Need Help Choosing Host for Small Online Business

[trowand]

Hey fellow PCMechers, I'm thinking about starting a small online store selling some merchandise. I have very little to no website experience but I'm also not exactly an idiot and am eager to learn. I've been pulling my hair out looking for a host and a place to register a couple of domain names. I spent an hour over at GoDaddy.com and just got more and more confused. I feel like they rip you off over there and make choosing your options as confusing as possible to trick you into paying for things that you don't really need. I went through the site adding things to my cart and when I went to checkout, my bill was $1,300! So I emptied my cart. I want a simple and easy online store with a shopping cart and I need to take credit card orders. I haven't looked at Frontpage but am going to check it out. While I find learning HTML interesting, I think I should use an easy WYSIWYG type of program. Anyway, I'm looking for advice on where to host and how to make my store w/shopping cart. THANKS!

[moistmule]

a quick google showed this: http://www.130th.net/?aff=tq2591 ( dont know whats good for this sort of thing in the US, but meh)

again, google found this: http://www.agoracart.com/

do a more indepth search yourself

NVU is a nice WYSIWYG editor, i never liked Frontpage

[mairving]

Important safety tip: don't add things to your cart over at GoDaddy. Fortunately they don't have all of the things checked so if you just scroll down to the bottom and click next you are good to go.

IMO, GoDaddy is a registar. They do hosting but there are plenty of extra options out there that are better than what they offer. A standard .com registration is $8.95/yr plus the .25 fee for ICAAN.

Some hosts offer some shopping cart functionality. Plenty of other scripts that you can get for free and install yourself that will also give you that functionality. I use Hosting Matters as my host. They are great but there are plenty good ones out there as well.

[kram 2.0]

Choose a domain registar, a physical server host, and a WYSIWYG software. You're going have to be fairly eager to learn if you want to script shopping cart software that is secure. As for starts, I would look at the Web Startup thread to get a general idea of what you should be looking for in terms of software.

kram

[kstatefan40]

My recommendation for hosting is:
Surpass Hosting - http://www.surpasshosting.com

I've been using them for about a year and have been very happy with them. I referred several 'mechers over there and I have heard nothing but positive things from them, too. I've never had any server downtime, whatsoever. They give you alot of space compared to other hosts, they have good service, and they are very good to deal with. Using CPanel, you can use fantastico to setup a shopping cart system for you. There are several other shopping cart systems availible, so you might want to check those out, but I personally like Paypal's the best.

I use GoDaddy for my domain name. I do not recommend their hosting - I have had several problems with them and their support sucks.

Good luck, and if you have any problems, let us know and we'll do what we can to help you out.

edit: The most you should pay for something like that is about $10 for the domain and about $5 per month for hosting when you just start out. No way do you need 1,300 worth of stuff!

[mairving]

Originally Posted by kram 2.0 Choose a domain registar, a physical server host, and a WYSIWYG software. You're going have to be fairly eager to learn if you want to script shopping cart software that is secure.

You aren't really scripting a shopping cart. Plenty of good ones like OSCommerce and PHPShop that are fairly easy to setup. You don't necessarily need WYSIWYG software since most are templated, i.e. use the same template on all pages. All that you will need is a template which you can get done fairly cheap.

[trowand]

Thanks for your input so far! Keep it coming, I'm all ears. I was considering using a Homestead Ecommerce package which is supposed to include everything that I need for an online estore. However, they only offer 100MB of space. That's kinda low isn't it? What do you think?

[mairving]

Originally Posted by trowand Thanks for your input so far! Keep it coming, I'm all ears. I was considering using a Homestead Ecommerce package which is supposed to include everything that I need for an online estore. However, they only offer 100MB of space. That's kinda low isn't it? What do you think?

It's probably a little low by today's standards. For practical matters it shouldn't matter that much since unless you are putting a lot of pictures or pdf's on your site, you don't have to worry about it.

Homestead is just okay. It is a quick easy way to get started but they don't really offer you much room to grow since everything is so locked into their Sitebuilder. You are much better off signing up with a regular host that offers you more space and more importantly expandibility. A CMS might even foot the bill for you. I tend to use Joomla, aka Mambo on my sites. It has Paypal and other modules that integrate quite nicely into your site and gives you plenty of room to expand. With it you just have to have one look or template and that template is applied to all pages. Want to change the look, change one file not 100. Some of the pre-existing templates can be used pretty easily as well.

[trowand]

Originally Posted by mairving A CMS might even foot the bill for you...

A CMS?

EDIT:Nevermind, CMS= Content Management System. THANKS!

[trowand]

Does anyone see a problem with going with a Yahoo Merchant Solution like this? It seems to have everything to start an e-store.