how much ? a web , one year , domain.

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#1

A girlfriend of mine wants a web for her galery , a friend of her , told her he do it for her for around 400 euros , all , the web , manteinance , and domain for one year.

What do you think ? is it cheap , is it right ?

Any way i think i’ll do it for her for free , as i just learned kompozer , But i got one question , How do i place things with css , before i used to start doing the page with tables , but they say is beter not to use them any more , so how do i start palcing stuff without tables ?

i use kompozer.

#2

400 euros? That’s like, $800USD, right? If so, then I’d say no way in hell. You can buy a domain for like $8 USD, and get a REALLY nice hosting plan for less than $50 a year. That’s WITH the 24/7 support, HUGE bandwidth, and massive amounts of storage space.

Look into getting a Joomla hosted account. I’m running Joomla on my site and it’s amazingly easy to setup and add new stuff.

#3

$800? not yet. Only around $580. I think the key in pricing this is determining how high maintenance the girlfriend is. Is she internet literate? Is she computer literate? If the answer to either of those questions is no, then the “maintenance” the other friend provides might wind up taking up a lot of time, scanning new works and uploading them to the web site, putting in captions and artists statements, rearranging the site because she doesn’t like it this month…

Even setting up a site takes a certain amount of time. Now, you may have reasons not to charge the girl for your time, but he may not be as close a friend :eyebrowlift:.

#4

giorgio, I’d suggest setting up a content management system for her. There are many free (open source) options available for you. I’ve used a free hosting service (they have pay levels, too, of course) called freehostia.com. They have several auto-installing CMSs available (elefante scripts), including photo gallery software. This, once you have it set up for her, would allow her to “maintain” the site herself, as they typically include a web admin interface that she should be able to learn quickly. A good learning resource on CMSs is www.opensourcecms.com where they have many live installs that you can log in to and try out. There are also many other resources there to learn from.

Coding a site from scratch, while always a good learning exercise for anyone, is really unnecessary anymore. All that work’s been done time and again by others who’re sharing it with the world! :slight_smile:

#5

As to placing things with CSS, search for “CSS positioning”.
Basic placement is easy, but easily breaks down in a lot of browsers. I’m thinking about going back to tables for some things, believe it or not.

#6

You could do what I do and just host your own web server out of your bedroom. I’m running 0SX and Apache.

What you spend and where you host is really dependent upon the amount of traffic you plan on hitting your site. If it’s going to be 100’s or 1000’s of people, host it remotely. On the other hand, if you’re just going to post pictures for friends and family members, just run your own server.

#7

If you have a dynamic IP address (which most home ISPs use), you’ll have to come up with a workaround (which some domain hosts provide) or spring for the static. Then there’s the fun of opening those lil’ ol’ ports and the pandora’s box that tags along. Too many headaches, IMO. Esp. when others are willing to do so, and provide the service to you for free!

#8

Do NOT host a webserver out of your bedroom. You’re obviously not experienced enough to be running servers. There’s a certain personal responsibility needed to put servers on the net.

Now, that said… you shouldn’t be thinking of more than around £15/month. Look for somewhere that has a control panel, unlimited email addresses, at least one free database (ideally more), and a gallery package you can setup at the touch of a button (or a few) from the control panel.

#9

Sorry Giorgio, I was in a hurry, and didn’t read your whole post. If you’re thinking of doing it for her with Kompozer, you’re a bit more advanced than the kind of person I was aiming the above comments at (no offense, either way though). Still, my advice is much the same: control panel, with a ready-made gallery package. If you want to do it yourself, that’ll still be possible. If not, you’ll have the gallery package to fall back to.

p.s.: the £15/month is maximum.

#10

I have a dynamic IP, but it doesn’t bother me to change it. My address usually stays the same for months at a time even though technically they are only 7 day leases.

As for opening ports, well… I agree to a point. Yes, from a security stand-point, any time you punch a hole in your firewall you are opening yourself up to the outside world. Then again, unless you have 1000’s of hits to your website all the time I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Plus - I would only do it on a version of Linux/Unix running Apache. I’m running OSX. Believe me, If I were running Win-DOZE I wouldn’t open IIS to the outside world even if my ISP PAYED ME!

#11

noip.com or dyndns.org would sort out a mapping from a fixed domain name to a dynamic ip if it did become a problem. you say it stays good for months but what about if other sites link to you, your IP address changes in six, twelve months and the link is broken. How many of those bad links do we all come across from servers in bedrooms?

Even my £65.00 Linksys firewall/router has SPI, DMZ and a dyndns client built in, it’s linux based as well, you don’t open your internal lan to outside you put your server in a dmz, internet facing, no port forwarding internally. macOS or not. Smoothwall is free if buying a decent firewall/router is a problem for anyone. Just needs an old PC.

Biggest headache and why I found it pointless to host at home is checking firewall logs, snort logs etc to make sure to the best of my knowledge that the server hasn’t been compromised.

Played with Linux like that for a number of years, best just to pay a bit each month for a hosted plan and concentrate on content rather than server maintenance, we all know how quickly a site goes out of date and sporadic updates.

#12

Thus, the beauty of the free offering at a place like freehostia. You can set up the site at no cost, then bump it up to a paid plan if you find you need more bandwidth (site becomes popular) or space (for serving all those blender animations :eyebrowlift: ) without a hassle. If it stays a small or personal-use site, then no worries.

Thanks for the links, yellow!

… all available at the free level and upgradable with the paid services.