Hosting and e-mails

[Corpse Cruncher]

The hosting company , that my workplaces uses, is to be booted out. They used some form of software (ecbuilder?)to create our web and then every year we have to shell out more money to keep it running, (half of the site isn't working regardless) basically they rip us off. They are not very friendly or communicative and drag their heels; unless they are issuing bills which they become super speedy.

We, from what I was told, are hosted by the host on a reseller account? We have no access other than something called FTP, which incidental doesn't work( that might be me I don't understand what the FTP is or how I am to use it) and have no apparent access or can send e-mails in our domain name. We can receive them any sent in our domain name but they are re-directed, when it works, through another e-mail account.

The boss announced he wants me to go and find a new host and get us on it pronto as he won't pay this current company any more money. More due to the fact they charged us for renewing the domain and it transpires they did not. How long it was down I am unsure but I ended up, frantically communicating with some people in NZ and or the USA to gain access so we could renew it ourselves. Then it had me frantically e-mailing our customers asking for them to resend any items to an e-mail account I set up, so business could resume.

This area I am clueless in, does emails come standard with hosts, how do I transfer the entire site over to a new host and what should I be looking for in the new host? Preference given to ease of use and a control panel I can log into like you wold logging into here, well similar I hope you understand what I mean.:blush:

Who is good and reliable? What we have is a standard several page website, with plans to add pdf features in the future. Is adding a pdf feature, mainly for part catalogue purposes, easy?

Far too confusing for this hour in the morning and indeed for the rest of the day.:eye-poppi :D

[The_Fire]

I can't help you with your local services unless you post links to which ones you are contemplating.
From a little looksee at my local hosting provding pro-services however, I would say that it should at least contain this:

Standard:
FTP
POP-Email
Domain renewal.

I would suggest getting in touch with a local webdeveloper and have them develope a Content Management System speficly for your needs for the easy of use though. That could easily include a PDF feature. It will off cause mean spending a little extra cash in the here and now, but it will pay off in the future.

[SezMe]

Corpse, you are asking the wrong "person". This forum has, of course, lots of inhabitants with web expertise but we cannot evaluate all the variables that affect your situation. You need to get some high quality expertise on to your problem. Seek some local consultants that can assess your needs, your current situation and make sound recommendations on how to proceed. If your company's future depends on having a quality web presence, asking for help here, no matter our collective expertise, is an extremely poor course of action.

[kevin]

My main rule for hosting a domains is to never register your domain with the company hosting your website. You may find yourself in a fight to try and get your domain back and if they hold your website and domain hostage you're kind of out of luck without a lot of effort.

First I would pick a registration company. For business class stuff I like EasyDNS.com. I've got a site registered through them and they run my DNS for me. I also use them to route e-mail to the domain to the appropriate people.

http://www.easydns.com/

I also use active-domain.com for other domains. They also handle the DNS and (when needed) e-mail forwarding for me. Cheapre than EasyDNS but I like EasyDNS interface better and they have more featurs (like the ability to buy SSL certs from them).

http://www.active-domain.com/


Currently the web host I use is Hostdime. They're pretty good although they have an issue of changing my IP on me occasionally and not telling me (they think they are my DNS provider. They aren't)

http://www.hostdime.com/

Personally I would be tempted to go with a virtual server these days and even run my own mail server on it, but that takes a lot more know how and self-support than just webhosting.

[Anti_Hypeman]

If you dont have access to your old site via FTP you might not be able to get all the files to transfer over. If it uses server side scripts of any kind you may not be able to download them.

The host you go with depends on the requirements of your current site. If it uses Front Page prepare for a windfall of pain. I can give you a better idea of what to do if you want to PM me the url or just post it here.

[Anti_Hypeman]

Any good web hoster will offer you full email and a easy control panel to set it up. There is no reason you should have to do that forwarding thing.

What do you mean by PDF features? Do you just want to have PDF's available on your site? You do not need any special server requirements to do that.

[kevin]

If you want to byte server PDF's (only send the bytes from the currently viewed page) then I believe there is a server side requirement for it (plus the PDF's have to be optimized for it). Fairly recent (and not so recent) versions of both Apache and IIS can do this by default.

Yeah, most web hosts will give you an e-mail account but sometimes they limit the number of accounts. Using fowarding from the DNS provider can sometimes give you more accounts plus you don't have reconfigure anyone's e-mail to download the messages.

[SphereGuy]

You can always get a T-1 and host your own domain.

