# Getting a Website, etc.



## Dibs-h (7 Jul 2011)

Seems a few folk are getting websites and then getting stuck or unstuck at some point - so here's a Noddy's (or not so Noddy) guide to getting a website.

Now to get a website you need 2 things - a *Domain *and a *Hosting account*. Yes there are outfits that will offer to do it all for you, but there's always the small print which bites later. I am a HUGE advocate of separating the Registration of the Domains and the Hosting. You'll actually find that the majority of the World does separate the 2 - it's only Noobies that get caught out.

*1. Domain Names*

You'll need one. I'd suggest not getting one overly long and if it's business - get the _.co.uk_ one and whilst you are at it, get the _.com_ one too. For the minimal cost - stops someone masquerading as you. Even if it's not business - I'd suggest you still getting the _.co.uk_ one. Sometimes the UK one is taken and you end up with a _.com_ one - it doesn't matter hugely, as long as the 2 business are different. Imagine the issues if the line of business was the same! If that's the case and the _.co.uk_ one is not available but the _.com_ one is - I'd suggest you think of a different name.

Stuck for a name - http://www.name-boy.com is quite useful as it allows you to put 2 words in and comes up with a ton of similar words and checks if the domains are available.

*2 . Registering a Domain Name*

You can't actually buy one. You lease them for x yrs at a time. X for _.co.uk_ one is 2 yrs minimum and others are 1 year minimum. Where do I lease one from? Registars - examples being

http://www.123-reg.co.uk
http://www.godaddy.com

There are others too. 

The Godaddy one - I use for all domains other than _.co.uk_ ones. Why - because there are countless discount codes floating around on the web - Google 'Godaddy discount codes' and within minutes you'll find ones that offer 30% off with no min spend. GoDaddy now do _.co.uk_ domains - so I will be using them for my _.co.uk_ ones as well & the discount codes help.

I do use http://www.123-reg.co.uk but that's for instances when someone like a client has the domain and they require me to have administrative control over than one (or more) domains but don't want me to have control over their account. For a one or 2 man band - not necessary!

Register your domains with a *Registrar*. As with all Registrars they will try and sell you extras,

- domain security,
- domain privacy,
- email,
- hosting,
- loads more

My advice - is to say *NO *to everything else! If asked about Nameservers just go for the defaults - as you are just registering the Domains, nothing more!

With both the above website\s - you'll effectively be creating User accounts at those sites with a Username & Password. Keep these safe as you'll need them to administer your domain later or enable moves etc.

*Question*: well a website has offered me some Gizmo for £50 per year and said that they will throw a free domain in. 
*Answer*: No such thing as Free Lunch - it'll bite at some point!

Now you have the Domain Registration - *Make a note of the date,* as in 2 or however many yrs you have registered the domain for, it will expire! They don't always auto-renew, although some registrars will allow that. Forget to renew it - it'll be a pain to renew it or worse - you'll loose it and some snake will register it and try to make you pay ££'s for it!

Now the other half of the equation - Hosting.

*3. Hosting.*

A Domain isn't any good if you have nowhere for any content\pages. You need a hosting account. At the minimum you need a Shared Hosting Account. Shared? What's that - well it's like getting a flat in a tower block, each with it's own living room, bedroom, bathroom, etc. This is usually some pounds per month - say anywhere from £2-5. Anymore is taking the proverbial and any less is suspect!

A hosting account will give you a fixed amount of disk space and bandwidth (per month - just the bandwidth) - these are the key things to note. Bear in mind that even a hundred MB of disk space is ample and a few GB of bandwidth\month is more than sufficient.

Anyone offering Unlimited Disk space and Unlimited Bandwidth is lying! Walk away! Bandwidth has to be paid for! And disk space is never truly unlimited as it has to be mirrored and backup up and stored - so instantly for 1MB of space you use - costs the provider x3 as much.

Where do you get one - Google or ask around. I'd suggest you ask around. A good one - has their T&C's laid out and charges by the month. Anyone charging by the year - walk away.

If you are in the UK - you want a UK host with servers in the UK. Having a UK host with servers in Dallas - isn't exactly going to be helpful with the speed of the connection, a US Ip address, differing time windows. Believe me - pick a UK hosting provider and one with servers in UK data centres. Folk might disagree and say

"I've had my site on a US server and it hasn't caused me any issues"

Ask the commercial techies and they'll be insisting their UK business has UK hosts and UK based servers in UK based Data Centres with UK IP addresses. Believe me there is a reason for this "madness" and it doesn't cost anymore.

Once you have found the host - ask for the 2 Nameserver entries. These are just 2 IP addresses. Make a note of them!

A good hosting provider - will not only provide disk space and bandwidth, they will also provide POP email and SMTP email (on the standard port of 25 and alternatives such as 587)

*3. Joining the 2 - Registration & Hosting.*

You now have a domain registered and a hosting account. Remember the Domain you registered with a Registrar? The Username\Password that you created on their website? Yes? Well log into their website - there will be a login "button" on the homepage - they all have them.

You need to go the DNS control panel and need to alter 2 entries - Nameservers. You Hosting Provider will have given you 2 of them. These will either be 2 IP addresses or 2 names. Mix and match is highly unlikely. You could have been given the same IP address twice or the same name twice. This last bit - isn't a good sign of a "proper" Hosting Provider.

So you will have something like

NameServer1 = 132.234.44.178
NameServer2 = 132.234.44.179

Quite often sequential but needn't be.

or 

NameServer1 = ns1.somedomain.co.uk
NameServer2 = ns2.somedomain.co.uk

The last pair is the most common. When you log into the DNS control panel you will find a place to change the Nameservers - replace the default entries with these 2 and click Submit\Save and you should see a message on the screen saying something long the lines of "Changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate". At this point you should be good to go.

Registration\Hosting - that's all there is to it!

At this point - should someone type your web address into a browser, they'll probably end up at a blank page or a noddy page that says "welcome to the home page of http://www.somedomain.co.uk"

Now you are ready to get your website up and running.

*4. Email*

The hosting provider will have given you details of the incoming & outgoing mail servers, along with the login details. Usual formats are as below, but need to be checked,

Incoming - mail.somedomain.co.uk (110)
useraccount - [email protected]
password - xxxxxx

Outgoing - mail.somedomain.co.uk (25 or 587 or something else)
useraccount - same as incoming
password - same as incoming

This all you need to get Outlook up and running or an IMAP account on an IPhone\HTC.

*Conclusion.*

So you now have you domain registered, a Hosting account to upload pages to and functioning email via Outlook or a phone. 

FTP'ing to your account - there are countless results on the web, if you Google "FTP upload to website" and creating pages\sites - again loads of stuff on the web.

I've written this post is the net result of stuff over the years and not readily available in one place - well except my head!

*Gotchas:*

Free Lunches

- Get hosting with XY&Z and get a free domain. _.co.uk_ domain names cost £3 or so per year - so they are throwing that in free but you are paying thru the nose for hosting! There are all sorts of fees to pay, should you ever wish to move elsewhere and everything has to be paid upfront for the year! Don't believe me - read the small print!

