[GCWB]

PLEASE READ BELOW THE UNDERLINE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE BABBLE BELOW. Although I'd prefer it if you did read it!

Hi, I'm new here, and new in general if I'm frank. I study currently study Graphic Design at university and we've just been briefed to create our own website, it's more of a side project but I really want to put everything into it. I've always wanted to learn web design and can see myself having a future in that line of work, but enough of my life story.

This is a hybrid question, I would like to know a reliable place to purchase my domain and web host, I'm sure this question is fired at you guys a hundred times over, and responded with promoters a hundred times over. However in the midst of the spammers, there is always a trustworthy member that speaks from experience - and this is what I'm looking for.

I'm completely new, as in... before last week I had barely seen or used any CSS or HTML, and when I did, it was only for forum posts. The point is, I'm learning... I already have a basic grip of HTML and CSS sourcing and I'm devoting all my time to this. Literally. For the last week I've just woken up, worked, researched and learnt, and it will continue to be like that until I can understand this. So now, more about this site and my requirements!

The site will be a portfolio site, and will show off my graphic design creations. This means HD videos and High resolution images. Furthermore, I'm curious as to what other uses a website can have, can I store files on it similiar to Dropbox? Direct my mail through it? Again, I apologise for my noobiness, feel free to give me a good telling if I'm asking stupid questions.

If you have any good links on the capabilities of a website, feel free to share.

I'm looking for a web host that will bare with a beginner, that understands the beginner issues but will also leave room for expanding skills and experimentation.



This post is a lot of information to hold in, so here is a quick summary of the post.

1) Reliable domain site I can buy from? I am from the UK if that has any significance

2) A web host which caters to the following specifications:

• Beginner Web Designer
  
• HD Videos
  
• High Resolution Images
  
• Experimentation, frequent website changes
  
• UK Based
  
• Expandability, they would been catering to a beginner at first, but later I hope to become a professional (ambitious I know, but I'm thinking ahead, I'm in this for the long haul)
  
• Maximum £10 a month.

3) Good links and resources for learning CSS and HTML. What can a website do? Can it work like dropbox, receive mail... etc

4) One final question, which I will post here as I'm here, it's a little off-section but bare with me. Do you guys always work with frameworks? Always work from scratch? I guess I'm trying to work out the basic process that you go through to make a website. What software do you use? I have CS5 Dreamweaver, should that suffice? Do you work solely with code or create a PSD and convert that?

Again, I am very thankful if you have been patient enough to read this and respond. If I've done anything wrong, feel free to point it out, I'm here to learn anyway.

This post has been edited by GCWB: 26 April 2011 - 10:25 AM

[MikeChipshop]

Hi George,
I'll try and answer you as best i can...

1) Personally i buy my domains from www.daily.co.uk and they're UK based. Never had a problem with support either so i can recommend them.

2)Web hosts are ten a penny and there are many many topics in this forum discussing them. A quick search should bring up lots of good reading for you. Avoid GoDaddy though!

3) For tutorials give http://htmldog.com/ a gander. Loads of great stuff on there.

4) The only framework i use personally is Jquery (the javascript framework) other than that i work mainly from my own personally developed frameworks and basic templates.

I use Photoshop/Dreamweaver but only ever use Dreamweaver in the code view, design view is a big no no!

Hope this helps!

[GCWB]

MikeChipshop, on 26 April 2011 - 11:17 AM, said:

Hi George,
I'll try and answer you as best i can...

1) Personally i buy my domains from URL HERE and they're UK based. Never had a problem with support either so i can recommend them.

2)Web hosts are ten a penny and there are many many topics in this forum discussing them. A quick search should bring up lots of good reading for you. Avoid GoDaddy though!

3) For tutorials give URL HERE a gander. Loads of great stuff on there.

4) The only framework i use personally is Jquery (the javascript framework) other than that i work mainly from my own personally developed frameworks and basic templates.

I use Photoshop/Dreamweaver but only ever use Dreamweaver in the code view, design view is a big no no!

Hope this helps!

1) Hi Mike, appreciate the response. All I needed for the domain was a reliable source, so I guess I'll be using the daily.co.uk site, cheers for that.

2) Yeah, I've seen them, they're absolutely everywhere, the problem is - sometimes it's hard to differentiate those who work for that specific company, and those who are giving unbiased advice. I'll give it a further gander, but cheers anyway.

