Advice needed, start a new website and hosting

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dukester

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#196145 20-May-2016 18:29

Hi, my partner has started a new business and we want to start a website to advertise her business. I have looked at the website domainz and there is a name we could get that would suit.

www.******.net.nz

We have a friend who has built a website all ready to upload , so where or what is our best option. I know we need to pay for a domain name and some where to host the site. I'm sure I haven't given enough or the right information here, please feel free to interogate me. 8-)

freitasm

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#1556527 20-May-2016 20:21

First I would not buy a domain from Domainz. Instead use a NZ company, such as metaname.

Trust me, you will be a lot happier.

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mugs2000

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#1556528 20-May-2016 20:22

This site might not be the best, but it certainly satisfies my needs:

www.webbase.co.nz

Hosting about $134/year + $34 domain registration for basic subscription

They support mysql, apache and php.

They have various applications that you can install, including ecommerce, CRM, call centre, help desk, wiki, chat, telephony, asset management, billing, the list goes on.

I use it for basic sales information, ecommerce and providing private customer specific information using an online database.

blakamin

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#1556555 20-May-2016 20:43

freitasm:

First I would not buy a domain from Domainz. Instead use a NZ company, such as metaname.

Trust me, you will be a lot happier.

Have you any thoughts on "squarespace"?

Yes, I listen to waaay too many podcasts...

freitasm

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#1556561 20-May-2016 20:52

No thoughts on that - never used their platform.

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michaelmurfy

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#1556562 20-May-2016 20:52

My advise - don't skimp out on anything. Google search ranks the speed of your site.

It is possible to create a site that is fast, and cheap - my site (https://murfy.nz) is run behind Cloudflare running on a cheap $12/yr (yes, per year) virtual machine and as you see it is quite quick. Another site I manage (https://charlimarie.com) is run off a Linode 1G with Cloudflare and as you'll see that too is really quite quick and gets upwards of 20k hits per day - both sites are using HTTP2 from the backend web servers with a bit of caching optimisation going on too.

I would never go to shared hosting - you're on a server with lets say 1000 other websites on a shared filesystem and if it gets owned so does your site. They're also slow. For your domain name Metaname has your back.

I've done a quick guide on using a VPS w/ Wordpress hosting here and should really do something on setting up HTTPS hosting but if you're using Cloudflare with your site too you can just enable flexible HTTPS and block off your server to everything but Cloudflare for security.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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danfaulknor

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#1556613 20-May-2016 23:29

michaelmurfy:

My advise - don't skimp out on anything. Google search ranks the speed of your site.

It is possible to create a site that is fast, and cheap - my site (https://murfy.nz) is run behind Cloudflare running on a cheap $12/yr (yes, per year) virtual machine and as you see it is quite quick. Another site I manage (https://charlimarie.com) is run off a Linode 1G with Cloudflare and as you'll see that too is really quite quick and gets upwards of 20k hits per day - both sites are using HTTP2 from the backend web servers with a bit of caching optimisation going on too.

I would never go to shared hosting - you're on a server with lets say 1000 other websites on a shared filesystem and if it gets owned so does your site. They're also slow. For your domain name Metaname has your back.

I've done a quick guide on using a VPS w/ Wordpress hosting here and should really do something on setting up HTTPS hosting but if you're using Cloudflare with your site too you can just enable flexible HTTPS and block off your server to everything but Cloudflare for security.

Not using shared hosting is great for us geek types, but I'm not sure I can recommend a VPS for everyone...

Shared hosting isn't that bad (well it's not with me). There are tools that jail everyone into their own filesystem space so that one site getting owned does not affect anyone else.

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timmmay

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#1556648 21-May-2016 05:51

Shared hosting tends to come with support. VPS doesn't. CloudFlare (a free CDN that makes your website faster) is a great idea for performance.

Is your website static HTML, PHP, or something else?

Incidentally SquareSpace is very good, easy to get started and get a nice looking website made, reasonable prices, but it's not generic hosting.

richms

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#1556649 21-May-2016 05:54

A website is not a brochure, which is something that many people do not understand. You cannot publish the site and then ignore it. Unless your friend is going to provide ongoing support for it including updating any of the active content in the site as patches are released you will "mysteriously got hacked" and be back here asking what to do.

Richard rich.ms

dukester

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#1556688 21-May-2016 08:38

richms:

A website is not a brochure, which is something that many people do not understand. You cannot publish the site and then ignore it. Unless your friend is going to provide ongoing support for it including updating any of the active content in the site as patches are released you will "mysteriously got hacked" and be back here asking what to do.

My understanding of the way it works is, we pay to get a website name, which looks like it will be metaname, once I decide on which company will host our website, we get access to upload the website. We would have access to change or update pages on our website. I dont quite understand yet what patches we need to put on. Is the security of the website not handled by the host company? I know there will be a password to upload changes to the website and that needs to be a good one.

freitasm

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#1556700 21-May-2016 09:39

If you use a shared hosting then they are responsible for keeping things up to date - you should make sure the company you get to host your site is running the latest version of the software you need, provide backups for the entire host and for individual sites (of course you would still keep the original files in case you either want to move somewhere else, or have problems with their backup not working). If you run your own machine (a virtual machine) then you are responsible for everything.

Some companies charge more for backup. Some companies charge more if you are using your own machine but want them to do the admin stuff... And so on.

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aboylikedave

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#1557523 22-May-2016 20:01

I am an enthusiastic amateur with a Wordpress site, a simply php site and another just using JavaScript.

I went with a UK hosting company as they got fantastic rating for customer service and my sites were mainly about English soccer.

There are cheap for shared hosting (about $30 per year) and the customer service has been amazing. Very quick replies, sometimes within 10 minutes and very helpful to the extent that If I have a query they literally offer to do things on my site for me - changing code, setting up scheduling etc.I wanted to move a whole site from one domain to another and they just offered to do it for me. So I wouldn'tt warn against offshore hosting unless you really do need to be able to contact customer support during business hours. But I suspect for many of us we actually do this sort of work at night!

Three other points. One, which the techies here can comment on - despite having CDN etc to speed things up, I suspect it might be worth thinking about a host near where most of your customers are for speed. If most of your customers are in Sweden for example, then even with CDN surely they will get a slower response from a NZ based host?

Secondly, I would look at both the shared hosting prices and the own server prices. Shared is great to start off with a Wordpress site for example but if you need to upgrade to VPS then it would be good not to have to move hosts. I suspect that this may even be part of some companies business model - offer cheap shared to get people in then pricey VPS once they are customers.

Finally, having got started with Woprdpress on shared if you want to move onto another framework such as Ruby on Rails, you may find this is not supported. TSO Host could only offer this on VPS (about $70 per month) whereas other companies can do this a lot cheaper (e.g. Digital Ocean, $10 per month). So think ahead if you can.

DISCLAIMER: I am just a hobbyist who has been teaching myself programming and web development over the last two years, I am not a developer. The above is based on my experiences but listen to those more knowledgable than me first!

My EPL football websites: Get the results but hide the score of your team at HidetheScore.net. Compare league positions with wage bills at RealPremierLeague.net.