Hatrack River Forum: How do you start a website?

This is topic How do you start a website? in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Promethius (Member # 2468) on :

So I have a great idea for a website but I have a few questions about starting one. I know enough html to do what I want with how the website looks and I know how to register a domain name and all that stuff. My only concern is how do I know how much bandwidth I should be purchasing every month? For instance I am on godaddy.com a site which offers web hosting but I do not know which plan to choose.

bandwidth plans Just to give me some sort of understanding, what package would a site like Hatrack need? Thanks alot.

Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :

You find a really neat hole - toilets or disposals will do - and then you take all the money in your wallet, tear it into tiny pieces, and drop it in the hole. Then you activate the hole to do whatever tricks it does, and presto: you have just started a website!

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Um, yeah. [ROFL]

To start with, get the cheapest plan around. Only upgrade to a plan with more hard drive space and bandwidth when you actually need it. There's no point in spending money before you need to, and the vast majority of domain hosting companies will gladly let you upgrade your hosting plan midway through.

I have several sites, and my biggest so far uses about 300 MB of space, but I have a LOT of pictures on it, and I don't remember how much bandwidth offhand - I'd have to check, and I'm too lazy for that right now - but the cheapest plan is perfectly fine. Something like this site uses a lot more, but that's because of the forum and the thousands of people who come here. When you're starting out, unless you're already famous, you won't get the kind of traffic that OSC does.

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

OSC, you're a gem!

Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :

Um, don't go with lunarpages.

They're very good about cancelling your account if your account uses too much system resources, and you don't fix it immediately. And there are no second chances with them. I could tell you a lot of stuff about them, but don't really want to go into detail because it could cause problems for someone who works for them.