Starting my own website

[Calum]

Hello all, I wasn't sure if this would be better in Web Design but it's not really about design, so I put it here. Move it if necessary.

I'm thinking of starting my own site, like so many out there.
I already have a forum, the one in my signature, but it's rather limited.
It's only a forum, no site outside of that, and no storage space for attachments etc.
There is a chat feature too, but it's also rather limited, and all the features I want I have to pay for.
So I'm thinking of starting up my own complete site.
Having never done this before, I'm not really sure how to go about this - I need to do it for free too, and I'd like it to be relatively easy to set up, although that's a secondary consideration.

I know I need a hosting company, such as mbhosting or 110mb.  Does anyone have experience with either of these companies, or can anyone recommend some alternatives?  What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?
What should I look for in a hosting company?

I know I also need forum software (if that's the right word) if I want a forum on my site.
Examples I know of are YaBB, phpBB, and vBulletin - my forum at the minute is Proboards.
Anyone have experience with any of these, or can anyone recommend some alternatives?
What do I need to look for, and what are the advantages/disadvantages of each?

Also, a chat system is something I would be interested in.
Anyone have any thoughts on that for me?

What else do I need to set up my own site?  And what do I need to think about before taking the plunge?
Remember I know almost nothing about this, assume that above is all I know about it.
Also, remember that free is the key word here, I don't have cash to spare for this site.

If you need any more information, ask and I'll provide it if I can.
Thanks in advance, any help is much appreciated.
Calum.

[soybean]

Calum, how is your forum being hosted?  Is darkblade a registered domain name, one that you registered?  

If you don't have a registered domain name and you want to have your own domain so that you can use a URL such as www.mysite.com, you need to register a domain name.  I like www.godaddy.com for domain registration.  I don't know whether they do business in the UK.

I'm using www.totalchoicehosting.com as a hosting service; I use their Starter plan, which costs $4/mo (I don't know whether they do business in the UK).  Perhaps you can find some free hosting; I really don't know about that.  But, I think there'll be some limitations or requirements, such as allowing certain ads to be placed on your site, or having a URL such as www.freehosting.mysite.com.  

You might also see whether your ISP provides disk space to accountholders for a personal website.  I can do this with my Earthlink acccount; the URL would be something like home.earthlink.net/~myusername/mypage.html.  I don't know whether I could install a forum on such a site.

Many of the paid hosting services provide forum software such as phpBB or YaBB and they make it easy to install from a user control panel.

[Calum]

My forum is hosted on the Proboards site as far as I know.
They give me a domain name of my choice and then put proboardsXX after it, to get darkblade.proboards52.com.
So I guess it's a little like the freehosting.mysite example there, but it's only a forum, no extra space or other parts to the site.
I don't mind having a URL like that, from what I can gather that's what mbhosting and 110mb, which I linked to in my first post, do rather than having ads on the site.  I'd prefer a domain name like that than ads on the site.
At the minute, I have both ads and a domain name which isn't entirely my choice.
I could check on whether I have disk space with Tiscali (my ISP), but if I change ISP then I'll lose the site, right?
As for free hosting, I know Zylstra555 and fffreak have sites with forums on which are hosted for free, so I guess it is possible.
Thanks for the reply, it does help.

[soybean]

I could check on whether I have disk space with Tiscali (my ISP), but if I change ISP then I'll lose the site, right?

Yes, that's right.

If you don't mind having the host site's name, such as mbhosting or 110mb, in your URL, I guess that's the way to go to get free hosting.  I'll be watching this discussion to see where you go with this.   8-)

[Calum]

I could check on whether I have disk space with Tiscali (my ISP), but if I change ISP then I'll lose the site, right?

Yes, that's right.

I don't think that's a good idea for me right now then, I'm probably switching soon.
I generally switch around once a year or when the contract ends if I can find a better deal.

If you don't mind having the host site's name, such as mbhosting or 110mb, in your URL, I guess that's the way to go to get free hosting.  I'll be watching this discussion to see where you go with this.   8-)

I think that will be the best way to go.
If I could afford it I'd maybe consider my own domain name, but having 110mb or whatever in the URL isn't a big deal to me if it saves me cash.
Any idea how much web space I need?
I don't know how much space a site or forum will take up.
Thanks a lot for clearing things up for me.

[soybean]

I believe 50MB would more than adequate.  Even 20MB might be sufficient.

[Calum]

So I don't need tons of space then, that's fine.
Just wanted to check.
I'm learning about this all the time, I'm trying to read up on it as well.

[soybean]

A single web page, if not too heavily loaded with graphics, will usually not be more than 50KB.  And, your forum will probably use less than 2MB.  So, you can see that you could have a large number of pages, along with a forum, and still not use over 20MB.

Many of paid hosting services, even with their the lowest cost packages, offer far more disk space than many small sites actually need.

[Calum]

I figured that a few web pages wouldn't be too large as I have done some web design before and the file sizes are pretty small.
I just wasn't sure how much space a forum would take up, seems quite small though so that's fine.
Thanks for clearing that up too.

[midwestman76]

Hey Calum
thefreecountry.com has alot of info on free website hosting, pros and cons. its worth checking out.

[Calum]

Thanks very much, it certainly looks interesting.
I'll make time to check it out soon.

[Calum]

OK, thanks to everyone for their input.
I'm going with 110MB hosting, they have a lot of features etc that many paid companies don't offer, and it's free.
I'm thinking of going with YaBB or phpBB for the forums, but I'm not sure yet.  Anyone have input on that for me?
And I'm pretty sure I'll set up an IRC channel and have a web client on the site to deal with chat.
Does that sound like it will work?
What else do I need?
I have Nvu for web page editing/creation, I guess I just upload the pages I create onto the server?
Bear with me on this, I really don't know much.
I'm very grateful for the help I have received so far anyway.

[Computer Hope Admin]

I can give you some feedback about the forums. I've had a lot of experience with YaBB and if you're planning on running a small forum and your hosting company supports it I say go with it. I've been pretty happy with it up to now it has its quirks but is really easy to setup for users first starting a forum. As your forum becomes more popular however it does seem to be more of a burden then it's worth. Which is why I'm converting to a different forum.

I've played a little with phpBB, however because I haven't really ran a phpBB forum I can't really say anything about it.

[Zylstra]

mbhosting has cPanel, and inside cPanel, is Fantastico. And inside that are installer scrips for some of the most popular web applications today. (Including YaBB and PHPbb!)
Mbhosting offers perl, mysql, php, and a whole lot more.
Also, I think they give you like 500MB of disk space.

The administrator of Mbhosting, as you may recall, is our very own forum member, Flame.

All services are set manually, meaning that it may take 24-48 hours for it to be set up and approved.
Mbhosting does not require that you have an existing website, like its main hosting server, HostingZero.

Check out the cPanel demo! http://www.cpanel.net/products/cPanelandWHM/linux/try_cp_whm.htm

Mbhosting does require that you have ads placed at the top of your pages (obviously, so they can make money)

[Calum]

Thanks for that admin.
The fact that YaBB is easy to set up is a big draw for me.  Issues with popular forums is not going to be a problem (I don't think so anyway) as the forum will probably be pretty small.
I don't anticipate having huge amounts of members.
Appreciate the feedback.
Zylstra - I'm going with 110Mb, because I get 2Gb of disk space, 100Gb of bandwidth/month, and lots of other things which seem useful.
I didn't know the admin of mbhosting (which you use for your site, correct?) is Flame, in fact I barely even know of Flame as he hasn't really been on the forums whilst I've been a member.
Appreciate the reply anyway.