- Hosting provider only does inbound email not outbound. Bit like a bog that doesn't flush! [email protected]! You'll need to use your own ISP's outgoing mail servers, but if you start changing things like Return Email address. i.e. you start masquerading - things will quickly go pear shaped as your email will be tagged as spam and binned. Net result - folk will say that they sent you an email and you never replied. Even if you leave the Return email address alone - firstly the mismatch between the address they sent to and where the reply came from doesn't instill confidence\security and secondy you are on a DHCP address, so odds are that's in a Blacklist somewhere.

By using a proper SMTP (authenticated) relay (that's the technical term for the Hosting provider providing outbound SMTP) provided by the Hosting Provider - the "tags" all line up and your mail shouldn't get picked up as spam.

- My ISP is offering free hosting. What happens if you change ISP?

There endeth this lesson!

Hope it helps someone

Dibs

p.s. Can't be pineappled - then either get fleeced\stuck\unstuck or get a man in and pay them to do it!
p.s.2 - when I'm next changing nameserver entries etc. I'll take a screen shot and post it up - it's dead easy changing nameservers but a picture speaks a 1000 words!


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## Anonymous (7 Jul 2011)

dibs

Great post, sure as well cleared a few things for me.


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## loz (7 Jul 2011)

Great post ,

Just a comment on the hosting, please think first and check any prereqs you might have are met.

Eg i need a certain number of mysql db's and certain versions of php to run my sites. - check the vendor does provide the facility ( or better still lets you install your own copies ( eg rental of linux space rather then web space ) 

Regs
Loz


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## Dibs-h (7 Jul 2011)

loz":2efouhtu said:


> Great post ,
> 
> Just a comment on the hosting, please think first and check any prereqs you might have are met.
> 
> ...



I was aiming it more at the noobies than those of us who can already suck eggs! :mrgreen: 

But good point nonetheless - A good hosting provider should be able to give you a test account for a week or 2 to play with. Using the old phpinfo() command in a basic php file - should give you all the info regarding the versions\modules installed by a host.

If you want to install your own copies of stuff - then you won't be looking at a Shared Hosting account - altho these can & do offer unlimited DB's within your disk storage limits, etc. If wanting to install your own software - then you are looking at a VPS (Virtual Private Server - like a full server, without the Full cost, but also without the Full grunt of a Full server) at the minimum.

Dibs


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## Hudson Carpentry (7 Jul 2011)

> Where do you get one - Google or ask around. I'd suggest you ask around. A good one - has their T&C's laid out and charges by the month. Anyone charging by the year - walk away.



Sorry and excuse my French but the above is utter pea's and is a negative on my VERY GOOD professional business.

I own a hosting company. Not only do I charge by the year (the larger packages have monthly payment options) but I only rent UK servers and provide a professional services backed up by the awards the company I rent from has won. They are considered one of the best in england which means my pay yearly packages are an award winning service (the hosting not my customer service or company)

Why would anyone pay £2-5 a month for a package when the yearly cost is so little its barely worth the hassle of setting up a Direct Debit/standing order etc.

My cheapest package is £5 and my most popular package is just under £20 a year. Why would you pay 41p a month. Hosting companies (like all other company account holders) get charged at there bank for every transaction and taking 12 DD payments a year would cost more than what the hosting package is worth. Not only does paying yearly save the hosting company money, the hosting company (well at least mine) will pass that saving on to you.

I agree that you should by your domain names else where to a degree. Im to small of a company to compete with the domain name prices of the larger companies so I do recommend my customers buy there domain else where many don't want the hassle with the extra paperwork evolved or want to keep it all in one place. As a small host I can offer more for less hosting wise as the larger companies will charge a price based on what they can get due to the size of there company.

As many busy companies or small one man bands will not want the extra 12 transactions to account for paying yearly is something of an advantage along with the lower cost "good" hosts will give for yearly payments.

The word Unlimited is the "wrong" word to use but don't stay away from the companies that use it as its only a technical fact that its wrong. In theory its the correct use. I use the word Unmetered. However from the customers point of view if the host will just expand the hard drive space if they go over the servers HDD limit then it is unlimited to the customer. The biggest and best hosting companies in the world use the word unlimited.

Im sorry but as your "opinion" could have had a negative effect on my business I felt raged to voice my opinion.


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## loz (7 Jul 2011)

And yet you advertise "from 34p a month" for hosting ???


I wanted to read more - but the read more button isnt working...........................


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## Dibs-h (7 Jul 2011)

Yes you could pay yearly for such small amounts but how many will refund pro rata part way thru the year?

It was more aimed at the outfits that want 100+ upfront for the year and the T&C's don't give any refunds. 

There are plenty of hosts that are fly by night outfits, not you of course. But how many noobs can tell the difference?

The bit you raged about was written from a customers perspective not a hosts respective. Such perspectives don't always match.

Even the unmetered bit, we'll have to disagree as extra disk costs as does bandwidth.

A host can't keep giving it away endlessly. To give away unmetered bandwidth is to be over selling it as the host has a fixed amount per month. We have whole racks in data centres so know such things are charged in this manner.

Dibs


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## Hudson Carpentry (7 Jul 2011)

loz":ncvmt5z1 said:


> And yet you advertise "from 34p a month" for hosting ???
> 
> 
> I wanted to read more - but the read more button isnt working...........................



You can not pay 34p a month thats an advertising trick most hosts use. Thats the before vat price if divided by 12 on the £5 package.

On that page it does say that its in a test mode!

http://tmw-hosting.co.uk/packages/compare.php
Is what I charge and for what packages. I haven't changed that page for some 3 years I think. At the time my packages and prices was cheaper and more featured then 1 and 1. Probably need updating now.

I fully admit that my hosting website is far from completed which don't look good. I wish I had the time to complete it, like I wish I had time update my portfolio (my HCF website is more important to me at the min). Most of my customers are word of mouth or clients I develop software or websites for, I even have other develops/designers that use my hosting services (they get a discount also as they sign up many a month). But that said anyone that rents servers from Heartinternet and uses either there resellers package or there server software to sell hosting packages from gets all the benefits of hearts award winning services.

My services (and im not advertising) are just as professional as bigger companies, just a s reliable and offer just as good if not better hosting service. Most so it the most user friendly and simple hosting panel they have ever used (again not my work the work of heart internet). My only let down is that I have to currently manually set up customers. That said all I need is there email address as the system auto generates there passwords and send them a professional welcome email and there address for the bill.

Anyhow I was only using my "hosting services" as a point to say hang on, paying yearly is by no far a bad thing. Im not the only one with servers or resellers accounts from professional hosts and charge only a fraction and take yearly payments.


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## Hudson Carpentry (7 Jul 2011)

Dibs-h":2uqldw99 said:


> Even the unmetered bit, we'll have to disagree as extra disk costs as does bandwidth.
> 
> Dibs



It may cost the host to expand but if they are expanding because someone has taken use of there unlimited space or bandwidth, that cost to the host can NOT be placed onto that customer if indeed they are paying for what is advertised as unlimited. It don't effect the customer one bit and don't deem a Host a bad one if they choose to advertise as unlimited. If there terms said something else, trading standards would have there say.

