Website hosting advice

[Bagpuss]

Hi,
I have a website which has been up for a couple of years, a guy I use for printing and web design does the paperwork for the hosting and he also provides a "Bronze" website support which is basically a once a month backup for £600 a year I've never made use of it but can't be without it and I understand that if the website ever needs to be restored then i'll be charged an hourly rate to do so.
This seems a bit "rich" to me, I'd be interested to know what everybody else does with regards to backing up your website ?

Incidentally I was given the Joomla environment initially and I have created all the graphics and content, essentially a DIY site.

Any advice appreciated, I'm trying to save some money but not at the expense of my website.
Thanks,
Adam/Bagpuss

[prospero]

Well I started a website about 6 years ago and it's still only got one page. It is handy for uploading big files to so you can email someone the link rather than a 40mb attachment.

http://www.petrbnsfineart.com/

I pay about $120 pa or thereabouts for 1GB of space which I though was a good deal. The domain name is extra, but not a lot of dosh. B*gger paying £600 a year.

I got a nice little HTML editor for about £20 which has lots of helpers built in + the FTP thingy so you can upload direct. Also got a 'websites for dummies book' which is good. If I can get it to work I'm sure you (or anybody) can.

One day I will do a bit more to it. The coding is simple but I have 100's of photos that all need scanning/resizing/colour correcting/etc. I think the basic design is OK. Bit homespun maybe, but with web design less is more most of the time.

[Jonny2morsos]

I am in a similar quandry. A few years back a customer did me a four page website for £200 and uploaded it to my host (www.mrsite.co.uk) to whom I pay £35 annual renewal.

BUT... if I want to make changes I get charged £60 per hour +VAT.

[fusionframer]

Hi Bagpuss,

Take a look at http://www.fasthosts.co.uk. They charge about £6 per month for a 10 page website, plenty of storage for photo's are included. They have loads of packages to suit and not only that you can get professional emails etc set up including exchange mailboxes for blackberry's etc.

They are reliable and with the £6 package comes sitebuilder and ftp software, so you can change your own website whenever you choose.

Well worth a look.

Cheers

Nick

[Not your average framer]

My website is with Getting British Business Online and it cost me £10 for two years including domain name registration. It's a govenment sponsered initive and a joint venture with British Telecom and Google sites.

It's been up for about a year now, but other than the basic details which were created at the time (two hours start up tuition) and I have not got around to doing anything about doing a proper job of it. It's just finding the time!

I am also a founding member, committee member and the webmaster for the Bovey Tracey Business Association and I built their complete site from scratch just using HTML and a basic HTML Editor / website authoring tools package. The package is about 10 years out of date and called Web-Express, but it is not connected with the present company called Web-Express at all. I don't like the new product by this name.

The site is hosted by BT Internet for about £5 per month. And the domain name registration cost £8 for each of the two addreesses, which is a one off once and for all charge. The site is still growing and when I get the time, I will create a page for my business on this site.

So far I've been to busy keeping everyone else happy. Since I gave all my time for free and used my own existing software the whole site is costing only £60 per year with one off start up costs of only £16. If you are comfortable with HTML, then this could be worth thinking about.

The Web addresses are:

http://www.theboveytraceyexperience.co.uk, or http://www.theboveytraceyexperience.com

I'd be interested to hear any feedback on this site.

[Ricky]

My Site is also with Getting British Business Online there are lots of things you can do with it.
& I find it easy to use.

http://www.barnardcastleframers.co.uk

[GeoSpectrum]

I put mine together myself and look after my own backups. Apart from my time, it cost £30 per year including the hosting email, ftp etc £600 is a rip off if it is just for backups. I have a 1 click backup as part of the package and over 4 years of using them for a number of webistes the up-time is 100% and there has never been a need for a restore.

www.ashcraftframing.co.uk (The last touches will be done at the end of this week when I have my new phone line).

Although I am not a professional wesbite designer I can put a reasonable site together and look after SEO. I use an old copy of Dreamweaver and am looking at using the free ZenCart for the on-line shop when I have time to set that up. I also put a site together for a friend and charged £600 for two years with 1 up date a month free. The site has been running for 4 years again with no issues. (www.geospectrum.co.uk), thne ISP i use is also a reseller and provides significant commercial hosting to some large companies so small fry like me benefit from thier investment.

[Gesso&Bole]

Why not consider using a blogging platform?

Free software, VERY EASY and user friendly to update, and all you need to pay is a few £s hosting fee (I use www.1and1.co.uk)

My site is on a Typepad template - www.gessoandbole.co.uk

and this one os on a Wordpress Template - www.keithwilkinsonframes.co.uk

In both cases a professional designer has been employed to design the logo, but the templates are free, or you can buy more sophisticated templates where someone else has done all of the work, and you just add your content - just google 'wordpress template'

[arcon5]

Backup services is usually part of a hosting package. There is also usually a backup facility for your databases incase the worst happens.

I have a few resellers who use a content management script I provide. Its a Windows based script works with a main 'header' file and you create 'body' files and during navigtion builds the page for you. Very user friendly, easy to edit in Frontpage (or whatever software you use), no technical knowledge required -- and best of all free when hosted with me @ £4.50pm

[mikeysaling]

our website is a complete diy job - written using AOLpress a free program no longer supported by aol but still available on line just google aolpress download . It easy to use (set up the site 1n 1999 and still using it ) - suits us . The host is my isp tiscali (was tesco when i had dial up) The only cost is annual fee for two domain names (£21.58 for both) I do my own backup. have a look

www.sarahjanemedals.co.uk

www.sjmedals.co.uk

you will see when using our names above it takes you to

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/medals/

[pramsay13]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread
As well as picture framing I dabble in designing websites and I provide a bespoke website for a good price (a bit like my framing!)
Have a look at http://www.thepictureframerml.co.uk

I have a few thoughts: first of all I think some kind of web presence is essential in this day and age - I do all my research / pricing etc online as most people of a certain age do.
- It doesn't need to be all singing all dancing but there's nothing worse than a tacky website.
- There are a number of free / very cheap ways of doing a website, but if you are not technologically inclined then it is worth paying someone else to do it for you. You have to consider how much time you will use up trying to make a website, and that you could be doing x number of frames in that same time.
- £600 a year for a backup is a crazy price. Most hosting companies offer their own as part of the service that the web designer will be paying for. I have all my sites on my local computer and they are all online (obviously) so if one happened to go down I could copy from the other place. I also backup my local drive periodically so if I ever happened to lose both at the same time I could do a reset from a few weeks back which would only lost most recent data if anything.

If anyone wants any advice - free to fellow framers just let me know although I'm not an expert, I just dabble a bit more than most people.

[yasminfrench]

Hi Adam,

If you're still looking for a good way to back up your website monthly, it is quite straight forward to use FTP software to download the files from your website directly to your harddrive, which to be safe, I'd then burn onto a DVD/ DVDs. It depends on how much space your files currently take up as to how long it would take. Feel free to message me if you've got any questions!

[technoframer]

.... and, since it is a Joomla site you would also need to back up the database, which is a little more complex.