Webhosting

[bananaman]

I'm looking to get a domain and start my own webpage. I also would like to reach out to some small businesses in my area. My brother is the owner of a furniture store and he is in a group of small business owners. I would like to write some webpages for them and get them up online.

I am trying to figure out what kind of webhosting site I should go through in order to do this. My brothers web-site requires PHP and a SQL database. You can view his current site at www.MidwesternFurniture.com

If you have any experience with a host, please let me know what would be the best route to take. I am kind of new at this and am mainly doing it to learn more about webpage design and what not.

[magicdanw]

I'm starting to learn php and mysql, and I tried starting with the free hosting that came with my Godaddy domain name. I had some issues with their server and forms, that involved a very basic thing (submitting a form twice.) If this is any indication of their paid service, I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm currently using a free host at freeweb7.com, but this won't be of much use to a commercial site, because I assume there are no guarantees of continual service and support on a free host.

[DJ Omnimaga]

I don't know much about free hosts anymore because they get rarer and rarer with the time and usually they dissapears like nothing, but for my MTV Music Generator forums I use 1and1 hosting. I have PHP/MySQL, 120 GB of diskspace, 1200 GB of bandwidth per month, 2 domains names included for free, 50 subdomains, 10 FTP accounts, 1200 e-mails accounts and there is 24/7 phone/mail support (altough I can only use the later since they only speak english). All this for $4.99 per month

I think TI-Freakware also use this hosting provider and he never got any problem with it

[pugboy]

Try using FreeHostia.com

Comes with MySQL, PHP 4 or 5, 250mb space.

[elfprince13]

[bananaman]

I'm not sure that I completely understand domain name purchases. If I wanted to call my site Example.com I could sign up with something like 1to1 and they would supply me with that domain name and then I could create up to like 50 subdomains. When I purchase a domain name, who gets the money for it. Lets say I wanted to use Example.com and set up my computer as a server. How would I go about getting the domain name.

Can I use 1to1 with multiple domain names. Or would I create something like business1.bananaman.com and business2.bananaman.com?

Edit:

A little searching around and this seems to be the option that I am looking for.
Reseller Web Hosting

This still does not answer my question about domain names, but it lets me know a little bit about what I'm looking for in a host.

[kermmartian]

I strongly recommend SurpassHosting; I've had excellent luck with them so far, and their support is outstanding.

http://www.surpasshosting.com/

[AlienCC]

Honestly can't complain about my current webhost, they have been good to me.

[Ph34r_my_l33t_skillz]

well, you can always open a freewebs account and use the option inside freewebs to get a domain name

[magicdanw]

Actually, freeweb7.com seems to be having some technical difficulties. For a couple of days now, new accounts won't display files - they just redirect to freeweb7.com.

[bananaman]

Thanks for all of your suggestions. My life has been rather swamped with the end of the school year rapidly approaching and all of my projects being due.

I will do some more research into this subject once I am off in May.

[NETWizz]

You can buy a domain just about anywhere you want. Everyone is essentially a resaler. They all keep a share of what you pay for themselves and forward the rest of the money up the chain.

When you buy a doamin name such as example.com, you can make as many sub domains as you want. I.e. 1.example.com, more.example.com, evenmore.example.com..... There is no limit unless you are being held inside someone elses sandbox. To be the master of your domain, you really need to setup your own name servers for total control of all records. However, this is a hastle, so I recomend you use a third party dns provider. Regardless, the MX points to your mail, A to your website, a WWW record is an alias, there is an NS record for name servers, SOA record for Start of Authority...

To setup your own server, you need an IP address that is preferably static (not-changing). Just setup an A record to point to this IP and install webserver software on this webserver. I.e. Apache or IIS are the most common.

Good Luck

[bananaman]

I have apache installed on my personal computer and I have messed around with it to host my own website. The only problem is that I own a laptop and it would not be very convenient for me to keep it always online when I drag it back and forth between my classes.

I do have a spare machine sitting around that I may be able to configure to run as a server. Once again, I think I will wait till summer before I decide what I want to do.