Anyhow. I don't have the time to do my website so I shouldn't be starting arguments on here (hammer) in the time I should be doing clients websites. IF the boss asks im on a brake :lol:


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## Dibs-h (7 Jul 2011)

Offering unmetered bandwidth and disk and then as the host having to pay more can turn a profitable business into an unprofitable one.

What happens then?

With all things you get what you pay for. IMO such marketing gimmicks are a sign of a poor business model.

We can agree to disagree.


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## Dibs-h (7 Jul 2011)

I'm not having a dig at you! The post was written to educate noobs.

And the safer road was taken.


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## Louise-Paisley (4 Oct 2012)

My host offers unlimited space/ bandwidth..

I absolutely do not believe that to be true and I am pretty sure if I put up a website that used up a couple of TB of space and had 20,000 daily visitors it would become quite apparent that the claims are not true.

However, 99.9% of people who take up the hosting do not use these large amounts of space, most will have a fairly modest website and maybe a forum with a few dozen people who regularly contribute. They are able to make these claims because the majority of users do not need that level, the few users who do use larger storage and bandwidth amounts are not impacting costs to the host because they know for every one of those they have there is another 99 who are only using 1 or 2 gigs tops and get 10 visits a day.

So, although the claims are probably a load of bunkum, for most of us its as near true as makes no real difference. I have several sites on my package, none of them is anything like facebook of course, and my websites are very rarely down and if they are it is usually only for minutes, and they operate as fast as a web site needs to - I have never to date had any complaints from anyone about the speed.

The idea that you need hosting on UK servers for speed is just a bit silly really, it is good advice for the likes of Argos etc which have millions of hits per week, but come on lets be realistic here, for the vast majority of people here putting a website online a few hundred visits a week tops is a more likely figure and providing a page is loaded in less than a couple of seconds no one is going to give a hoot. Yes if 15 seconds later the page still has not displayed everyone will be back on google looking for another but you can pull a page from the USA in well under a second - providing of course that you do not have 20 x 10mb high res images on it and if you do then you have already eliminated a large section of your audience using mobile devices.

It is obvious that if your website reaches a point where you are getting 10000 visitors a day and using TB's of space then NO shared host is going to serve your needs, at this level the website would be hosted on your own leased servers, but it is not something anyone reading this thread is ever likely to even need to consider


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## Dibs-h (5 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":379j0hjx said:


> The idea that you need hosting on UK servers for speed is just a bit silly really


Nowt like selective quoting! :roll: 

If it had just been about speed I would have said so, but going back to what I wrote



> you want a UK host with servers in the UK. Having a UK host with servers in Dallas - isn't exactly going to be helpful with the speed of the connection, a *US IP address*, differing time windows."



I think you'll find having a US based IP address is not as "helpful" as you might think. :wink:

You may not use significant resources, can you say the same about the other 2,656 websites on the same server\IP as yours?

Dibs


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## Eric The Viking (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs and Hudson are both right: you basically get what you pay for, and it's shark-infested waters, too.

I work on a retainer for a good local IT company. we offer cloud services and domain hosting _to our clients_. I also do freelance work of various sorts, including web design.

Recently I tried to set up a web site on a very well known web service for a small client. Domain name reg: OK. Web hosting: looked OK, as the service supported Joomla, which I usually use. So I got on with developing the site locally. 

When I came to upload it, I discovered to my horror that the "service" was offering a hacked version of Joomla, frozen at a buggy, obsolete version, with some arcane and pointless restrictions in place. It meant I could either hack their code (which worked, incidentally - their setup wasn't very secure) or re-write my (up-to-date) site back into the old version. This wasn't just nit-picking: the Joomla version they were running (and probably still run for all I know) was deprecated over a year ago. Full Joomla installations auto-update with security patches, bug fixes, etc. this was also disabled.

I had to apologise to the client for my poor advice. After discussion We've set up a web hosting package locally. It's secure; I know the server admins personally; it's hugely faster than the well-known one; it hasn't crashed once (the well known one emulated a yo-yo). And the servers are gosted in the UK, where my client wants to do business.

Yes it costs more, but he's happy and I'm relieved. I won't attempt to go down the 'cheap DIY' route again!

E.


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":15e9j7es said:


> Louise-Paisley":15e9j7es said:
> 
> 
> > The idea that you need hosting on UK servers for speed is just a bit silly really
> ...



I agree with what you are saying, but it is things that really don't affect joe blogs who is starting out with a quick simple website when starting up in business. Getting a dedicated server in uk data centres is a big financial cost, I am sure most startup business just do not have the funding to pay out 150 or 200 quid a month for that.

I am really at a loss as to why an IP resolving to a USA geolocation would be a problem, I don't recall ever doing a whois lookup before buying?

Really it just seems to be somewhat over the top to insist on uk servers etc for a startup business which is unlikely to be getting thousands of daily visits, it seems more like advice to an expanding business which is more online sales based rather than an information only webby.


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## Dibs-h (5 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":2l9ivpo2 said:


> I agree with what you are saying, but it is things that really don't affect joe blogs who is starting out with a quick simple website when starting up in business. Getting a dedicated server in uk data centres is a big financial cost, I am sure most startup business just do not have the funding to pay out 150 or 200 quid a month for that.
> 
> I am really at a loss as to why an IP resolving to a USA geolocation would be a problem, I don't recall ever doing a whois lookup before buying?
> 
> Really it just seems to be somewhat over the top to insist on uk servers etc for a startup business which is unlikely to be getting thousands of daily visits, it seems more like advice to an expanding business which is more online sales based rather than an information only webby.



Over the top? How do you think Google.co.uk excludes Non-UK pages? Ever thought how many people when searching for something then click "Pages from the UK"? How do you think Non-UK pages are excluded? Ever wondered how clicking on "Pages from the UK" still returns ".com" domains? I didn't think so.

You have a non UK IP address - Geo locating out of Utah, where your shared server is hosting 2600+ other websites. If someone searches on whatever search times bring up your website and then clicks on "Pages from the UK" - my money is that your website has a high probability of disappearing from Google's Results. So would that be "over the top" for Joe Bloggs wanting to get work in the UK?

Obviously YMMV!

Dibs

p.s. No one mentioned dedicated servers or anything remotely close. Hosting provision like you have (in the US) can be bought just as cheaply in the UK, with UK IP addresses, etc.. with a company that has trading record, etc. where you might have some recourse if things go wrong as opposed to zip if abroad.


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## Eric The Viking (5 Oct 2012)

@Louise: 

You can still have a shared server in the UK at reasonable cost - we do 'em, too - but you're right that it *is* more expensive than a one-man startup can usually afford.

That said, a US server is a last-resort for me, except in certain very specific circumstances, that have nothing to do with business use (politics!).

The aspect not really discussed so far is usage. For web-based businesses, it does matter where you host: where will the clients mostly be, what jurisdiction do you want to be in, how important are transatlantic links, etc. Unlike cellphone services, when demand increases it's a lot more expensive to put in a new link across the Atlantic than a few cell towers. 

I've been doing internet-based work since 1993 (yikes!), and it's gone in phases: after a while the transatlantic pipe clogs up. There's a couple of years of poor connections, then a new fibre bundle comes on-stream and it's all good again... for a while. Moore's law (or the equivalent for traffic) means that demand always grows exponentially, and it does regularly exceed supply. 

