advice, opinions on webhosting, domain names
 

I am wanting to have a web presence for my photography business. The short story is I am going back to commercial photography after a several year hiatus.

My buddy has a simple website which functions mainly as a business card for him and he recommended something similar to me.

At this time I don't need an e commerce site, nor anything too intense. The ability to put up about 100 images in three categories, and some text is all I need right now. That and an email address. And this thermos. That's all I need.

I have some questions, but right now I have to go for a few minutes.

putting key words in the site name will really drive the traffic.

wet, young, teen, and amateur seem to be very effective.

And the holy grail, "erect nipples."

I'm aware there is a way to include all that site traffic driving content on my page, but I will turn to a professional when it comes to that.

The site I'm looking at is called aplus dot net and it offers beb hosting for about 7 buck a month and registers a domain name for about 7 buck per year. They offer a bunch of free templates that I suppose you just upload content to.

As you move along the registration process they start in with all the a la carte stuff like do you want to make your registration private? 9 bucks a month, etc.

At this point I looked at a couple of other sites enom, I think and then I became overwhelmed. On the one hand, how friggin hard can designing a website with a template be? on the other, how much time do I want to spend not earning money in an effort to earn money?

Anyone have any ideas about this?

I think whale penis may also prove useful at driving traffic to my site as well.

More questions: Does it matter who I register my domain name with when it comes to web hosting? Why choose linux server or windows server? Does it matter to me?

Here's my perspective for what it's worth:

If you're a small site with small traffic, shared hosting is fine. What shared hosting means is that your provider buys a server and puts a number of separate, independent web sites on it. You're essentially sharing space with other small web sites, but neither you nor your customers will really notice. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement until you start getting a lot of hits and serving a lot of bandwidth.

The players in this space seem to be a dime a dozen. Dreamspace is probably the most well known. One of their advantages is that they supply a number of pre-loaded applications (a blog, a shopping cart, a forum, etc.) that you can turn on for your domain with just a click. The disadvantages are they have been wildly successful, which has resulted in questions about whether they are hosting more sites than they can handle. I personally left them because I couldn't stand the amount of spam I was getting, and the tools they were providing weren't doing anything about it. I honestly don't know who else is big in this area, but I can tell you you'll be hard put to distinguish between the features and pricing offered by many of them.

Maybe a pro account + a custom domain at smugmug or one of its competitors would suit your needs? If all you're looking for is a place to show your photos, that might do it.

Thanks. That gives me a better understanding of what is going on. I'm checking out smug mug. I have no idea how many hits I'll be getting, so it's hard to guess what will happen and what I'll need.

So I'm at smugmug, which is preety cool and just the thing it seems, and I'm getting all registered and what not and then they ask me do I want to register all the various dots net, org, biz, etc. I don't think I need to now.

I've been running a podcast on Dreamhost for 3 years - it gets about 10,000 unique hits per day, and serves an average of 35 gigs a day of data. This is on a standard, low budget shared hosting account. It's more than enough for what you're looking to do.

In addition to the one-click installs of popular applications, Dreamhost will give you a one-click option to use google apps for your email. Basically, you get a gmail email account, with their spam filters, storage, search capabilities, everything good about gmail, but the address is still you@yourdomain.com

I'm pretty hot on what they offer, for the price.

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The best unlimited webhosting service, by far, is unlimitedhost.us.to , they have unlimited EVERYTHINK for 3 dollars a month!

How about unlimited spell-check? Do you guys have that?

No, he really means EVERYTHINK... they don't put any limits on what you can think.

Buy a bunch of domain names that you think people are going to want, then sit on them until they offer to buy it from you. Oh, not that kind of advice that happens to also be illegal? Sorry. Just wanted to help you get some photography funding.
:)
Squatter alert!!!

purchasing domain names as an investment is illegal? Since when?

Yepppers!!!! It's called squatting and now there is a law against it....Let me see if I can find the info for ya...Here's a scrap...

~snip~CYBER SQUATTING Vs DOMAIN SPECULATION

Cyber squatting
Simply put, cyber squatting means the registration of a domain name in violation of a trademark or business name or other intellectual property of its owners. This includes the registration of a name deceptively similar to such business name or trademark. Usually, domain squatters register these domains before the company does and offer these domain names to such business houses at a premium. In some cases, domain squatters unscrupulously divert traffic to their sites and use their site for profiting illegally or for posting objectionable and defamatory messages. In other cases, a misspelling of such trademarks or business names is used to confuse the end user. This constitutes domain infringement or cyber squatting and makes the illegal occupant liable for eviction.
US Judge Berle Schiller gave a precise definition of cyber squatting or cyber piracy as �the deliberate, bad faith, and abusive registration of Internet domain names in violation of the rights of trademark owners�.~snip~

Has to be trademarked apparently....If it isn't I guess it isn't illegal. Or maybe this is all a vicious rumour, because I can't find the actual law, I have been finding people talking about the illegality of it and have had no cite for the actual law....I need to go find it...

I have squatted for a boss because she was a jerk....She would buy up all the domain names on all the people she didn't like that she thought might want it some day...I think that should be illegal but I don't really know if it is until I can find the cite.

As I understand it, if you aren't actually utilizing the domain it is not considered an investment, it's considered squatting...

It's pretty easy to put up a keyword feed aggregater for the title of the site, and get instant content. Presto! the domain is being used.