10/28/06

1. Who do you recommend for hosting my website?
2. How do I register a domain?
3. What should I use to create my webpage?
4. I want a forum, how do I set one up?
5. Don't free forums rip you off if you try to move away from them?
6. Should I lock my forum?
7. Will you moderate my forum?
8. Will you build my forum?

Who do you recommend for hosting my website?

OK firstly you need to understand what you services you want from your hosting service. Your ISP has probably given you some web space which will accept FTP transfer. This space may have a limited bandwidth to it (that is after a certain number of visitors the ISP will either charge you for extra visitors or they will be shown an error message of some type) so I use my own ISP space to test out pages or sites that I'm working on.

Another choice is a free site like lycos which has the advantage that it supports Frontpage, has an easy to use GUI to upload files and other features. The downside is that it's free because they place they own adverts on to the site (heck they have to make their money back). Here's my site that I use to test Frontpage functions on websites I'm developing. It's a good option until you're ready to move on to a full hosted service.

There are lots of fully hosted services around and you need to pick one that suits what you want. I always use Pipex as I've been a customer of theirs for over 15 years. Their hosting service is called 123-reg.co.uk and clicking on the banner ad below takes you straight to them. The other company I'd recommend is Star who are now best known as the company that owns MessageLabs.

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How do I register a domain?

Your hosting service will normally offer this as well as your ISP. I always get mine via 123-reg.co.uk as I can then manage all my domains from a central point.

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What should I use to create my webpage?

Tough question and no doubt a thousand and one views one this one. You can write a website in any text editor in the world. MS Word will happily output HTML code even if it is untidy. I've used Notepad (yeah thanks Steve for that little work assignment ), HotmetalPro, Dreamweaver and Frontpage. I prefer Frontpage just from a speed point of view, it does what I want and is quite tidy in it's coding. The guys at http://www.arachnoid.com/ have some freeware editors that tend to get good reviews but I've never used them so you'd have to see if it worked for you. Some hosting services offer their own building tools which if you're new to website building get you a set of nice looking pages very quickly. There is one danger and that is the snobbyness of some designers who just know that their way of doing things is the right way. If those of us in the IT industry are honest then almost all of our sites are not Lynx compatible and go against the spirit of what the 'Net' used to be. It's unfair to pick on sites because of their chosen editor.

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I want a forum, how do I set one up?

These questions aren't getting any easier. There are unsurprisingly a lot of options. There is http://www.delphiforums.com/ which is well known US based forum service that you pay for but has the advantage that the adverts are filtered so you shouldn't get any dodgy adult links and no 'If there's blame there's a claim' litigation type adverts. Yahoo have the long standing http://groups.yahoo.com/ service which isn't as pretty as some of the other offerings but is very good and you don't get many adverts.

OK I've teased enough and someone is asking 'But what about PHP boards!' well yes these seem to becoming the fashionable thing to have on one's website. With a cute little SQL backend (that's a database if you didn't guess) they seem to be the must have for website these days. There are two main ways to deliver this service.

Firstly the free service like the one used on http://www.forumsplace.com/  or one of these from a google search where the site is hosted by someone like forumsplace.com. The service is free, but in these case you get adverts. These guys are very honest and refuse to move your data should you choose to shut the site down or move it.

The second method is to run your own PHP board on your own site like http://www.sausagemaking.org/forum/ which is run as part of Franco's whole business.

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Don't free forums rip you off if you try to move away from them?

Two things here, most forums refuse to give you an SQL dump for their server so that's not really a rip off. Secondly most free forums give you a sub domain of their own site so even if you move the data you have to tell all you users where you've moved to. 'Ah yes' I can hear you say 'but you could do a redirect from your own domain' and I would say 'yes you could and if you're going to do things like that then you're better off hosting your own board'.

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Should I lock my forum?

Up to you but in an open forum you will get delightful people that will post nasty messages. In all the forums above you can delete the nasty posts or appoint moderators who help you police the site. You can in most of the above you can give people view only access and make them register on your site before they can make a post.

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Will you moderate my forum?

Thanks for the offer but I've finally got rid of the last of my mod privileges on various forums. Being a good mod requires time, an agreed code of conduct and careful management. I don't have the time and too many sites these days don't have robust codes of conduct (the ones I've referenced are some of the better ones I've visited).

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Will you build my forum?

Clearly if you're willing to pay I'll take a look, I've just picked up a job setting a PHP forum up for someone. My last yahoo group setup role was a year ago. Now that Delphi requires payment for setup then that cost will need covering. Use the feedback form here and we can discuss.

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