If your clients are in the USA, that's fine. If they're here, UK hosting is better.

E.

PS (later) And Dibs is right about search engines - we live or die by them these days. If you have a local business, and you want to be picked up by local searches, doing all the right SEO stuff matters, and so does a UK IP address, at least it seems so.


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":1sjsp2dm said:


> Louise-Paisley":1sjsp2dm said:
> 
> 
> > I agree with what you are saying, but it is things that really don't affect joe blogs who is starting out with a quick simple website when starting up in business. Getting a dedicated server in uk data centres is a big financial cost, I am sure most startup business just do not have the funding to pay out 150 or 200 quid a month for that.
> ...



Well my host is in the USA, with a google search I come up number 3 in page one.. If I select pages from the UK my result changes to number 3 on page 1 which is really not very much different is it? Do you really believe that the largest search engine on the planet is really using a geolcation system as basic as checking where the IP resolves to? That is a WELL outdated concept  

As for something going wrong.. well once about 2 years ago my website was running slow (not the happy house cats one) and I phoned the host. I was speaking to an advisor within 3 minutes, I explained the problem and they said lets have a look and see what is happening.. He said one of the other accounts was running rogue scripts which was dragging the server down and that account was now suspended. I said well that's good but at the end of the day I am relying on this website for income and this is not really acceptable. Of course it is a problem with shared hosting as they said, but they said we will transfer your package onto a new server and so you should have no problems at all but if you do in the future then call us back and we will sort it out right away. It took them about 20 minutes to switch me onto a new server and to date I have had no further problems at all.

While I think it is entirely possible you can get hosting across the pond which does not offer this level of service, I very much doubt that every UK host will be nearly as good as my USA host. It all comes down to who you buy from not where you buy from, there are good and bad both sides of the pond. As for cost, yes UK hosting prices are coming down now, when I first got hosting I was using a UK service which was expensive and RUBBISH, I switched to the USA Bluehost after recommendations and cut the cost by over 75% and got a service which was infinitely better.

At the end of the day I maintain that the geolocation of the host is NOT nearly as important as you are making out, it clearly makes no difference to search results on google as I have checked searching with UK Pages only and still get the same results, and just because a host is across the pond does not mean that you get zero level of service from them. Pages on my site are served more than fast enough to not be a problem at all and I have seen UK hosted sites which serve slower as well as faster.

Really the only problem I have encountered from a US host is the time difference, the server and MYSQL server being set to mountain time means that orders placed in the UK have the wrong timestamp in customers order history, even this can be fixed fairly easily by changing the timezone in PHP and issuing a mysql query to change the mysql timezone into the mysql intit configuration but to be honest the benefits from doing it is not worth the hassle of actually doing it.. Then of course it is fairly unlikely that someone starting out doing joinery/ bespoke furniture etc is going to have an online shop taking direct payments and order processing so again this would not even be a consideration.


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## loz (5 Oct 2012)

Leaving the argument aside 

adding to the advise - its often a good idea to use anon registration of your domain so that people cannot lookup your home address if you pee them off..............................


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## Eric The Viking (5 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":3qp1q9g5 said:


> Really the only problem I have encountered from a US host is the time difference, the server and MYSQL server being set to mountain time means that orders placed in the UK have the wrong timestamp in customers order history, even this can be fixed fairly easily by changing the timezone in PHP and issuing a mysql query to change the mysql timezone into the mysql intit configuration but to be honest the benefits from doing it is not worth the hassle of actually doing it.



Surely it's using UTC and therefore the timestamp will be automatically adjusted? 

Or is your PHP script converting it in situ? It's easy enough to add 7 hours...


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Eric The Viking":vqjhaqwl said:


> Louise-Paisley":vqjhaqwl said:
> 
> 
> > Really the only problem I have encountered from a US host is the time difference, the server and MYSQL server being set to mountain time means that orders placed in the UK have the wrong timestamp in customers order history, even this can be fixed fairly easily by changing the timezone in PHP and issuing a mysql query to change the mysql timezone into the mysql intit configuration but to be honest the benefits from doing it is not worth the hassle of actually doing it.
> ...



Apparently not, the mysql server is set to mountain time, so to correct it I would have to add a line to set the mysql timezone on each init otherwise it just reverts back to mountain time - yes its a bit of a pain I guess but really not enough to need to waste time editing the code over. Besides which, much of my sales is international so fixing for UK would not fix for other countries. 

I think it is a combination of the server configuration and poor support for timezones in my cart software rather than one or the other. But really, for less than £80 a year for all my websites not just one and free cart software, well I can live with a few silly niggles 

Oh as for registration address details etc.. yes good advice, it is worth opting for domain privacy if you are offered it when you buy - if your phone/ email address is entered into the register you are also likely to start getting spam from it as well!


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

loz":2d3ac0no said:


> Leaving the argument aside
> 
> adding to the advise - its often a good idea to use anon registration of your domain so that people cannot lookup your home address if you pee them off..............................



I am not arguing, I though it was a discussion forum 

I accept that the advice given is good, just trying to make the point that for a startup wanting a fairly simple showcase website some of the points are not quite so important as it makes them appear.

If you can get good hosting in the UK, at a good price, then of course there is no reason to not do so. If you can get equally good hosting at a better price and it happens to be in the USA then there is really no reason to NOT go for that and save a bit of money.. Well that's my experience anyway


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## Dibs-h (5 Oct 2012)

Domain masking - I personally wouldn't. Would you buy from a website - that has no real-world "Contact Us" details?

Don't mask your domain details and make sure they match the Contact Us details on your website - after all you do want people to contact you?

My 2p worth.

Dibs


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## brianhabby (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":2qzbo8te said:


> Domain masking - I personally wouldn't. Would you buy from a website - that has no real-world "Contact Us" details?
> 
> Don't mask your domain details and make sure they match the Contact Us details on your website - after all you do want people to contact you?
> 
> ...



That's a fair point - depends on if you are running a business of course, not all websites are. Just make sure the registration address matches your business address if different from your home. 

More importantly though is if you are running a business then your trading address MUST be on your website, I think there's a law somewhere that says so. I also check any website I've not dealt with before and if I can't find a proper address and phone number I don't buy.

regards 

Brian


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## Dibs-h (5 Oct 2012)

@Louise

I didn't suggest having a UK IP was the end all and be all. IP addresses do make a difference to rankings in Google (and possibly affect whether a page is in the results if you select "Page from the UK"). We can agree to disagree about matters. Rankings being affected by the location of an IP are not outdated - but if you believe it doesn't - that's cool.

UK Hosting - just because you got rubbish service, doesn't mean UK Hosting is rubbish. :wink: I've had hosting for almost 10yrs out of TeleHouse & have to say it's been rock solid.

£80 per year - quality hosting is available in the UK for that or less per year. Not necessarily Retail (i.e. they aren't holding your hand) but it's available. However - if you're happy with yours - that's even better.

Yes - some (I too) sit on the edge of large commercial IT entities with hosting up to the eyeballs - but those elements that are applicable to all and those just to some - aren't difficult to see\understand. :wink: 

YMMV.

