Website hosting help

[808smokey]

Hi,

I was trying to put my business online with a small website. Do you guys/gals know of any good options that I might have.

Just from a google search all I can find is $4.95 to register my domain
name. $4.95 per month with all these options:

100MB of space 5 email accounts 10gig DL a month. Is that any good? I've never had my own .com only the freebee sites that have it something like www.mywebsite.thisplacewebhosting.com

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Capmaster]

Yahoo/Geocities has nice starter packages for small businesses. You can even have them handle Visa/MC payments and the fees aren't too bad.

[sterno]

I was pretty happy with LunarPages (http://www.lunarpages.com/).

[g_shocker182]

Definitely try clawz.com free version

Puts a banner on the top of the page, but you get

Custom Error Pages
FTP / Browser FTP support
PHP/ MySql Support
Email forwarding
50 mbs (1.5mbs file limitation though)
A support forum - with individual help!


yoursite.clawz.com

[SquirrelDip]

Take a look at http://www.gotoecom.com - pretty cheap to register and they offer a free hosting plan.

[808smokey]

PHP/ MySql Support

That allows for Credit card payment and shopping carts right?? I'm still looking at the ideas you all posted, thanks

[g_shocker182]

It allows for a LOT of things. Having php support allows things such at what you are looking at right now.


I guess if it supports php then it supports PERl and thus cookie usage and thus shopping carts. I'm no expert in that area, so could someone clear this up?

[sterno]

I guess if it supports php then it supports PERl and thus cookie usage and thus shopping carts. I'm no expert in that area, so could someone clear this up?

Perl and PHP are entirely different, supporting one does not imply the other. However, there is really not any good reason to allow one and not the other. Both PHP and Perl can use cookies. Cookies are the easiest (but not the only) way to build a "shopping cart" application.

Credit card payments are a different matter. Typically, places use third party software for verification and/or transaction processing, and you'll have a programming interface to it. Some hosting companies provide that software as part of the service (possibly charging an additional fee). Others do not, and you may or may not be able to set it up yourself. Some hosting companies actually provide a complete back-end system for online ordering with both shopping cart and credit processing, and you just write your front-end pages to hook in to it.