Website anyone?

oceansapart

Hi all,

I am currently in the process of trying to build a portfolio of websites for a hopefully soon to be launched web design business, and I am looking to take on two or three projects for this purpose.

If anyone here is planning on commissioning a site or email marketing campaign, I would be happy to do this at no charge for the purposes of including it in my print and online portfolio just drop me a PM.

On a similar topic I would be interested to hear about people here who have already gotten a website and your experiences in general of finding a reasonably priced supplier .

Thanks,

mick.fr

I have got a couple of websites, commercial or just info broadcasting, but I found myself being very well served for my money in the US.

For as little as 24 USD a month with an ISP based in Texas.
For this money I have got a reseller account, I can host unlimited domains, emails, SQL database, huge disk space, huge bandwidth...

Irish suppliers are way too expensive, and tools provided are useless.
cPanel is a great tool to easily manage websites, this is like an industry standard nowadays. It is preinstalled by the ISP and it gives you a graphic interface to easily install MySQL databse, PHPBB forum...

stepbar

http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/home/advanced/ or
http://hosting.digiweb.ie/hosting/starter/

Very reasonable TBH

mick.fr

Yes that's right I have to admit IRISH ISPs since the last 2 years made some substential efforts to decrease their prices.
More and more ISPs are coming, which is a really good thing, because prices are going down.

Gareth37

mick.fr wrote:

I have got a couple of websites, commercial or just info broadcasting, but I found myself being very well served for my money in the US.

For as little as 24 USD a month with an ISP based in Texas.
For this money I have got a reseller account, I can host unlimited domains, emails, SQL database, huge disk space, huge bandwidth...

Irish suppliers are way too expensive, and tools provided are useless.
cPanel is a great tool to easily manage websites, this is like an industry standard nowadays. It is preinstalled by the ISP and it gives you a graphic interface to easily install MySQL databse, PHPBB forum...

That is quite expensive. Siteground do it for $60 for the year while Hostrocket are not that more expensive.

Gareth37

oceansapart wrote:

Hi all,

I am currently in the process of trying to build a portfolio of websites for a hopefully soon to be launched web design business, and I am looking to take on two or three projects for this purpose.

If anyone here is planning on commissioning a site or email marketing campaign, I would be happy to do this at no charge for the purposes of including it in my print and online portfolio just drop me a PM.

On a similar topic I would be interested to hear about people here who have already gotten a website and your experiences in general of finding a reasonably priced supplier .

Thanks,

Most seem to charge way over the odds. They are good talkers but are not as professional as you wish and charge between 5000 and 10000 euro for a static website which is unbelievable.

Its all about image, getting as much free publicity as you can and having a good portfolio.

Can you write scripts?

mick.fr

Gareth37 wrote:

That is quite expensive. Siteground do it for $60 for the year while Hostrocket are not that more expensive.

No we are talking about reseller account, this is not the same as basic website hosting. Mine is 299 USD a year for ullimited client's accounts.
Siteground is 240 USD for 5 accounts (1800 for 50 accounts) while Hostrocket is 210 USD only with the equivalent tools I have got but server's uptime is only 99.5% while my hoster (hostgator) is 99.9%.

mneylon

If you're targetting the Irish market you should host in Ireland.

And yes - I am biased!

mick.fr

blacknight wrote:

If you're targetting the Irish market you should host in Ireland.

And yes - I am biased!

Well I understand your point as being an Irish ISP.
But this is a marketing fact that no matters where your website is hosted.
A website is not successful because it is hosted in a specific geographic location. We would be aware :-)

JohnDigital

Is there any issues with the geographical location of a website when it comes to something like natural searches on Google/Yahoo when selecting the parameters of your search as 'Pages from Ireland'?

mneylon

JohnDigital wrote:

Is there any issues with the geographical location of a website when it comes to something like natural searches on Google/Yahoo when selecting the parameters of your search as 'Pages from Ireland'?

Yes. "pages from Ireland" will only show sites hosted in Ireland or using .ie domains

information

Gareth37 wrote:

Siteground do it for $60 for the year

Siteground are the worst hosting company I have ever used.
I have recommend them when I was using them, but then I had a problem.

I was told for over a week by 4 members of their staff, that there was no problem.
Eventually I was able to contact a manager, who discovered the problem.

Irish companies are nearly the same price as the US ones.

The reason I will always use an Irish company from now on, is due to the fact that, I can pick up the phone and shout at them if there is a problem.

miju

mick.fr wrote:

Well I understand your point as being an Irish ISP.
But this is a marketing fact that no matters where your website is hosted.
A website is not successful because it is hosted in a specific geographic location. We would be aware :-)

i used to be of the same persuasion as yourself but you are very much wrong

1: as mentioned your site doesnt come up in pages from ireland
2: irish visitors connection times are slower to US hosts and the more successful your site is the slower it will get trust me i run a couple of sites both get about 4 million hits a month each , 1 was hosted in the US and then switched to an irish host simply because of long connection times etc

then of course theres the fact that most US hosts dont know their arse from their elbow and you can spend a silly amount of time explaining to them how to fix your problem , have yet to have that problem with an irish host and then theres the added bonus of knowing if you have a big problem you can pick up the phone or "pop down to their offices" etc

mick.fr

I have over 15 websites hosted in the US and Irish people have no problem to browse them. I connect regularly to them to upload new content and I have absolutly no problem, truncs between US and Europe are excellent. That's not like Europe to Asia...