3) Appreciate it! I've been using 720p youtube videos from a user called CreateTheWeb, he has a 25 video (around 10 hours) series of an introduction to dreamweaver, HTML and CSS and it's been monumentally useful. I can't complain, but picture based tutorials are quicker to learn.

4) Yeah jquery really interests me, I've already spent about 10 hours+ looking and researching my favourite jquerys. Mostly just navigation UI's and picture viewers (for my portfolio) I don't want to get into flash because I know that whenever I get into a flash website, I resent being there the second I see it. Everything seems so unresponsive and slow, I just prefer good old java. (although as I'm new to the scene, I can't really judge properly yet of course) Haven't learnt how to properly integrate the jscripts yet, but I'm sure I'll get there...

Yeah I thought as much, I knew about Dreamweavers design view, it's only really there as a preview for coding from what I've learnt. Also useful for just correcting spelling mistakes and hyperlinks.

One more question, which I'm unsure of whether you'll know the answer, being a student studying graphic design, I have a plethora of career opportunities for when I graduate. I'm thinking, quite confidently, that I want to go into web design/app design/interface UI design. My question is, how similiar is web coding to that of app coding? Just out of curiosity I suppose.

Cheers mike!

This post has been edited by GCWB: 26 April 2011 - 02:54 PM

[MikeChipshop]

GCWB, on 26 April 2011 - 02:05 PM, said:

One more question, which I'm unsure of whether you'll know the answer, being a student studying graphic design, I have a plethora of career opportunities for when I graduate. I'm thinking, quite confidently, that I want to go into web design/app design/interface UI design. My question is, how similiar is web coding to that of app coding? Just out of curiosity I suppose.

Cheers mike!

It all depends on what platform and language you're working with although currently app development and web development are the closest they have ever been.

[GCWB]

MikeChipshop, on 26 April 2011 - 02:20 PM, said:

It all depends on what platform and language you're working with although currently app development and web development are the closest they have ever been.

Cheers mike, appreciate it.

[rallport]

Any host can cater for you needs. A few UK based one's I ve had and still do have great experiences with - tsohost.co.uk, 34sp.com, vidahost.com.

The only kind of 'special' requirement is your HD video - as if even people start to view that directly from your site you'll at some point start to use too much bandwidth - some hosts are nice and inform you about it, some hosts are naff and simply take down your site without warning.

Space may also be an issue if you have HD video, as all hosts (no matter what they say) have a hard limit for each of their customers - ignore hosts that say you can have unlimited everything.

It may be worth asking your potential hosts a few questions re the above and ask them what would happen in theory if you suddenly got 100,000 viewers of your site/videos within a short space of time.

For domains I just use heartinternet, as they are as cheap as everyone else and have a decent enough control panel.

With regards to storing files, well the decent host let you use your webspace, that you've paid for as you wish. E.g. you coulpd upload a zip file to www.yoursite.com/files.zip, post that as link in say an email and let people download it as normal. Crap webhosts - and last time I used them, fasthosts did this - prevent you from linking directly to your files. So that's something to check.

Just FYI, all the above 3 hosts I've mentioned would be able to cater for all the things you've said.

[GCWB]

rallport, on 26 April 2011 - 06:20 PM, said:

Any host can cater for you needs. A few UK based one's I ve had and still do have great experiences with -LINKS HERE

The only kind of 'special' requirement is your HD video - as if even people start to view that directly from your site you'll at some point start to use too much bandwidth - some hosts are nice and inform you about it, some hosts are naff and simply take down your site without warning.

Space may also be an issue if you have HD video, as all hosts (no matter what they say) have a hard limit for each of their customers - ignore hosts that say you can have unlimited everything.

It may be worth asking your potential hosts a few questions re the above and ask them what would happen in theory if you suddenly got 100,000 viewers of your site/videos within a short space of time.

For domains I just use heartinternet, as they are as cheap as everyone else and have a decent enough control panel.

With regards to storing files, well the decent host let you use your webspace, that you've paid for as you wish. E.g. you coulpd upload a zip file to Link, post that as link in say an email and let people download it as normal. Crap webhosts - and last time I used them, fasthosts did this - prevent you from linking directly to your files. So that's something to check.

Just FYI, all the above 3 hosts I've mentioned would be able to cater for all the things you've said.

Cheers for the response. Question, most the hosts that I've been looking at, offer packages for windows and linux? Is this for the server? Or the OS that I'm using? As I'm on a mac, I'd appreciate an answer.