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

I'm going to agree with SezMe and Kevin. Get a reliable, knowledgeable consultant. There's tons of things people here can recommend, but without someone on your end familiar with the tech, it would all be VERY hard to get right.

Check out the sites of some companies in your local area, and when you find a few that you like, ask the company about who does their website, and/or consulting.

Or you can use companies like those kevin listed. Personally, I convinced my company to move everything in-house, but I've been trained for that.

Good luck
SSR

[Corpse Cruncher]

You can always get a T-1 and host your own domain. T-1?


To the rest, Bar a few errors on the webpages we have current, mainly picture and a form error. The whole site is as the boss wants it.

He wants to add the PDF feature so any customers have the ability to download our newsletter(if ever we ever get it done- c/o techdrawing guy) and or our product brochure(c/o me- yes give me sympathy I have knobs and nuts on the brain now) :D

Bear in mind the boss is tight, very to the extreme of penny pinchingly so, and we have to resort to the use of crowbars and blackmail to get him to buy anything.:rolleyes: So for what I need, less is more and more easier to get his tightness to authorize payment on.

He won't go down a consultant route as our current host was it, and the boss is not impressed with what has occured yet again. As far as he is concerned once done it is sufficeint, end of story.

See what I have to put up with.:o

To give you a better idea of site wise, what I need to cater for, these are appropriate.

http://www.isphording.de/
http://www.falconfoodservice.com/
http://www.inamet.com/index.html
http://www.castmetalsfederation.com/


To SSR is it easy to diy what do we need and what do I need to learn to self host the site?


And thanks to all.:D

[Corpse Cruncher]

Any good web hoster will offer you full email and a easy control panel to set it up. There is no reason you should have to do that forwarding thing.

What do you mean by PDF features? Do you just want to have PDF's available on your site? You do not need any special server requirements to do that.

I listed sites that are appropriate to help guage my needs and what I am on about.:blush:

We don't have a control panel we have a ftp link(not working) and no access to where our site is barring that. I have asked for access to the control panel and was told there isn't one. Which is precisely why we need to cut free from their incompetence. Even our e-mails are currently still not arriving, via them and I am still waiting for a return call despite my best parrot impression of ringing them everyday. BAD HOST!

A new host is needed and pronto and that is what I need to find out what is good and what is not. How much space is plenty and how much is not enough etc. What is essential features and what is not etc.

I think I shall go to bed and sleep until it is over, its too technical, now if I could cook/eat it I could do it. Anybody got a good recipe for crispy fired host? :D Yum!

[kevin]

You can use IE's web archive feature to at least grab a copy of all the linked pages.

You can try using something like DownloadThemAll extension for firefox to grab all the currently linked files from the existing site:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/201/

Also you might try Filezilla as your FTP client, I've had it work with FTP sites that others don't.

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

[kevin]

be wary of the cheapest hosts you can find. they have reasons for being cheap and helping customers is expensive....

You're going to need to educate yourself a little more than we can probably do in a short time here. Try some of these sites:
http://www.goodwebhosting.info/
http://whreviews.com/

[Anti_Hypeman]

It may not be as simple as copying the pages over. Depending on how it is coded you might have to change the links. They could be using files on the server for various things that you dont have direct access to.

You dont need anything special just for PDF files to download you just put them on the site and link to them.

There are tons of hosts that offer basically the same thing servage.net is a good one. Just shooting from the hip I would say a bare minimum of.

200 megs space
5 gig transfer a month
the more pop3 email accounts allowed the better

Thats about it for such a simple site.

If you are giong to be doing it yourself I suggest downloading the 30 day free trial of Dreamweaver 8 http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ its as easy as using a word processor. It has built in FTP capabilities that make it easy to upload your site to the new host. It can also automatically update all your links if they need to be changed.

[Corpse Cruncher]

I can use a word processor, that I have no doubts about. If Dreamweaver turns out to be more complex than a word processor I'll be swapping your blue teacloth for a pink frilly one.:D That and glaring at you and hurling the odd make you squeak curse in your direction.


I found a nice hosting site, this was something called a reseller account, not quite sure what one of them is yet.

The hosting site was very informative, some of that information they gave I managed to understand too. Bonus! A lot well was beyond my poor nincompoop brain, but they had a good interactive help tuition and a forum for moaning or asking for help. Also very cheap for what I imagined would be the cost of something like that would be.

Another one was this site, but I have no idea how big a TB is? http://dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html Again seemed reasonable as just a general hosting account but stings a bit for a business one. Which is what I am finding, a business hosting package is steep and over inflated IMHO.