Dibs


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Again, how many people here have used whois to check credentials of a website owner before making a purchase or enquiry? How many people lookup the site in the domain register to obtain contact details to make an enquiry? Compare that to how many people go straight to the 'contact us' link on the website and fire off an enquiry..

For sure the only time I have ever gone to whois is to report abuse and I would guess over 99% of web users would not even be aware of whois lookup let alone how to use it.

Including contact details on the website is of course a common sense requirement although I am not sure it is a legal requirement for a sole trader as it is with a company (ltd,plc) It would of course be stupid to not include it on a website, there is little point in having a great showcase and no means for viewers to contact you  

Even then it is worth making some effort to prevent spambots harvesting the details, contact us pages rather than mailto links, telephone numbers as bitmaps rather than text, that sort of thing. You can quickly end up with 50 spam emails masking one genuine enquiry otherwise and relying on spam filters to sort this mess out after the event is less than ideal as you still run the risk of genuine enquiries being lost.

Again this comes down to the size of the business, large ones with staff who's remit is to sort through the incoming communications and pass on the genuine ones to those able to answer it can, and probably should, have the domain registration details confirm the business, but one guy scraping out a living wants to be able to get on with earning activities not wading through spam to find genuine contacts.

The email address associated with my domain registrations gets on average 500 spam emails per week and they are ONLY used in domain registration, the ones associated with the websites get very few indeed (one every couple of days) - I don't have the free time to wade through that level of junk to find genuine emails because every hour I spend on that is a hour I am not earning money.


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":1m8b9id8 said:


> @Louise
> 
> I didn't suggest having a UK IP was the end all and be all. IP addresses do make a difference to rankings in Google (and possibly affect whether a page is in the results if you select "Page from the UK"). We can agree to disagree about matters. Rankings being affected by the location of an IP are not outdated - but if you believe it doesn't - that's cool.
> 
> ...



The 'pages from the UK' does not affect my search rankings despite my host being usa based, I checked it again when you mentioned it, the google geolocation is far more sophisticated than simply resolving an IP address and takes into account many other factors including but not limited to the TLD.

I absolutely agree that one UK hosting bad apple does not mean they are all bad, this is exactly my point, the exact same thing goes for USA hosting.. There is obviously good and bad both sides and selecting a good one is far more important than selecting one based on location, a good USA host is going to be a much better choice than a crappy UK one and visa versa  Well, of course that is my opinion, I can only speak from experience after all.

I am happy with my host as I have indicated, though I have no loyalty to them. Up to now they have provided a great service, I get plenty of sales from my website (too many of late truth be told), I have sent products to almost every country on the planet and the website earns me a living without any advertising costs at all. It was initially cheaper than every UK based host I found, most of which did not provide anywhere near the benefits. That gap has I admit closed somewhat in the years I have had my sites, and should the standard of service I get fall I would switch hosts without a seconds thought - I have all my domains with 123reg so it is a fairly simple matter of backing up the files and databases, restoring them to a new host and changing nameservers in 123, but for now at least I am getting good value for money so I stay with what I know.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say USA hosting is better, I am simply saying that there is not really anything different between UK/USA especially for someone just starting out with a small website to showcase their work, if there is then I have not as yet encountered it.


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## brianhabby (5 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":2yey0to5 said:


> Including contact details on the website is of course a common sense requirement although I am not sure it is a legal requirement for a sole trader as it is with a company (ltd,plc)



You are right, it is certainly 'Good Practice' for any business to properly display its full contact details for the benefit of potential customers, however, if you are actually selling from your website there is specific information that MUST be provided prior to someone making a purchase.

There are two pieces of legislation that would appear to be relevant here: 

'The distance Selling Regulations' and the 'E-Commerce Regulations' both seem to require the full contact details of the business to be provided before any transaction takes place irrespective of the firm's legal status.

regards 

Brian


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

brianhabby":ifok0jlj said:


> Louise-Paisley":ifok0jlj said:
> 
> 
> > Including contact details on the website is of course a common sense requirement although I am not sure it is a legal requirement for a sole trader as it is with a company (ltd,plc)
> ...



I suspected as much, I have contact details on the site anyway because its just sensible from a selling point of view, but the above would be met if the information was provided during checkout prior to payment I guess.

Still I cannot think why anyone would not provide contact details, although I am fairly sure I have encountered sites that don't once in a while.


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## brianhabby (5 Oct 2012)

Actually, I have encountered such sites all too often and never buy from them - I take the view that if they want to hide their address then what else are they hiding?

I have sometimes emailed to ask for a physical address and surprisingly some firms still wont give the information - business madness in my opinion. 

regards 

Brian


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

indeed


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## Dibs-h (5 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":1ntakrks said:


> it is a fairly simple matter of backing up the files and databases,



I'd suggest, if you don't already do it, back them up weekly or monthly - better to have them when you don't need them as opposed to not have them when you need them. Hosting companies can hit the wall, due to unforeseen circumstances (both US & UK ones).

Dibs


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## Louise-Paisley (5 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":2ifq5ewo said:


> Louise-Paisley":2ifq5ewo said:
> 
> 
> > it is a fairly simple matter of backing up the files and databases,
> ...



I backup the db weekly, I also have manager software running on the computer which keeps a copy of the db and updates the local copy when it polls for changes every 15 minutes, the files do not really change other than images I upload with new products and they are also kept locally so not critical but I do a files backup once a month just for added security.

I also have a host backup service which backs up the entire site and db onto different servers with several weeks worth accessible.

Of course this level of backup is only needed for a dynamic site, a showcase site without online sales and accounts to track would only need backing up if you make changes - but you should have a backup absolutely, nothing worse than finding everything lost


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## MajorGFX (8 Oct 2012)

No idea if you have had experience with GoDaddy but I would never recommend them. I'm a website designer and would steer clear of that hosting company.

In terms of SEO you want a UK based hosting company.

GoDaddy servers are in Holland, 1and1 servers are in Germany.

Google - UK Web hosting. Just my 2 pence.


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## Dibs-h (8 Oct 2012)

I use Godaddy purely for domain registrations along with 1&1 - never used either for hosting.

Dibs


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## henton49er (11 Oct 2012)

OK, so I have bought my domain name and chosen a web hosting company (Fasthosts). The two are now linked together and I want to design and upload my web pages. 

The web builder that comes with my hosting package (called Sitebuilder) is utterly useless (no its not, its worse than utterly useless). Can I produce a series of pages on, say, Word or Powerpoint or something that thinks and works in a way that is vaguely intuitive? (or at least I am used to its foibles!!). I have spent most of today wasting my time, I fear (and maybe my money if I have to kick my hosting company into touch).

Any guidance would be appreciated.


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## brianhabby (11 Oct 2012)

You probably can create your website in one of the Microsoft products but you would be strongly advised not to. The verbose code that these programs create will make for a very slow and cumbersome website that will be virtually impossible to edit with anything else. 

What you need is an HTML _(Hyper Text Markup Language)_ WYSIWYG _(What You See Is What You Get)_ editor as it is HTML that your website is based on. Most professionals will use something like Dreamweaver but you would be looking to spend several hundred pounds for that program.

If you search the web you will find several free HTML WYSIWYG editors and I'm sure people will be along soon with their favourite recommendations. These programs will be fairly basic compared to the professional programs like Dreamweaver but that is probably a good thing given that you are a beginner in all of this.