Kind Regards,

George

[MikeChipshop]

It's the OS the server is based on. You're machine has nothing to do with it.
Take it from an ex-windows server user, unless you're planning on using ASP classic or ASPX, go with a linux server.

[fov]

GCWB, on 26 April 2011 - 06:49 PM, said:

Cheers for the response. Question, most the hosts that I've been looking at, offer packages for windows and linux? Is this for the server? Or the OS that I'm using? As I'm on a mac, I'd appreciate an answer.

Kind Regards,

George

That is the OS on the server.
I wont go into the whole Linux Vs Windows argument over which is best. But linux is
Seriously though Windows is necessary to run any windows only tech such as asp and .net. Both can host php and html etc.

The HD video can be interesting. How much space do you anticipate using and how much bandwidth do you want.
For more advanced features such as being able to start in the middle of the video you need something to support psudostreaming which most likely wont be in a normal hosting package.
An option could be vimeo or maybe youtube if you are able to give the rights away (dont get in trouble with uni if you cant!)

Avoid any 'unlimited' hosts!

Jumping back to domains, think about paying a few pence extra. For example .uk domains cost the seller £5+vat (so £6) anything on top of that is what is used to provide the whole rest of the service. Think if you are making them 9p how much support you are going to get!


And for code help dont forget w3schools. Great website!

[GCWB]

fov, on 26 April 2011 - 07:06 PM, said:

That is the OS on the server.
I wont go into the whole Linux Vs Windows argument over which is best. But linux is
Seriously though Windows is necessary to run any windows only tech such as asp and .net. Both can host php and html etc.

The HD video can be interesting. How much space do you anticipate using and how much bandwidth do you want.
For more advanced features such as being able to start in the middle of the video you need something to support psudostreaming which most likely wont be in a normal hosting package.
An option could be vimeo or maybe youtube if you are able to give the rights away (dont get in trouble with uni if you cant!)

Avoid any 'unlimited' hosts!

Jumping back to domains, think about paying a few pence extra. For example .uk domains cost the seller £5+vat (so £6) anything on top of that is what is used to provide the whole rest of the service. Think if you are making them 9p how much support you are going to get!


And for code help dont forget w3schools. Great website!

Just to clarify with the HD video, I'm a student... so obviously I'm known only to my fellow course mates currently... I don't expect a lot of visits, maybe 20 a week... so at the moment it's hardly significant. In a year I'd hope for it to grow to around 50 a week, but still - that isn't much is it? The HD videos would be shorts, lasting around 3 minutes and being a file size of around 1.5GB. My videos are already on vimeo, however I haven't paid to have the ability to upload HD videos on vimeo, so as of now it's just SD. I'd rather use a player that I can scrutinise for aesthetics, and vimeo isn't exactly the prettiest embedded.

It is relatively important to get the HD up. However I don't see myself using pseudostreaming, I think I'd most probably just want it to play from the start.

[fov]

GCWB, on 26 April 2011 - 11:19 PM, said:

Just to clarify with the HD video, I'm a student... so obviously I'm known only to my fellow course mates currently... I don't expect a lot of visits, maybe 20 a week... so at the moment it's hardly significant. In a year I'd hope for it to grow to around 50 a week, but still - that isn't much is it? The HD videos would be shorts, lasting around 3 minutes and being a file size of around 1.5GB. My videos are already on vimeo, however I haven't paid to have the ability to upload HD videos on vimeo, so as of now it's just SD. I'd rather use a player that I can scrutinise for aesthetics, and vimeo isn't exactly the prettiest embedded.

It is relatively important to get the HD up. However I don't see myself using pseudostreaming, I think I'd most probably just want it to play from the start.

1.5GB is a large file. If you get 5 full watches a week that is 30GB of transfer per month. Scale that up and it does start to use a decent amount of bandwidth.
But dont forget these will be downloaded by people on adsl internet connections sometimes. 1.5GB will take a long time to download. If the user wanted to skip about in the film they would have to down load it all without psudostreaming.
Is is possible to do on a normal hosting account for £10 if you pick carefully but it wont be ideal.

[GCWB]

fov, on 27 April 2011 - 06:57 AM, said:

1.5GB is a large file. If you get 5 full watches a week that is 30GB of transfer per month. Scale that up and it does start to use a decent amount of bandwidth.
But dont forget these will be downloaded by people on adsl internet connections sometimes. 1.5GB will take a long time to download. If the user wanted to skip about in the film they would have to down load it all without psudostreaming.
Is is possible to do on a normal hosting account for £10 if you pick carefully but it wont be ideal.

