TimW

I am using 20i free hosting and have a clunky old site which I am going to replace with a new wp site. I don't want to use wampserver or any local development setup I am going to do it on the webserver but afaict I don't have the ability (without paying(which is always an option)) to create a subdomain. The stackstaging/temporary url doesn't appear to be what's needed at all so I have a spare unused domain name and I have installed wordpress and am beginning to get things set up. Two probs: I should keep google out shouldn't I ? to avoid having a half built site with duplicate content being crawled? I wouldn't have a problem with inserting a robots text meta thing but I am not too sure how you even find the head section of the index page in WP. I found I could easily put password protection on the public_html folder through the 20i control panel. Will that do the job, as a temporary arrangement? If I develop on the spare domain I am going to have to change every single link (I guess not the relative ones) when I move the site to its final location. Is there a way to automate that? or make it less laborious? I am guessing the 20i automatic migration options won't do that for me? Oh, and Happy Christmas everyone! Tim W

Thanks, a kind offer. I will take a good look. Nothing happens quickly round here these days but I will be on it sooner or later. You may have seen the site but more likely I was working on another one years ago - there are a number of organisations involved in conservation and wildlife around the Hills who need web help from time to time Tim W

I appreciate the encouragement from you all! Wordpress it is then, that's decided. If you are curious this is the old site that needs updating: https://www.quantockdeergroup.co.uk/index.html I have got as far as moving it 'as is' onto free 20i hosting and putting it on https. I will look at some free themes, any recommendations? We have a lot of pictures of deer so for a change finding good images won't be a problem. TW

I don't really do this work any more but I have come out of retirement to help (another) local charity to have an up to date web presence, so a simple, non commercial brochure and blog site. No great security issues, just a handful of more or less static pages and a news/blog/updates page. It's for a group who monitor the presence of deer in the countryside. Anyway, what little I knew about wordpress is long forgotten and out of date anyway, but would that be a simple job - to set up the domain on free hosting with a free theme would it not? Swap out some header images and make a few other adjustments? For some reason I am slightly intimidated by the complexity WP has taken on. I used to use a nice simple flat file CMS (GetSimple) but it hasn't been much developed in years although someone has set it up for php 8. I could go back to that but an old platform is probably going to throw up some issues, or am I wrong? So Wordpress?or the devil I know? or is there some other option for a really simple site. I am happy with writing and editing simple html and css.

Should anyone come bye here looking for an answer an easy method is to compose an email in thunderbird, inserting the image and using a table for layout. Then save as an html file and use that html file as a footer. A bit clunky but it will write you the strange arcane html that is apparently required here as well as inluding an image encoded as text within the html.

Thanks. I knew there was a way. And yes, what a muddle!

I am making a simple html file as an email footer - name, company, phone and a logo so very simple. Images in emails are a pia ime because some programs decline to load them and some present them as attachments offering to save them . So a small jpeg of a logo, is there a way of pasting it into the file directly as text, not using src="filesomewhere" ?

Do you just need a simple editor like CKEditor or TinyMCE? That would be enough to output html with basic markup and images.

I will look at Stripe, ta!

The site in question I made many years ago and yes, I know it needs updating along with the whole corporate ID but that's a job for another day: Friends of Quantock Website [edit] Hmm, links have been banned? https://friendsofquantock.com/

Running a website for a small local charity. We want to make it easy for people to pay money over to us. This is an occasional requirement, the circumstances being often that someone has decided to make a donation, or held a collection on our behalf and currently they have to email or telephone to get the bank details or even to post a cheque to the treasurer. We already have a page for signing up to annual paid membership via paypal. So we could make a second paypal button for one off donations. We could just publish our bank account details and say 'go away and make the payment yourself through your bank.' Neither of them seem particularly ideal. We would like to have some contact details from donors as well, just to thank them and sometimes offer them membership benefits. We could sign up to some kind of online donation service; we used to have a MyDonate account but they closed. Obv we want to pay as little as possible in fees, especially no percentages (in case there is a large sum involved). We need to give all the right signals of security, professionalism and authenticity. It's all looking a bit complicated to me and I can't help thinking there should be a single simple solution for handling charity money online but what is it? Ta.