[The_Fire]

Dreamweaver is a piece of cake. Simply use it in "Layout" mode....
The only time you really need to access the codes are when/if you need to configure a database connection.

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

It's not "easy" to DIY if you don't have the tech background. There's two main paths... Expensive and easier (Windows), Cheap and difficult (linux/BSD)

First thing you'd need is a computer to host it all on. The second thing you need is a fairly highspeed (DSL) internet connection with a static IP address (Most hosts give out Dynamic IPs)

It's nothing I'd recommend for a beginner, but then again everyone starts somewhere. If you're really interested click on the network clue link in my siggy, there's a ton of info there, some of which I think relates to hosting your own web/email. :D

Apparently your boss hasn't heard the saying "You've got to spend money to make money"

SSR

[SphereGuy]

I wouldn't recommend hosting on a DSL or Cable connection for a serious web page. In fact, most companies have a provision prohibiting it unless you pay extra. Check with the company, I'm sure there are many different companies doing different things. I host my web page on my cable connection and they never changed my IP until they found it, now it changes almost daily (and every time it changes they send a form e-mail explaining that servers are not allowed) where my neighbors and friends with the same service still have pretty constant IPs. For a little extra, $79.00, they will allow it and give me a static IP but it's just a personal page so I'm not worried about it. Several of our work sites have DSL and they also prohibit servers without paying the "business rate" as opposed to "consumer rate."

In any case, if it's a serious business site make sure you check your provider before you launch a server.

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

Well, I was assuming since the boss is a skinflint, that the site isn't thier current main portal for business. In my experience DSL providers don't have a big problem with hosting server, but cable certainly does.

But if it was supposed to be a SERIOUS business site, then yes, I'd suggest calling the phone company and setting up a T1 line. But T1 lines are prohibitivly expensive ($300-600/mo in my area)

Since the bossman refuses to spend money, I have a feeling that the whole transition is going to hurt badly :(

Good luck

[jimlintott]

Off topic - but an easy way around dynamic IP adresses is no-ip.com (http://www.no-ip.com/) . It is free and easy. You get an easy to remember URL that gets updated when your IP changes. I use it on a little box on a cable connection. Mostly for friends and family to look at pictures and as a handy *nix shell account when I need it.

[kevin]

But if it was supposed to be a SERIOUS business site, then yes, I'd suggest calling the phone company and setting up a T1 line. But T1 lines are prohibitivly expensive ($300-600/mo in my area)

I'd have to say that if you don't have a dedicated IT person on staff, or at least an on-call consultant that makes regular maintenance check-ups, hosting your own website is probably not the way to go. Running your own server, DNS, web software, plus your own stuff on top of it is not for the faint of heart.

[Corpse Cruncher]

Boss equals pay less and want it all. So I am already banging head against a brick wall. However a challenge keeps the grey matter firing. That means I have nothing to lose barring my job for attempting to pretend to be a big chief in the IT world. Nobody else in the company is as clued up as me. Honestly what I know would not fill match head so it says plenty about the other staff.

It will also look impressive on the CV, 'can destroy a website through nincompoop actions caused by a skin-flinted boss'. Now that will make future employers head-hunt me.:D

SSR, I shall be probing your inner being and assimilating anything I can. If it makes sense, I shall be demanding money back from you. :D

Talking of static ip. We had one until the boss realised it was cheaper to not have one and save a few pennies, so to speak. Honestly you have to laugh at his money pinching ways, or go mad and beat him over the head with a seventh hand file. This is the same man whose paper bill is astronomical, who still insists, not only do I write down every communication and copy it 3 times, but also that I must copy the communication sent or received the minimum of 5 times, not including the computer record. Then moans when I ask for more paper as I have run out of reams of it again. Yes you have to laugh or I would cry and tie myself to an entire forest.

[Stainless_Steel_Rat]

Ahhh yes, the new "paperless office" I think they mean that the office is going to use up all the paper in the world now! I have people here who still print and file every email, even though I've told them how to save and archive the emails. *sigh* Of course at ~30 I'm the youngest person in the office, so the TechIQ isn't very high around here.

I'd recommend you find a major company to host with. godaddy.com has some inexpensive hosting options. Netsol.com is the BIG BIG name on hte block, I'd go with them if I was going to out-host my website.

As far as designing and working on a site, Most of the hosting sites will have a WYSIWYG editor in them, use that for simple web pages. For major work on web pages I'm going to have to go with Frontpage. It's cheaper than the Adobe alternatives. I'm sure someone here knows of an open source solution though :P

SSR