Hosting and Domain Names

In order to setup your website you will need a hosting and a domain name.  A domain name these days costs a little cheaper than it did a few years ago.  And since there are local hosting companies that accept payments via bank transfer, a credit card is no longer a pre-requisite to register your own domain. 

For hosting, there’s a hosting company that offers it for as low as P40 a month, but with just 500MB of bandwidth that’s too small even for just blogs.  So, unless your website doesn’t get read much then this package is not for you.  You can visit Ploghost (http://www.ploghost.com), Mobilehive (http://www.mobilehive.com) and Wyldnation (http://www.wyldnation.net) for hosting. 

Take note of the bandwidth and the monthly costs as well as the convenience of paying the fees.  Generally speaking, the greater the bandwidth, the more visitors your site can handle at any one time, and the more stuff you can post.  It’s also more expensive to maintain.  

If you still can’t afford your own domain and hosting, then you can search the web for free hostings.   Just make sure that the free hosting you choose can support server-side programming language like ASP, PHP and Coldfusion, and provide basic database support.  

But let me warn you that most of the time, the free host sites will put banners and advertisements on your Website that have a tendency to annoy or overwhelm visitors, thus discouraging future visits. 

Brinkster (http://www.brinkster.com) offers free hosting with support on ASP and provides Access database.  As for PHP, there are tons of free hostings available.  Use Google and search for their free hostings. 

Most of the time, these free PHP hostings support mySQL or postgreSQL for databases.  If you are interested in a free .tk domain, you can also sign-up at DotTK (http://www0.dot.tk/index.html).

Development

The development part of a domain or hosting is quite expensive but it will still depend on the type of Website you want to put up.  If you have personnel that can do some designs for your Website, then that’s good because this will ease your financial and technical burdens.  You can then try building your Website using some form of Content Management packaged with your host such as Mambo open source, PHPNuke, Drupal, PHPBB, Wordpress and more.

But if you don’t have a capable Website developer, then you better start looking for someone who can work on your designs.  Likewise if you think that the Content Management System is more complicated than what you really need, then freelance programmers are available to help you out in that respect. 

I personally accept web development projects.  I do some design but not that much and I still prefer projects that are more on programming than designing.   But I will give you enough flexibility to implement your design and if you want, I can help you implement your templates.

You can also visit Philweavers (http://www.philweavers.net) and search for a handful of competent Filipino freelancers who will surely meet your requirements.  You can also try posting your project at Filipino Freelancers (http://www.filipinofreelancers.net) and let the freelancer bid for your project.  You can then decide who among those bidders you wish to work on your project.

Maintenance

The maintenance part is probably the easiest because you can already do it by yourself with the help of the CMS you use for your Website or with the custom CMS that was developed by the programmer you commissioned.  In fact, two of my former clients who are pure businessmen maintained their respective Websites by themselves.   They just e-mail me once in a while if they have technical problems with regards to the CMS I developed for them.

I hope that the information I provided here is sufficient for you to start your Website.  For feedback, send them to albert.tagaban@gmail.com.