Whatever you do - don't give up - but don't use the MS stuff. 

HTH

regards 

Brian


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## Louise-Paisley (11 Oct 2012)

http://www.trellian.com/webpage/index.html

Is reported to be quite good


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## Dibs-h (11 Oct 2012)

http://www.weebly.com allows you to create a decent looking website very quickly and then you can backup the website and restore it to your own host (editing the html, php files to replace domain names) and you can end up with decent looking website.

Nothing I've read in their T&C's prohibit this apparently.

HIH

Dibs


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## MIGNAL (11 Oct 2012)

I changed my site, from one that was edited (only occasionally) by a web designer to one that I did in Weebly. It's just incredibly simple to create and make any changes that are needed. I'm sure it has it's limitations but for your average craftsperson showing off their wares it's more than adequate. Now I even have embedded u-tube videos.
Anyone with a hint of page layout and basic design can produce a professional looking site. For the money I saved on my previous website update fees I just paid for the full Weebly upgrade. It's hardly a huge amount anyway.


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

I ended up trying PageBreeze (the free version). Everything went well with drafting out the front page (although the options were a bit limited) until I tried to publish the page to the web, only to be told that I can only publish using the "Pro" version for which I would have to pay about £30 (more than double my domain and hosting services charges for 2 years!!). I guess that's another bit of free software going in the bin!!

I might try this Weebly thing.


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

henton49er":3g469im0 said:


> I ended up trying PageBreeze (the free version). Everything went well with drafting out the front page (although the options were a bit limited) until I tried to publish the page to the web, only to be told that I can only publish using the "Pro" version for which I would have to pay about £30 (more than double my domain and hosting services charges for 2 years!!). I guess that's another bit of free software going in the bin!!
> 
> I might try this Weebly thing.



You should have a local copy of the files you created, the publish option is usually just a built in FTP client to upload directly to your web host and probably classed as a "Pro" feature or enticement to buy the full version. If it DOES save the files in a local folder then you should be able to just FTP them to your webhost - some hosting offers an online file manager to do this, some give you FTP access so you will need to install an FTP client such as Filezilla.

Above is part assumption as I am not familiar with PageBreeze


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

Louise, thanks for all your advice.

I have just published some draft pages via Weebly. This seemed to go OK. How soon can I expect to see the new pages on the site (at the moment it is still showing the obsolete ones from PageBreeze)?

Regards,


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## brianhabby (12 Oct 2012)

Mike, 

Your website can take up to 48 hours to propagate around the web but usually is visible after a few hours. However, Fasthosts should have given you details including an IP address that would allow you to see it live on their servers to check everything is okay. 

Post a link so we can have a look. 

regards 

Brian


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## loz (12 Oct 2012)

For static html pages, netobjects fusion free version is very good,

http://netobjects.com/html/essentials.html


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

henton49er":3ubhc38t said:


> Louise, thanks for all your advice.
> 
> I have just published some draft pages via Weebly. This seemed to go OK. How soon can I expect to see the new pages on the site (at the moment it is still showing the obsolete ones from PageBreeze)?
> 
> Regards,



Have you assigned the domain name to weebly? 

Sometimes it takes 48 hours as mentioned, sometimes much less, and often you need to hit F5 to refresh the page a few times to refresh the cache in your browser to see the change


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":17o1608u said:


> Have you assigned the domain name to weebly?
> 
> Sometimes it takes 48 hours as mentioned, sometimes much less, and often you need to hit F5 to refresh the page a few times to refresh the cache in your browser to see the change



I registered the domain name with 123-reg.co.uk and set the nameservers(?) as requested by my hosting company (Fasthosts). When I publish from Weebly it should be aiming at the ftp.website.co.uk. and I input my ftp username and password as required by Fasthosts. Is there anything else I should be doing? If so, it is not obvious from either Fasthosts or Weebly.

I'm getting too old for this!! - and to think I used to write machine code programs for my old 8086 PC back in the mid 80s !! (mind you, that was when I paid extra to have a 30Mb hard drive as the standard was 20Mb).

Regards,


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

I was under the impression that weebly websites were hosted on their own servers rather than a website generator which created pages for your own server.. I could be wrong..

what is your website address?


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

I used to write 68000 assembler back in the Amiga days, and 6502 & z80 before that


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

Looking at weebly support, then I do not think you can publish a weebly site to your own host, it will be held on their servers and unless you point your domain to them will have an address like www.yourname.weebly.com

Your options are to upload your pagebreeze pages to your fasthost account, or abandon fasthost and change the domain dns to point to your weebly account


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## Dibs-h (12 Oct 2012)

henton49er":imtb2ioo said:


> Louise-Paisley":imtb2ioo said:
> 
> 
> > Have you assigned the domain name to weebly?
> ...



I think Weebly host the website. Why don't you "backup\download" the website from Weebly onto your PC - do a find and replace for the Weebly subdomain for your domain and then upload it to FastHosts?

Dibs


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

Well, I went into the A-record schedule on the Fasthost site, changed the addresses for "www" and "@" A-records to match the Weebly IP address as given in the Weebly Support pages, re-published .... et voila!! One dummy website with 9 linked pages up and visible online.

Pure bl**dy guesswork for part of it, but it seems OK. So I have used 123-reg for my domain name, Fasthosts as hosting service and Weebly as a WYSIWYG webpage builder and published direct from Weebly to Fasthosts (Weebly said it could be done on their support pages, but recomment that they do the hosting - which is probably why they make it a bit awkward!!).

Alls well that ends well; many thanks for all the advice. I still have a long way to go until the website is fully functional, but at least I have the bars bones up and running!!


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

henton49er":26fz6x7g said:


> Well, I went into the A-record schedule on the Fasthost site, changed the addresses for "www" and "@" A-records to match the Weebly IP address as given in the Weebly Support pages, re-published .... et voila!! One dummy website with 9 linked pages up and visible online.
> 
> Pure bl**dy guesswork for part of it, but it seems OK. So I have used 123-reg for my domain name, Fasthosts as hosting service and Weebly as a WYSIWYG webpage builder and published direct from Weebly to Fasthosts (Weebly said it could be done on their support pages, but recomment that they do the hosting - which is probably why they make it a bit awkward!!).
> 
> Alls well that ends well; many thanks for all the advice. I still have a long way to go until the website is fully functional, but at least I have the bars bones up and running!!


You are no longer hosting on fast host..

By changing the A-Rec you have directed your domain name to weebly's servers instead of fast host. You have no need of fast host now, weebly is acting as your host


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

having said that.. if your host gives you pop3/ smtp/ imapi mail boxes then I think you can still set those up on fasthost with your www being directed to weebly.. Not sure if weebly would let you set up email on the domain, if they do then that would probably be the easiest option and forget fast host completely.


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":q8e3r68k said:


> You are no longer hosting on fast host..
> 
> By changing the A-Rec you have directed your domain name to weebly's servers instead of fast host. You have no need of fast host now, weebly is acting as your host



As long as it works, I'm OK with it. I might have wasted paying Fasthosts for 2 years of hosting, but it wasn't too much (<£10). I still get mail via Fasthosts, I think.

