some common starting points...
free web space
Many people make the mistake of thinking that they can use their Freeserve,
NTL, Tesco, Yahoo etc, web space for their
business. Check the small print in the terms and conditions. Most
of these state that they are for non-commercial use only.
There are also two main arguments against using this sort of webspace:
- the address you end up with marks your business out as being a little amateur.
- you stand the real risk of having your account terminated so all the money
you’ve spent on stationery and advertising with your web address
on is wasted.
In most cases this type of web space does not allow you to develop any functionality
for your site.
web incubator ISPs
There is a group of internet service providers that can be described
as "incubators", although they would probably not call themselves
that.
These provide free web space where sites of a commercial nature
are welcomed. Some of these free ISPs also provide quite impressive
packages including ability to run scripts such as PHP and Perl,
ability to transfer domain names in, creation of multiple email
names related to the domain name and other features. There are down
sides to using these ISPs, including levels of service and server
reliability but as web incubators they are invaluable.
If you are tempted to try out a site using freespace then we will
happily point you in the direction of some good ones to at least
get you going in the right direction first.
academic web servers
Many societies and academically related organizations start off
their first site on a web server provided by a university or institute.
While the facilities that can be provided by such servers is often
very impressive they are rarely free. For instance in the UK a charitable
society that has pages hosted on a university server should be paying
50 pounds sterling per year to the Joint Academic NETwork (JANET)
for the privilege of hosting within the .ac.uk domain. Also, most
universities will not allow you to have a domain name hosted on
their servers, so if you want to have www.yoursocietyname.org as
your name you will have to leave the world of academic servers.
While this may seem traumatic initially, you may find it can save
you money, as was the case with eursafe, who we helped move from
a server in a Dutch university to a commercial one - and saved
them money !!
the best choice for your organisation ?
It is important to be aware of what you want now and in the forseeable future.
This can help ensure smooth development over the next few years.
As a minimum receommendation we would recommend hosting accounts that include the use of some scripting language such as ASP or PHP to allow smart site development.
If you are looking at Linux/Unix hosting then the ability to run Perl scripts will probably be useful - although this will almost certainly be included.
For Linux/Unix hosting the provision of the httpd facility is useful. This allows directories to be password protected easily and the setting of custom error pages. To do this with IIS (Windows®) servers needs action to be done by the hosting company at the server.
If you want to do a bit more investigation on your own then for the UK we can recommend the following couple of sites that give information on numerous hosting:
Please note that the above are far from exhaustive listings!
If you want we can take care of the whole matter for you as part of the design and development process.
For more demanding requirements such as the provision of a Secure Socket Layer, ability to run mail lists etc we can recommend www.occupacia.com
Having done the design for this hosting company and used their system a bit we can testify to whata good package it is.
All accounts come with a great on-line control panel that makes configuring the web space so easy.
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