Web hosting: where to host your weather page

Iā€™ve used GoDaddy for years and have been very satisfied. You have total control of your Domain (Changing DNS Servers etc).
They have the .info extension on sale for $1.95 US for the first year (expires 10/31/2004). You can ā€˜Go Liveā€™ very inexpensively these days. Your biggest investment youā€™ve probably already made (wx-software). Just a few years ago, it would cost (on average) of about $20.00 - 30.00 per month and were very limited in the scope of what you could do.

Iā€™d recommend trying to stay with the main domain hierarchies rather than using .info .tv etcā€¦ There is a reason why .info is so cheapā€¦ many business, school etc sites block those because they are used a lot for spammers and fraudulent schemes etcā€¦

Iā€™ve been using Godaddy since they showed up. They are very good.

Note that most hosting companies will need to have your domains pointed at their nameservers to allow you do control the subdomains etcā€¦

Have you ever transferred a domain to a new registrar? Did it go easily?

I have. It did. BUT they were both reputable registrars charging reasonable fees. I have heard that some of the cheaper registrars donā€™t like to lose customers so make it difficult/expensive/slow to migrate away from their service. They might not be able to commit to exactly which day/week/month theyā€™ll release the tag, so your site might be off air for quite a while whilst the transfer takes place.

Iā€™ve transferred a number of domains to and from Godaddy, Network Solutions and Register.com

If it is a sale of a domain, normally what I do is setup the nameservers to point to the new owners names servers first, before starting the transfer so they can use the domain right away and any time it takes to transfer doesnā€™t hold anyone up. The transfer then is just a formality that doesnā€™t need any rush since the new user can already manage the dns on them.

Most transfers are fairly quick though. ORG domains require an extra step. They want a password first and some registars are a bit dumb on that.

GoDaddy will transfer domains for free if they already are the registrar for that domain.

Thanks for the input :slight_smile: I have a couple at Register.com but Iā€™m having a hard time understanding what Iā€™m getting for the extra $$, especially for a hobby.

Ok, stupid question timeā€¦

Should I get the domain name first and then the hosting site or get the hosting site setup and going then link the domain name?

(I know itā€™s pretty green question but I havenā€™t owned a domain name is 3-4 years. :lol: )

Hereā€™s what I would do:

a: Register the name - then youā€™ll be sure what it is

b: Sign up for hosting, theyā€™ll need to know the name from ā€œaā€

c: Go back to the registar and give them the DNS IP addresses youā€™ll get from the hosting co in step ā€œbā€

d: Wait maybe 24-48 hours until the DNS info propages across the net and then youā€™ll be able to see your site.

All of my domains are with GoDaddy.

At work, we have about 30 or so with Register.com. Only two of them are on their ā€œprimaryā€ servers which means if I make a change they are supposed to update the server within 15 minutes. These have 1 hour TTL time. The rest are on their ā€œFreeā€ servers which can in theory take up to 47 hours to update (both update once every 24hours 12 hours appart).

The only reason why the corp is with them is due to some of the other country support. Otherwise, I would move them all over to Godaddy.

At $43 per year for the privledge of Register.comā€¦ Iā€™d stick to Godaddy.

A 1 hour TTL will be increasing the DNS traffic quite considerably. I tend to set 24 hour TTLs on the grounds that DNS changes are rarely needed and usually planned well in advance, so you can reduce the TTL a few days before the change (to 15 minutes last time I did it) to get a quick change once the server IP is changed and then change it back to 24 hours once youā€™re sure the change doesnā€™t need to be undone.

There have been recommendations for www.godaddy.com for low cost domains, but I haven't used them (yet).

This site seems to have vanished I have been trying for several hours!
Anyone got any addresses for cheap domains? :smiley:

godadday works fine for me
just tried it

Just registered my domain name with godaddy.com ā€¦ was very easy.

My wife thinks I should add a link to the city (www.cityofcarterlake.com) right on the main page because I have a better domain name then they do now.

it appears to be back. I just tried it
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp

One note here for those who still arenā€™t convince to buy a domain name.

Godaddy (and Iā€™m sure others) allows you to redirect/mask to your current hosting site for free.

Iā€™ve decided to go this route at the moment, while continuing to use my ISPs free hosting option for the site.

So when you go to www.carterlake.org, you are really going to http://members.cox.net/carterlakeweather

Advantages:

  1. Everything stays free
  2. No hassle domain name (takes mere minutes to setup!)
  3. Can register domain name with search engines
  4. Previous visitors notice nothingā€¦ all links still function as before

Disadvantages:

  1. Creates another layer which needs to be working for site visits (i.e. godaddy.com goes bye bye and no visitors through domain name even though site is up and working)
  2. Masking masks refer stats (I can no longer tell where people are coming from)
  3. Unable to bookmark individual pages
  4. Possible page rendering glitches with Firefox (looking into work arounds for those)**

** Got that working againā€¦ had to change some of my Javascript to be WC3 compliant

Update: It is now 24 hours later and it appears that ā€œgodaddyā€ has indeed gone, still canā€™t raise the site, has anyone else been able to? :frowning:

i think its just you that has trouble with that site oldun, on your slow internet connection, maybe

just tried it here again, no problem

Works fine for me, and it was working last night when I saw your first post. Have you changed anything with your browser that could be blocking it?

Youā€™ll end up on a secure page anyhow, so try https://www.godaddy.com/ or https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp

Does your Internet provider offer similar services? Is it possible theyā€™ve blocked access deliberately?

Even if they do provide the same type of service, bocking another Registrar would be a violation of ICANN rules. One registar cannot block access to another. It would be foolish for a Registrar to do that.

My guess is that it is network routing related. There have been a lot of overseas networking issues the past couple weeks.