Need advice on starting a website

lonesome killer

Banhammered
I know you'll need to register a domain name. What's a good hosting and/or registering company? Are the site designing tools that come with hosting companies good for a decent layout or should I look at an external program?

Any other suggestions you may have are appreciated.
 
I know you'll need to register a domain name. What's a good hosting and/or registering company? Are the site designing tools that come with hosting companies good for a decent layout or should I look at an external program?

Any other suggestions you may have are appreciated.


What kind of plans do you have? personal site or something bigger? That answer is what dictates what sort of stuff you'll be looking for.

Domain names aren't always necessary depending on what you want. For example, my personal site (hosted for free through 000webhost) can be accessed through a subdomain, vintagepc.site50.net. If I wanted a top-level domain (e.g. vintagepc.com or so), then yes, I'd need a domain name. The only time you "need" a domain name is when you have a VPS service or a dedicated server box that you manage yourself. Most hosting companies (especially cheap/free ones) grant you such a <yoursite>.ZZZZZ.com subdomain.


Each hosting company provides their own set of tools, it differs from host to host. Some provide ready-made stuff and templates to work from, others just give you a text editor and let you go to town. If you're just looking at something small like a personal blog or so to post stuff, then something along the lines of a ready-made content management system like wordpress or drupal might be what you want.
 
You'd be wanting a host with PHP and MySQL then to handle the database.

As for content... the fact you want to go with a forum means you might want to look into coupling with a portal or CMS plugin for the forum to do the few pages. It'll keep a consistent look across the site even when the forum theme is changed - much like our home page is handled with EWRPorta and showcases articles etc.

From there the forum software's templating system will let you design and add additional pages and content as you wish, which stay within the forum's styling (though you can turn it off if you want).

The question then becomes the forum software you want to use. Free ones aren't particularly great but of them I've had experience with Simple Machines and it's acceptable. I recall having tried others and being less than impressed.
Paid forum software (the heavy-hitters like vB, IPB and XenForo) is an option but not cheap; many licenses are $100+ and also have yearly renewal fees. Some companies do offer free forum hosting with this paid software at the expense of ads in your forums.
 

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