asterroc | (no subject)

Go to http://www.joker.com/ to register the domain. The service and rates are very good.

What type of webpage is it? That will influence your choice of host.

Professional - I'm applying to grad schools and I'd like to have a website not hosted at my work.

Do you mostly need to host website text (e.g. a resume, a personal statement) or downloadable files (e.g. papers you've written, videos)?

Text and small downloadable files (.pdf, .ppt, .docx) mostly. I'm basically going to mirror (and improve) my current page, the third hit on Google for my name.

Wordpress.com might be your best bet, then. It's very easy to build a Wordpress website and I believe they offer file hosting. If not, you can get a Dropbox account for free and host small files in a public folder there.

I'm confused. Let's say I get the domain zandperl.com , how can Wordpress or Dropbox let me actually put an html file at that URL? Can I host a whole website within Dropbox?

Wordpress will let you point www.zandperl.com to (say) zandperl.wordpress.com, pretty much invisibly.

You can have different pages hosted at zandperl.wordpress.com that you build like blog pages, but they will look like regular web pages: there are no comments, you can use a pre-made design that has a website look rather than a blog look, etc. Here's a tutorial with examples. (Ignore the bit about installing Wordpress on your host site; you won't need to do that.)

The site is all maintained Wordpress-style, so editing pages will be a lot like editing blog entries--similar to editing LJ entries, in fact.

Dropbox will let you create a folder full of public files. It looks just like a folder on your desktop, but they're stored on Dropbox's servers, and you can add links to those files from your website.

Edited 2011-07-29 02:02 (UTC)

Oh I see how to get my Dropbox to give a link in the public files, the sample file in there has the following URL:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1284589/Top%20Secret.txt

If I use that though, is there a way that I can get it so that someone on my theoretical zandperl.com site won't see the link as a dropbox.com address but as a zandperl.com address instead?

I'd rather be editing separate .html files on my computer and uploading them, than dealing with templates on a blog site. What I really want is to just be ssh-ing into something that appears on my screen as zandperl.com .

You are a very perplexing combination of power user and neophyte!

Dreamhost offers SSH access and I know lots of people who recommend them.

I have never hosted my own website, so I'm asking all sorts of newbie questions along those lines. I have always had space on a college/university server that I could access through text-based ssh, and once on a friend's server. Sometimes I chose to use a program that give me a drag-n-drop interface, but it was conceptually the same thing. My current school is the only one where I haven't been able to ssh in, and was forced to use a Microsoft product to interface with the server.

I do not want to use a blog template because I want to understand every line of .html code, even if I couldn't generate it independently. I am starting to learn .css, but I'm still really new at it so I can't understand most templates, and I like a very clean look anyway (where my sense of "clean" includes not wanting images as borders).

I do not want to use a blog template because I want to understand every line of .html code

That's the thing that makes you a power user! Most people really couldn't care less.

So another question, if I go with one of the other hosting services people mention, but I want a second domain name pointing to the main one, that's what domain name registry (such as joker.com) would be good for? Or am I misunderstanding.

(For example, let's say I want zandperl.com to be a real webpage, and zandizandperl.com to redirect to zandperl.com)

No, you can either register both domain names through your hosting service, if they offer that, or register them both through a registry like Joker and point them to your hosting service.

Lots of hosts also will give you a free domain name if you buy space with them :) just a matter of picking a host (there are a lot out there, though I am a little outdated on what the popular ones are now).

The proper terms I'm looking for are "host" and "DNS server" then?

Domain registrar: where you buy the domain name
Host: where you put your files

When you buy your domain, you will probably want to purchase Privacy Protection so that people can't find your address in a WHOIS search. I think it's an extra $7 or so a year.

I like using Brinkster for hosting - you can get a cheap package for as little as $4 a month. Dreamhost has a slightly more user friendly interface and is about $9 a month for two years.HTH!

Thanks for reminding me of the WHOIS, I can put my work address in, I don't mind people knowing that from my professional site.

Do Brinkster and Dreamhost throw in the domain name thingit with their service?

First, register the domain name. Then find a web hosting service. Some web hosts also do domain registration, but are probably going to charge you more than a place that specializes in domain name registration.

I've been using hostgator.com as my web host for 2+ years, and I think they're pretty good. I also did my domain name registration through them, though there are probably less expensive places to do that.

It runs me under $10/month for more storage than I will ever use, and they have a nice dashboard that gives you control over your files and whatever you want to install at your domain - like websites. They've got a whole bunch of blogs and other tools you can install, with a very simple system for installing them (pretty much "click here"). You could either use a Wordpress installation for setting up the site, or another kind of website builder. Hostgator (and many other hosting companies) provides a whole bunch of website designs that you can install for your own use - I have only used Wordpress, so I don't know how easy the other methods are, or how easy they are to customize.

There are SO MANY web hosting companies out there - but most of them should make it really simple for you to install a blog/other website builder, store files and link to them, etc.

ETA: If you're building your own site from scratch so you know all the html, then you (obviously) don't need the built-in website builders at all, though they might be useful as instructional tools.

Edited 2011-07-29 03:07 (UTC)

Do sites that offer builders also allow uploading your own? I agree I could learn from the builders.

Yep. I actually have nothing but some minimal html on my primary domain. (I have more interesting domains for the sites I -want- people to see, and I put the Wordpress sites on those.)

I don't recall if hostgator has ssh, though I think they do, because I've been happy enough the graphic interface for uploading files, and I'm not a real power user. Also, the file manager interface has some built-in ability to edit html - and other - files right there, so when I've been tweaking css files for the wordpress sites, I don't have to keep uploading new files from my desktop to see the changes.

From the demos, it seems that Hostgator.com is the same interface as Hostmonster.com, which my union uses, which I find ugly but usable. Do you know, do you have to use Hostgator's webpage to upload files, or are there ways I can set up say Dreamweaver or MS Expression Web to do it within the program? Or can I do that thing on Windows where it's listed within My Network Places, I think it's called VPN?