So what do you recommend? I see that I have two options here, optimise my videos for web and bring them down to 500MB or find a host that's capable of my requirements. I'd prefer the latter, and can pay £10 a month no problem. Sorry if I'm being a hassle, but my videos are a strong part of my portfolio.

[fov]

Im afraid I dont really know of any decent hosts off the top of my head with these features at that price point. If you could raise a bit more budget I could probably recommend some people along with myself but at that price I couldn't even really offer anything to meet your requirements long term.

But I would expect there will be someone out there offering it. After all a lot of hosts seem to want to compete only on price! You have the knowledge now what to look for though now!

[rshosting]

GCWB, on 27 April 2011 - 11:51 AM, said:

So what do you recommend? I see that I have two options here, optimise my videos for web and bring them down to 500MB or find a host that's capable of my requirements. I'd prefer the latter, and can pay £10 a month no problem. Sorry if I'm being a hassle, but my videos are a strong part of my portfolio.

Another way of reducing your budget and still hosting videos is you can, host your videos on a video sharing website such as YouTube and then bed those videos in your website.. This way you wont need much hosting space and your videos will be streamed directly from youtube, thus saving you bandwidth etc..

Just my two cents..

[rallport]

rshosting, on 03 May 2011 - 05:15 AM, said:

Another way of reducing your budget and still hosting videos is you can, host your videos on a video sharing website such as YouTube and then bed those videos in your website.. This way you wont need much hosting space and your videos will be streamed directly from youtube, thus saving you bandwidth etc..

Just my two cents..

Depends if he wants a professional or amateurish look. If the former, host yourself.

@OP: have you converted your videos to a web format like Flash video?

[MikeChipshop]

rallport, on 09 May 2011 - 10:50 AM, said:

Depends if he wants a professional or amateurish look. If the former, host yourself.

Vimeo do offer a premium service (that still works out cheaper than hosting your own) where you can style the player and remove all Vimeo branding. Always worth a look.

[GCWB]

rshosting, on 03 May 2011 - 05:15 AM, said:

Another way of reducing your budget and still hosting videos is you can, host your videos on a video sharing website such as YouTube and then bed those videos in your website.. This way you wont need much hosting space and your videos will be streamed directly from youtube, thus saving you bandwidth etc..

Just my two cents..

Yeah, I'm starting to see this as my only option. As I regularly use Vimeo it makes sense for me to upgrade that subscription.

rallport, on 09 May 2011 - 10:50 AM, said:

Depends if he wants a professional or amateurish look. If the former, host yourself.

@OP: have you converted your videos to a web format like Flash video?

I'm all very new to the web design scene, I'm tech handy, but this is all incredibly new to me, I wouldn't have the first clue about hosting myself... I'll just go with Vimeo.

MikeChipshop, on 09 May 2011 - 10:53 AM, said:

Vimeo do offer a premium service (that still works out cheaper than hosting your own) where you can style the player and remove all Vimeo branding. Always worth a look.

It definitely seems logical. Thanks for your responses!

[GCWB]

Hi, I know it's wrong to revive old threads, but seeing as this is my thread and it's on the very same topic, it just makes sense to.

I now have gotten to the stage where I have designed my website in dreamweaver, and have literally (10 minutes ago) bought my domain from 123-reg.co.uk, (www.gcwb.co.uk) apparently it can take up to 24 hours for that to be confirmed. So for now, I will be researching web domains, and with a new and much easier criteria to cater for, I'd hope this would be a quick answer and respond situation.

EDIT: I have chosen to go with 123-reg.co.uk, seeing as they host my domain already and after researching their packages a little, they seem reliable. Fortunately for me, they are also based in the UK. They also have a plethora of beginner based apps (none of which I will be using) but this gives me some reassurance that they know what they are doing.

You guys have helped me out to a ridiculous degree, thankyou for all your help! I really appreciate it.

On a final note, can anyone direct me to a tutorial or such that can help me get my dreamweaver site uploaded to my web host? I'll have a look around and probably find a few, but seeing as you guys must get a lot of us 'beginners' I figure you might know one.

This post has been edited by GCWB: 29 May 2011 - 11:06 PM

[GCWB]

EDIT: I have found the answer to my question. Sorry for reviving this thread. My apologies.