web hosting/ domain name
 

I have a friend who owns his own business who 'finally' wants to get on the web.

How does one go about registering a name?
About how much does it cost?
Where to go to do this?

Web Design will come later, just want to get these first steps done first, but im probably just going to use Frontpage, unless someone here is good at telling me how to write it in code!

don't use frontpage...it makes baby jezus cry.

No really, unless they've seriously improved it, it creates crap pages that often don't work in browsers other than IE. If you have to go wysiwyg, try dreamweaver or a shareware product...(assuming you're on PC).

the dreamweaver stuff looks pretty cool.

any sites that help with coding? i havent really played with it, as the few sites ive done were on AOL which codes it for you.

depends what you mean by "coding." Most sites are heavinly style sheet dependent these days, so you need to learn not only html, but css. Using a wysiwyg editor gets around 99% of that. That being said these days I still hand code most stuff. Just do a search on html or css tutorial.

Dreamweaver is what I use. Very powerful but very simple. You can twiddle in the html if you like, but you don't need to. A good external reference book is "The missing manual" series.

You can buy a good basic DW template for about 10 or 20 bucks - which sets up the css for you. Check out www.plumley.org - I simply modified a purchased template.

You can register the name anywhere. The trick is chosing where to host the site as it will typically provide mail services as well. There are a million hosting companies out there. One of the problems with the cheaper hosts is they tend to have p@rn sites and email gets blocked (typically by AOL) coming from your host. I use yahoo and have been fairly happy.

I use Network Solutions. The Web hosting is fairly basic, but can be upgraded for various solutions. We also use them for e-mail and domain name registration.

last I checked, network solutions was a lot more expensive than dotster for domain registration.

For hosting I use Westhost (www.westhost.com). Been with them for almost 10 years now.

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How in the hell did you guys learn how to use dreamweaver??!! I got it a couple of years ago and it was a bear to learn, finally went back to Frontpage 2003 and its a world of difference in its ease of use.

Have always heard that dreamweaver is excellent but the learning curve is sure high!

I use www.westhost.com for my site. Very good people and easy to work with. 24/7 tech support, and live people to talk with.

The tutorial built into dreamweaver is very good.

As far as buying a name, I recommend dyndns.org - I used their free subdomain service for years, registered a few .orgs thru them for $15/yr. A little more than others like godaddy, but they provided me with a very nice free service. As to hosting, have him get in touch with me :)

I've been using http://www.godaddy.com and have been very happy.

+1

If you know Photoshop or Acrobat, try Adobe GoLive - much easier than Dreamweaver IMHO.

Dreamweaver's design view will totally butcher any dynamic code you may be using, so the second you get more advanced than straight HTML, you should stay in the code view. I use Fireworks/Dreamweaver to set up layouts and css, then TextMate for everything else. The less you rely on wysiwyg, the better off you'll be, imho.