The first machine I ever wrote programmes for was a Commodore 64, which must have been around the same time you were on Z80s.


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

first programming I ever did was basic on a zx81 in 81 LOL

Then I got a dragon 32 and started assembly language, pretty sure that was 6502, then an amstrad 6126 z80 based, then Atari st & amiga 500 68000

The good old days when I could access every chip on the motherboard  Everything now is high level languages like C++, I just cant get my head round it, I like to start with moving the contents of one memory location into a register and add it to another register and work up from that LOL

Still waiting for this link to eyeball ya webby by the way, mine is in the sig


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## henton49er (12 Oct 2012)

Louise,

I have sent you a PM.


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## Louise-Paisley (12 Oct 2012)

gotit, fankoo


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## DrPhill (13 Oct 2012)

At risk of changeing the course of this thread - though the topic is related.....

I use my own domain as a web address, but use my ISP as a mail host (currently TalkTalk). I think that this encourages some over-zealous mail programs to declare my emails as junk (they may be but I would rather the recipient see theem and decide).

Two questions:
(1) Is my diagnosis correct?
(2) Is there a simple solution?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Phill


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## Chems (13 Oct 2012)

Yes apparently talk talk got blacklisted at one point. People discovered it when they were trying to email documents to themselves at work and the work place filters were deleting them. The best thing you can do is if you have a domain name you should have access to a [email protected] email address. Set this up and use it. There is always the possibility of your email ending up in spam depending on what people have there settings on.


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## RogerS (13 Oct 2012)

The only factor not mentioned that I can see is website response time. Some of the cheaper hosting sites make your website run like molasses on a winter's day in the Arctic.

Excellent opening post, dibs, by the way.


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## DrPhill (13 Oct 2012)

Chems":3fgbiwa0 said:


> Yes apparently talk talk got blacklisted at one point. People discovered it when they were trying to email documents to themselves at work and the work place filters were deleting them.


Interesting; understandable, but irritating.



Chems":3fgbiwa0 said:


> The best thing you can do is if you have a domain name you should have access to a [email protected] email address. Set this up and use it. There is always the possibility of your email ending up in spam depending on what people have there settings on.



I am not sure what you mean here. I have sent the emails with 'from' and 'reply to' as [email protected]. Is there something else that I should do?

Thanks for rreplying.

Phill


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## Dibs-h (13 Oct 2012)

Putting a different domain name in the "reply to" field in you email client and hence it appearing different in the email header can be (and is by some) spam filters tagged as spam.

Phil - you say you have hosting, does the host offer you email, i.e. SMTP & POP3 mailboxes? Or if it's budget hosting - just redirects? Worth asking?

If they offer SMTP and POP3 - you will need to ask them if they offer SMTP on ports other than the standard port 25. A lot of ISP's block outgoing SMTP traffic on port 25 -forcing you to use their mail servers (reduces folk spamming off their networks.)

HIH

Dibs


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## Dibs-h (13 Oct 2012)

RogerS":158e7urh said:


> The only factor not mentioned that I can see is website response time. Some of the cheaper hosting sites make your website run like molasses on a winter's day in the Arctic.



Many factors can affect that Rog. Shared hosting with the host having oversold (i.e. too many customers on their reseller account\VPS\Server), whilst the bandwidth may not be an issue - the CPU\memory can be overloaded.

Other things like if they are non-UK and too many hops (or one with bandwidth restrictions) can make the user experience slow.

Whilst some may disagree, because they haven't experienced it, picking a host with a UK presence (i.e. their own racks) in a major UK datacentre (i.e. Telehouse or Redbus) can help in not having such issues.

Regards

Dibs


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## DrPhill (13 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":lmvfnr2y said:


> Putting a different domain name in the "reply to" field in you email client and hence it appearing different in the email header can be (and is by some) spam filters tagged as spam.


Hmm, I use Mozilla Thunderbird, and maybe need to examine my headers a bit more closely.



Dibs-h":lmvfnr2y said:


> Phil - you say you have hosting, does the host offer you email, i.e. SMTP & POP3 mailboxes? Or if it's budget hosting - just redirects? Worth asking?
> 
> If they offer SMTP and POP3 - you will need to ask them if they offer SMTP on ports other than the standard port 25. A lot of ISP's block outgoing SMTP traffic on port 25 -forcing you to use their mail servers (reduces folk spamming off their networks.)
> 
> ...



I only use talk-talk as an email 'provider' as they are my (current) ISP; I want my email solution to be 'portable' - in as much as if/when I leave TalkTalk I just have to adjust a couple of settings (forwarding from my domain, outgoing settings from Thunderbird) and '_Robert the long distance truck driver is your mothers live in lover_' as they say.

I admit to being a little confused over the details of the email world, and thought I had a good solution. It seems though that the number of my emails automatically winding up in spamboxes has increased of late. Eg, my wife's yahoo account. I am sure my wife has not chosen to mark my mail as spam. Well, pretty sure....... hmmmm


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## Dibs-h (13 Oct 2012)

DrPhill":18jf1qav said:


> I only use talk-talk as an email 'provider' as they are my (current) ISP; I want my email solution to be 'portable' - in as much as if/when I leave TalkTalk I just have to adjust a couple of settings (forwarding from my domain, outgoing settings from Thunderbird) and '_Robert the long distance truck driver is your mothers live in lover_' as they say.
> 
> I admit to being a little confused over the details of the email world, and thought I had a good solution. It seems though that the number of my emails automatically winding up in spamboxes has increased of late. Eg, my wife's yahoo account. I am sure my wife has not chosen to mark my mail as spam. Well, pretty sure....... hmmmm



Phil

I assume you have a domain - http://www.whatever.com - that is registered to you. It sounds like you have a website "on" it?

Email the hosting provider who hosts your website and ask if your hosting package comes with SMPT\POP3 mailboxes? Or just POP3 for inbound? Or redirects?

Once you have the answer to these questions you'll be more informed to decide how to progress.

As an example - a truly portable email setup, is one where your email is hosting externally to your ISP and your email address will always be [email protected] no matter who your ISP is.

Your mail client (Thunderbird) is configured such that,

Incoming Mail - is retrieved via POP3 from mail.whatever.com (i.e. your domain) on port 110
Outgoing Mail - is sent via SMTP-AUTH (authenticated SMTP) from mail.whatever.com on port 225 (or 2225 as most ISPs will block outgoing mail on port 25).

Both incoming and outgoing mail require a username (most likely your email address) and a password - this will be set using the web hosting control panel.

You can then retrieve and send email - regardless of who your ISP is.

HIH

Dibs


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## DrPhill (13 Oct 2012)

Dibs-h":1qcvleew said:


> DrPhill":1qcvleew said:
> 
> 
> > I only use talk-talk as an email 'provider' as they are my (current) ISP; I want my email solution to be 'portable' - in as much as if/when I leave TalkTalk I just have to adjust a couple of settings (forwarding from my domain, outgoing settings from Thunderbird) and '_Robert the long distance truck driver is your mothers live in lover_' as they say.
> ...



That does help quite a bit - being a skinflint I was trying to avoid paying for email hosting. Perhaps I ought to look at paying a bit more money to build a reliable system.

