very easy to add to later, both content and functionality wise.

I use 1and1 for my website, cos I knew very little about them I used their templates etc which was easy to use.
Costs me £35 every 6 months.

[JamesMio]

Another + 1 for Wordpress here, it's a great little website management system and it's free!

[the_lone_wolf]

Thanks guys, I think wordpress is the way to go for a simple site.

I suppose if you take out a cheap hosting option and find out you need more space/bandwidth later on they should be happy to sell you more?

I have a Pro Photobucket account with unlimited bandwidth that doesn't expire for a couple of years, I presume there's nothing to stop me using them as bandwidth intensive picture hosting or would it be better to keep everything with one provider?

Most hosting companies' basic plans should be enough for you. If you're not going with Go Daddy then you just need to make sure it's PHP hosting and includes at least one mySQL database (or just tell them it's to host WordPress). And if you ever do start hitting the limits of your account you can either upgrade, or moving to another host is pretty painless.

A lot of other hosting providers have 'one click' installers set up for WordPress, but even if they don't it's quite easy to install and there's loads of guides around.

For pics, no problem leaving them on another host and many advantages of doing it. Generally speaking photo hosting sites are far better at managing and delivering photos than content management sites. Am also fairly sure there's a WordPress plugin available to pull pics from Photobucket so it would be really easy to display them within the site.

If you decide to go for it and have any issues, feel free to shout me - have done quite a few.

[the_lone_wolf]

Thanks for that, I may well drop you a PM if I get stuck on something...

Time will tell if three weeks is enough to register the domain, teach myself everything about wordpress and get the site up and running before I leave for my travels...

[Ruffy]

For your initial aims, can you not simply host a couple of basic static pages on the free space that you probably get from your broadband provider?

Only when you get more complex will you need to look at proper hosting packages that cost extra cash.

Just a thought.

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by Ruffy

For your initial aims, can you not simply host a couple of basic static pages on the free space that you probably get from your broadband provider?

Quite possibly, but I'd like to register my own domain regardless and the cost of a basic hosting package is spare change when it's a few quid a month...

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

Quite possibly, but I'd like to register my own domain regardless ...

Agree that's a good idea. I did it myself years ago and got not further with the website bit, but then I don't need it for work purposes (yet).

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

... and the cost of a basic hosting package is spare change when it's a few quid a month...

OK, just basing on my current tight finances, where it would be cash that could be better used elsewhere.