And yes it is easy to add your hosted website to google.ie, I do not see the point here ?
Google is indexing webpages according to one of the following 2 factors :

IP Address

and/or

Domain ccTLD, so basically if your domain name is blabla.ie but hosted in the US, you will still be indexed by a local IE domain and be easily found in google.ie

Ireland is a very small country, ISP made some efforts, mainly because there is now more concurrence, otherwise nothing would have been done (And why anyway hehe, money is money).
Irish ISP's can not compete with US ISP in term of prices.
In the US, I can have a dedicated Linux or Windows server with good CPU, Raid 1, for 100USD a month, here in Ireland, it is over 250 Euros a month.

I am not blaming Irish ISP and I trully respect their commitment and accomplishments, but the Irish market is small, so they can not compete with abroad ISPs (Technicaly and price).

heggie

mick.fr almost every post I read from you on boards is full of mis-information! , sure your site can be listed on google.ie, but the option 'pages from Ireland' results must be physically hosted in ireland. I always recommend people targeting a local market to go with a .ie , any US hosts i've ever used, i have found have significantly more downtime. It's also nice to have support based in the same country with same working hours as you for the sake of 20 euro or so extra per year for a standard hosting solution

miju

who hosts your sites mick.fr and can you throw up a link or two to some of them , would be interested in checking out their speeds (may move to em if they are any good)

mick.fr

heggie wrote:

mick.fr almost every post I read from you on boards is full of mis-information! , sure your site can be listed on google.ie, but the option 'pages from Ireland' results must be physically hosted in ireland. I always recommend people targeting a local market to go with a .ie , any US hosts i've ever used, i have found have significantly more downtime. It's also nice to have support based in the same country with same working hours as you for the sake of 20 euro or so extra per year for a standard hosting solution

1. You are insulting me simply because there is some points you do not understand. Alright thank you fair enough...
2. The fact that you do not now how Google indexation is working is not my fault, and yes your site, even hosted in the US will be available "pages from Ireland" will be available.
3. US support is 24/24 a day, forget about this in Ireland.

mick.fr

miju wrote:

who hosts your sites mick.fr and can you throw up a link or two to some of them , would be interested in checking out their speeds (may move to em if they are any good)

No problem, my ISP : www.hostgator.com
Some examples : www.fooljam.com, www.matrice-in-motion.com

mick.fr

My own test I ran from http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php


Load time (secs) Average Speed per KB
01 www.boards.ie 22.4 KB 1.24 seconds 0.06 seconds
02 www.fooljam.com 41.96 KB 0.69 seconds 0.02 seconds
03 www.matrice-in-motion.com 6.55 KB 0.18 seconds 0.03 seconds
04 www.oasis.gov.ie 1.64 KB 0.65 seconds 0.4 seconds
05 www.eircom.ie 4.14 KB 1.6 seconds 0.39 seconds

My hosting, far, far faster :-)

Ok well this test website might be in the US. Let's see what you have got if you run the tests from Ireland >

heggie

'January 29th, 2007. Hi there,. I am a consultant specialized in security, business intelligence'


taken from your site.


first result searching that on a standard google page returns your site top of list.

pages from ireland :

You are not there.

mick.fr

heggie wrote:

'January 29th, 2007. Hi there,. I am a consultant specialized in security, business intelligence'
taken from your site.
first result searching that on a standard google page returns your site top of list.
pages from ireland :

You are not there.

My intention has never to make fooljam.com available from local Irish pages.
90% of my visitors are US, and this is my target.

As I explained previously google indexation is adding websites in local pages searches if : They got an Irish IP Address and/or a .IE domain name (If one only qualifies, you are in).

Please refer to section 7 of this Irish link.
http://www.redcardinal.ie/search-engine-optimisation/19-10-2006/10-steps-to-getting-into-google-and-staying-there/

Now I also said previously basic Irish hosting packages are cheap enough and there is no point to mess around with the US if you do not want to.
So for the majority of users, Irish packages would be just fine.

Now if you want something more specific, a dedicated server, a reseller account, a 24/24 a day support, there is no better than the US.

Voila, no Rant nothing. Just the truth as it is.

RedCardinal

heggie wrote:

... the option 'pages from Ireland' results must be physically hosted in ireland.

Just to clear this up - your site must be physically hosted on Irish IP space OR use the .IE ccTLD to appear in the 'Pages from Ireland' filtered results.

All my .ie domains are hosted in the US