I use 1&1 as a domain manager. Should I use them for email service? Or do people here have recommendations?

Phill


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## Dibs-h (13 Oct 2012)

Phill

Domain - who is it registered via? These will be the people you are paying some pounds per year.
Hosting - who is your web hosting with? I assume you have a domain?

Cheers

Dibs


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## DrPhill (13 Oct 2012)

Domain is registered through 1&1.

My website is hosted by SourceForge - I have free site hosting because I have open-source projects on their site, but they do not provide email services. Their web-hosting suits my very simple purposes.

I use TalkTalk as ISP. I am using their email services currently. I pay them for broadband, and email services are part of thee package.

My domain redirects HTTP requests to my SourceForge website, and mail posts to TalkTalk.

My apologies if I seem vague, or seem not to be answering your questions, I am not familiar with the terminology, nor the thrust of your questions.


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## Dibs-h (13 Oct 2012)

Phill

Ok. Domain registration thru 1&1 is fine. Mine is too.

You don't actually have "real" web hosting - i.e. with a host that offers - X MB of disk space & Y GB of bandwidth per month for £Z.

So if you want to have a truly portable email setup that isn't dependant upon your ISP - you need to get some real hosting. Read Post #1 of this thread - this should fill in most blanks.

The only differences are you

1. already have the domain,
2. would like to continue to re-direct your http requests to SourceForge (I assume you want this to remain as is & not host your own website somewhere else?)

On 1&1's control panel - you leave the A record alone and change the MX (mail record) to point to the Hosting provider.

At that point - your mail is received by the mail server at your hosting provider & your mail client (irrespective of which ISP you are on) sends and receives, assuming you change the outgoing\incoming mail settings in Thunderbird.

You could host the website [the main page] as is, on your hosting provider & not Sourceforge and the links on your homepage will still take the user to Sourceforge - in this case you would download the homepage and upload it to your hsoting account - via FTP, remembering to change links in the HTML that relate to the domain - i.e. change links from http://phillvanleersum.users.sourceforge.net/ to http://www.whatever.com and then upload. To make this live - you would change the A record on 1&1's control panel to point to the nameserver\s given to you by the hosting provider.

That way your website is on your hosting - but has links thru to Sourceforge where the stuff you have created is held.

HIH

Dibs

p.s. The thrust of my questions was to ascertain what your setup actually is, no point in giving you advice that doesn't work for you.


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## DrPhill (14 Oct 2012)

Thanks Dibs,

I think I understand it a bit more. (BTW - I knew the overall reason you were asking the questions, but not the detailed reasons, so had to try to make sure I included the info you wanted. Trying to be both clear and concise in text is a challenge.).

The interesting bit to me at the momment is


> change the MX (mail record) to point to the Hosting provider.


. I currently just redirect the mail to [email protected] - is that the mechanism you mean or is there a different better way to redirect that I missed.

Also, is there a way (a cheap way!) to get my web pages to display the domain address correctly. Currently if you go to _myDomain_ the web-addresses show their address as_ sourceforgeDomain/somepage_ instead of_ myDomain/somepage_. I could believe that there is a better solution, though there may be technical reasons that this is not possible. The files do reside on sourceforge servers, so the address displayed is entirely correct, but this page displays a ukworkshop domain name, for example.


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## Dibs-h (14 Oct 2012)

Phill

You are using a Redirect to redirect all mail to [email protected] - MX records relate to mail servers. 

Any decent hosting package comes with web space, bandwidth and SMTP & POP3 mailboxes (along with FTP, MySQL, and so forth). The bandwidth will be the sum of http, FTP and Email (send & receive). As you don't have any hosting provision - the only choice is a Mail Redirect, which you have.

Web page - you are on a sub domain of sourceforge, so the webpage will always say what it does. That may not be a technical limitation but most likely the policy of SoureForge.

Once you have you own hosting - you can do what you like.

Drop me a PM if you want some advice\etc. with getting hosting etc.

Dibs


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## DrPhill (15 Oct 2012)

Thanks again for your advice. It seems as if a full hosting service is what I really need, and not my cheapskate solution.



> Drop me a PM if you want some advice\etc. with getting hosting etc.



I will do that for sure. Although I am technically savvy in some areas, this bit always seems hard to grasp. It may be a few days as we are dealing with a bereavement at present.


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## henton49er (20 Oct 2012)

Louise and others,

Following up from an earlier part of the thread, I have just published the latest version of my web site (http://www.pointfarmcrafts.co.uk). Note that the shopping pages are either blank or under development (or both), and that I have linked the site to Facebook (nudge, nudge: :wink: :wink: ; say no more!!). I also have this forum on the "Links" page.

Any comments would be welcome either on the open forum or by PM.


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## Louise-Paisley (20 Oct 2012)

very nice 

I would suggest that you make the 'contact us' a main heading in the menu rather than having it as a sub item in extras - contact information is quite a vital part and should be clearly visible I think 

I also wonder if maybe the menu could be a touch more 'Obvious' - not that I found it hard to see but maybe some would, just food for thought.


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## henton49er (21 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":2odp6qrn said:


> very nice
> 
> I would suggest that you make the 'contact us' a main heading in the menu rather than having it as a sub item in extras - contact information is quite a vital part and should be clearly visible I think
> 
> I also wonder if maybe the menu could be a touch more 'Obvious' - not that I found it hard to see but maybe some would, just food for thought.



Louise,

Thanks for your reply ( and for "liking" the site on Facebook!!).

I thought long and hard about the location of the Contact Us page. I have put links within many of the other pages direct to the Contact Us site, and tucked it away under Extras as a web designer advised that people would look for and find it there if interested enough.

I would love to make the menu headers a bit more "obvious", but that seems to be one of the things on Weebly that I cannot alter, and I'm not in to doing it by playing about with the page coding. I would have liked a larger font size and a different colour but cannot change either.


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## Louise-Paisley (21 Oct 2012)

The menu bar is not a huge issue I don't think, I would question the advice that people would go looking for a contact page though..

If you check most websites you will find contact us links positioned in the top level menu or header/ footer of every page - If someone feels they need to contact you then really you want them to be able to do that quickly and easily, while links on various pages helps of course I think having the contact us link in the same place on every page would be a much better and cleaner solution.


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## henton49er (21 Oct 2012)

Louise-Paisley":3avjr7mu said:


> The menu bar is not a huge issue I don't think, I would question the advice that people would go looking for a contact page though..
> 
> If you check most websites you will find contact us links positioned in the top level menu or header/ footer of every page - If someone feels they need to contact you then really you want them to be able to do that quickly and easily, while links on various pages helps of course I think having the contact us link in the same place on every page would be a much better and cleaner solution.



OK, you've convinced me ... I have re-published with the Contact Us page on the top menu (there is just room without it tripping onto a second line of main tabs, which I wanted to avoid at all costs!!).


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## Louise-Paisley (22 Oct 2012)

henton49er":31ybp5wj said:


> Louise-Paisley":31ybp5wj said:
> 
> 
> > The menu bar is not a huge issue I don't think, I would question the advice that people would go looking for a contact page though..
> ...



LOL yes I could see that problem but thought I would just leave that for you to discover/ worry about


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