Questions about picking a domain name registration and web host

[askpcguy]

I think I'm finally ready to jump into owning my own domain name and paying for web hosting for photography.

After looking at plenty of domain name and hosting solutions, I keep hitting the same thing. The home page slaps your face with huge under $10 per month prices but when you get into the sign up pages, your cart ends up saying something in the amount of $100 or even more.

Then I dug deeper and found some sites have some what nice prices but there are cheesy restrictions or legal junk that I do not want to mess with.

So my question is, are there any descent domain name AND web hosting providers (either for photography or not but I'd welcome access to free site templates) out there?

Yes I know about smugmug, flickr, picasa and any of those other "pay to host" photo communities.

Thanks,
Chris

[CanonRebelz]

Smugmug is way different from flickr and picasa. Don't be fooled into thinking they are.
I love smugmug, I have one, it's great. Great for print fulfillment, proofing, portfolio, etc.
I also bought a domain from smugdomains (godaddy smugmug kinda thing).
The price may not seem so bad once you think about it.
Plus, google "smugmug coupon" and find some coupons (I think 20% is the biggest one right now).

[SusanH1970]

I bought my domain name through yahoo for $10.00 and started off with a free weebly.com account for my website, then ended up forking out the extra $40/year or whatever cheap price it is to upgrade on weebly so that my website shows as "susanharringtonphotography.com", with no ads, as opposed to "susanharringtonphotography.weebly.com" with an ad on each page.

Weebly is a template-based site builder, drag and drop, super easy to use drag and drop for those as technologically impaired as I am, LOL. Using it quite satisfactorily for now until I can afford to have someone design me something custom.

Where's Pat (private) when we need her to extoll the virtues of weebly?

[askpcguy]

@@CanonRebelz
Thanks for that, I don't find any mention of a smugdomains for registering a domain name or providing web hosting.

You must mean search on google for "smugmug coupon" it's just one of my pet peeves, people throwing the word google around as though it's the be-all end-all term for Internet searching. Also I use blackle.com because that blinding white background of google is just too much to look at.

-edit I was going for something along the lines of www.ipage.com as it both allows a domain to be registered and offers web hosting. I'd rather consolidate everything into one company, since it'll help reduce clutter and what not.

[bigone5500]

I use a host called 1and1.com and they have always been good to me and are very reliable. I have been using them for about 4 1/2 years now and there has only been 1 outage. I pay 9.99 a month and get 3 domain names along with unlimited bandwidth, 250GB storage, support for cgi, perl, python, mySQL databases, and a bevy of other features. Check them out at 1and1.com

They also have windows servers if Linux isn't your cup of tea.

[askpcguy]

1and1.com was one of those providers that plaster low prices all over their front page but when you get to the shopping cart, your price is easily into the hundreds of dollars.

[SusanH1970]

Just wondering...was my info no help at all? Not being facetious, but I was curious as to why you didn't respond to any of the info I gave.

[askpcguy]

Weebly isn't really what I am looking for. There is simply so many options and companies out there, it's tough to find something perfect and on budget.

Godaddy web hosting + domain registration is about $60/year.

Add $30 for a wordpress template, and you get:

Ryan Taylor Photography

[askpcguy]

The godaddy.com site is pretty confusing, all these little terms and plans. While I'm not put off by all this, I'm just trying to find the most simple and cost effective way to get myself a website.

After wading through, my shopping cart had a total of $90.

It's enough to make me go insane!