Seems fine on chrome on android phone

Yes memorable, relevant and simple is the way to go I think. Talking of amazon for small scale selling online it often seems to be the best option to go through amazon or ebay so your own website is really of secondary importance only. Is there a whole art and science to getting noticed on amazon itself, and getting your products presented there?

ZERO SEO value now? That's how out of date I am! Good to know, and glad I asked.

There was a time I know when domain names were key places to hold key words, and people used to trade carinsurance.com or buyviagraonline.co.uk because the name had so much value in SEO. I know that value is much reduced now, but is it still significant? I mean if (without giving away my secret business ideas) I wanted to sell say antique tin cans online would it be important to have the domain vintigaebakedbeantins.co.uk and use it (because people will search for those terms) or could I equally well use timswhims.com (which has no search term value at all). I get that it needs to be memorable, good if it matches the actual business name etc. but I am asking SEO specifics.

If you don't know any PHP the best way to get a working form is by formspree.io or similar

I have been moving several domains, eg registering them with a new company. All gone smoothy except for two .com domains which appear to be stuck at 123reg. The online info says 'could take 5 days' but previous moves have been done in an hour. Should I wait? 5days? really? why? Tim W

I would like to say that the free service from 20i is way better than the clunky old reseller platform I was paying for elsewhere, (and they got hacked and I had to change all my passwords!)

Found it now! looks ideal

I haven't found it. They seem to offer another reseller account.

Question is this: Free hosting using my own domain - does it exist these days? Lots of companies will offer free hosting on a sub domain eg timw.hostco.com but I need to use my own domains for free or maybe a nominal sum. Reason is I used to do some web design and I find I have a legacy reseller hosting account for which I pay a couple of hundred £ a year still and I am doing some housekeeping and tidying . There are a dozen domains with sites on this account which for one reason or another I want to keep on the web, but they are local charity sites or clubs or hobbies or personal and I want to just make the cost as close to zero as I can. There is no requirement for anything much, they need PHP but have a CMS with no database, no commerce, no ssl certificates, not much traffic, not much storage.

I am not really in the business of making websites any more, and was only ever self taught, but I still run a handful of sites including this one for a much loved local conservation charity. I put a paypal button on it some years ago which enables people to sign up to an annual membership subscription. It was standard paypal cut and paste code iirc. It takes the user to the paypal site, they give their name and address and pay and it all goes through to the membership sec. who sends them the car sticker and the paper newsletter. There's also a box for a business name but I don't remember how I linked that to paypal so we got the info and I don't even know if it works or has ever been used: http://friendsofquantock.com/membership/ My problem is that this year we are running a Christmas Offer of a Gift Subscription so you can buy a one off years membership for someone else and we will send them a gift wrapped parcel of book and car sticker plus enrolling them for a first years membership. An ordinary paypal button will give an option for separate delivery address but I need extra fields, extra info namely the recipient's email (for membership purposes) and the purchaser's name and a messsage to the recipient. So the package can arrive with a personalised message from the purchaser (Happy xmas John, Jane has bought you a years membership of FoQ..) I am thinking the whole thing needs to be done on a form on the paypal side (not on my non secure http site, but really idk?) and I can't find any simple instructions for copy pasting code onto my page to make this happen. It can't be that hard. Any pointers? TW

It was once common practice and the tools were freely available and widely used. Feedburner - isn't that even a google tool? Is it really un google friendly?

Yeah, the location could be a givaway.

Ta fisicx , the metadata in jpegs - was that where you said 'not sure what you mean' ? or something else? I am sure some images have data associated with them, but not sure how it works. Is it exif data or something? TW