Website Advice

[Vidor06]

Folk
Hoping to use the collective to work out what the best course of action is.
So heres the scenario. Last year I decided for a bit of fun to create my own website, not for business or anything, just for something to do. So I registered a domain with GoDaddy. Along with the package I got their website builder tool and starter email for a year.
All these products have now come up for renewal. All I want to do is continue to play around with the website and use the email address I set up at the outset.
GoDaddy are looking, what feels like, quite a lot of money to continue using their services. What I am looking for from the collective is, if I decide to leave GoDaddy what products do I need when I am looking elsewhere?
Its all a bit of a minefield and Im not sure who offers the best service and price. A lot of the websites offering advice are American so its hard to know if they read across to UK.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Vidor

 

[Old jon]

You could look at One and One, they do a hosting service, with email addresses and lots of other stuff.
www.1and1.co.uk

 

[vernon]

You could look at a freehostia service. The hosting service costs nothing. You do have to pay for a domain at around $10. You get 250MB of free space and a database plus some free facilities like setting up a blog using Wordpress or a content managed web site using Drupal.

You don't get a website builder as such but you do get to explore the possibilities of an unrestricted Wordpress installation i.e. you can pick and chose from any available template and can choose a range of add-ons.

It is hosted in America but the beauty of the world wide web is that it doesn't really matter where the service is hosted.

www.freehostia.com

 

[PeteXXX]

I've used www.switchweb.co.uk in the past. Great service. Pete, the owner lives in Shrewsbury and will answer any issues you may have personally.

 

[Wafer]

How much are go daddy asking for out of interest? If it's the economy option for something like ~£70 that's not too bad but you can certainly get cheaper.
There are what feels like an infinite number of web hosts out there with different deals and everyone can recommend one they've tried.

Be aware you'll have to go through a bit of a process to transfer a domain to a different registrar. You can keep the domain and the hosting separate if you want but that would also take some configuration that you may not be familiar with.
If you want to transfer the site you've built on the go daddy platform there will be some work there too and I don't know how their setup works. If it just makes HTML files, easy enough, if it's some sort of database backed thing, a bit harder.

My current chosen host is Vidahost https://www.vidahost.com/cloud-web-hosting/overview have been using them at work for a few years and got a friend onto the cheapest account (£30/year) for her business and they've been pretty good. No 'website builder' type tool afaik but it does have the fairly common 1-click installs for a bunch of stuff. They've helped me configure stuff and fixed some issues with the CMS I was using that I wouldn't particularly expect to be in their remit, so that was nice!

 

[Salar]

You could look at One and One, they do a hosting service, with email addresses and lots of other stuff.
www.1and1.co.uk

I use 1&1 for my business and emails, did my own website pages with their builder. Nice and easy.
Lots of bad reviews around about 1 & 1 but I've been using it professionally for a number of years with no major problems (famous last words)

 

[mjr]

Be aware you'll have to go through a bit of a process to transfer a domain to a different registrar

and be aware that a lot of the borderline-scammy cheaper registrars impose exit fees of almost whatever it would cost to make a change through the relevant registry (and sometimes more if the registry process is awkward in some way).

Whenever looking at hosting deals, always look for how much it costs to get OUT as well as to stay put, especially if it's a business account where you don't have some of the usual consumer protections - although even then, they can be somewhat academic as you may lose control of your domain while any dispute is ongoing and the ability of UK consumer law to affect foreign hosting providers has been rather limited so far AFAIK.

Also, a lot of cheaper hosts do technically-dubious things and some rely on the "we are bigger than most so otthers will have to work around us" approach to problem-solving, but there's really not often a good way for a non-technical purchaser to spot the difference at that level until something goes wrong (recently most often publishing policies using Sender Policy Framework that the customer cannot control that says the customer's emails should be rejected as spam by everyone else).

 

[Chris S]

Google sites are free and easy to use. You also tend to get top ranking with Google searches.
https://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en_GB/overview.html

They're ideal for amateur websites, this one was written about my old school. It's been on-line since 2009 when GeoCities closed down.
https://sites.google.com/site/ophney77/ophney

 

[Vidor06]

How much are go daddy asking for out of interest? If it's the economy option for something like ~£70 that's not too bad but you can certainly get cheaper.
There are what feels like an infinite number of web hosts out there with different deals and everyone can recommend one they've tried.

Be aware you'll have to go through a bit of a process to transfer a domain to a different registrar. You can keep the domain and the hosting separate if you want but that would also take some configuration that you may not be familiar with.
If you want to transfer the site you've built on the go daddy platform there will be some work there too and I don't know how their setup works. If it just makes HTML files, easy enough, if it's some sort of database backed thing, a bit harder.

My current chosen host is Vidahost https://www.vidahost.com/cloud-web-hosting/overview have been using them at work for a few years and got a friend onto the cheapest account (£30/year) for her business and they've been pretty good. No 'website builder' type tool afaik but it does have the fairly common 1-click installs for a bunch of stuff. They've helped me configure stuff and fixed some issues with the CMS I was using that I wouldn't particularly expect to be in their remit, so that was nice!

Go Daddy are looking about £130 all in, which seems a bit high to me for the basic stuff Im trying to do.

Thanks fopr the advice everyone else. Some good options there. @Chris S @mjray @Salar @PeteXXX @vernon @Old jon

 

[Bimble]

We've used Easyspace in the past and they seemed to be affordable and reliable. Their entry-level packages are here: https://www.easyspace.com/web-hosting/compare

There's Namecheap too (select UK datacenter): https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/shared.aspx

 

[KneesUp]

I use https://www.unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk/ for my business 'blog' - you get unlimited space and lots of tools for £2.75 a month. You can host as many sites as you want on it if you get the urge. They've been very helpful on the odd occasion I've messed up and asked them to restore my site.

 

[martint235]

Just be aware that if you go for a site that hosts a Wordpress blog, you need to keep the software up to date. I used FreeNetName (now defunct) for years without any issues and then switched to JustHost (I think they bought out FreeNetName) . I used them for my website and, more critically, my email address but they kept suspending my service saying that I was sending spam emails as I wasn't updating the Wordpress software. It was actually nothing to do with the Wordpress software and the spam wasn't actually coming from my account (someone had spoofed my email address). JustHost must have known this as they would have been able to see traffic leaving their servers if it was me but they just chose to play silly b*****rs.

 

[MossCommuter]

If it's only for fun and you don't expect much traffic then build or get hold of a small PC, stick something like Ubuntu Server on it and host it yourself. You'll learn a lot and it's much more fun!

If you want to give access from outside your LAN then you might want a static IP address and domain - my service provider provides a static IP and a single domain for a couple of quid. If the site is only for you then access it within the LAN by IP or hostname.

 

[Wafer]

Go Daddy are looking about £130 all in, which seems a bit high to me for the basic stuff Im trying to do.

Ah yes, that does sound pricey for what you're after!
I used to have some web space for playing around with, testing different CMS' and stuff but wouldn't pay for than £100/year for that including the potential for a bunch of subdomains, different databases and some other things I found useful.