Web Site Help??

alexco38 · Mar 22, 2011

Google has a free web site hosting.

There are many others but they tend to come and go. You can use ISP free service but that tie you to their service.

Tim R. · Mar 22, 2011

Maine Sail said:
I already have a domain name, and web hosting already in place, paid for service, but I just need help actually building the site to get it up there.

MS, if you want to use your existing service provider I can get you started on the website. They have decent tools for putting together a site. That is how I built my site.

Bill Roosa · Mar 22, 2011

What OS are you interested in using? MS, linux, other. does not matter to the viewer but some OS are better, cheaper than others.

Tim R. · Mar 22, 2011

Maine Sail said:
I want to use Network Solutions as we set it up but I also need a bunch of features I do not know how to do or make easy for me to make changes in the future..

Email me what features you are thinking of. We can sit down for an hour or two and explore what NS has to offer.

CalebD · Mar 22, 2011

I recently re-did my boat website using WordPress. It is a free package and is widely used by companies and individuals alike. As with most things there is a learning curve but like with sailing you learn most by just doing it.

I have noticed that your pbase website sometimes loads a little slowly but otherwise works well. Will you be wanting to do e-commerce from your new/improved website?

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.odalisque.us/

CalebD · Mar 22, 2011

Content security

Maine Sail said:
... snip ...

Word Press sounds good but my head is spinning researching it..

I'm not that surprised you say that. I was spinning a bit too at first. My boat partner helped me get going with it.

I think I get your main motivation for wanting to do this. It is from having your text and pictures ripped off by that Indian website?!?
There has got to be a way to turn off the 'view page source' that most browsers have which gives you the html code and embedded text. There also is a way to turn off drag and drop of photos and there must be a way to disable the 'screen scraper' function Windoze offers. There is nothing you can do to stop someone from typing your text into a word processing program while viewing your page though. You should be able to secure the photos.

There is another product called 'Drupal' that may be able to clamp down on ways of people grabbing your content. I'll poke around a bit to see what I can figure out.

Tim R. · Mar 22, 2011

CalebD said:
I recently re-did my boat website using WordPress. It is a free package and is widely used by companies and individuals alike. As with most things there is a learning curve but like with sailing you learn most by just doing it.

I have noticed that your pbase website sometimes loads a little slowly but otherwise works well. Will you be wanting to do e-commerce from your new/improved website?

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.odalisque.us/

Wordpress is not free if you want to use your own domain. And the free version limits your storage space. MS, I do not honestly think you will be able to pull this off with a free site.

Wordpress is good but the free version is a bit limited.

dscribner · Mar 22, 2011

How about throwing a bone at PYC? See if some young geek would like to hone his website skills for time crewing on the MaineSail Express? We had this bang-up programmer at one company I worked. The "consultants" we hire could NOT fix the network. They tried for days. One day they left for lunch. When they got back, it was puring like a kitten. This kid (Spanky) was 15. Some kids today breath binary. When SpankySoft hits the market, I'm in, ground floor baby!

CalebD · Mar 22, 2011

Tim may be right about WP, the free version. I am by no means an expert in using it yet. We are using it but require no e-commerce nor am I that worried about folks stealing my content or photos. Sadly, creating a web page seems to put your content into the public domain.

From the limited research I just did it sounds like the easiest way to protect your photos is by 'watermarking' them. That would not stop someone from stealing a photo and editing it in photo-shop to try to remove the water mark.
I found this link on the subject fairly interesting: http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/10-ways-to-protect-images-from-being-stolen/

Another tactic might be to require people to subscribe to your web site - in the same way you must join a Yahoo group and be (optionally) approved. I set up a group in Yahoo for the Tartan 27' sailboat and left it open to the public for some time. Once we had over 100 members we regularly got scantily clad biker chick spams so we closed the group and made it available only with approval - no more biker chick spams - boo hoo!

For example, here is the link to my T27Owners group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/T27Owners/
You can probably see the photo on the main page that we change now and then but you cannot see the Photos section where folks who have registered have uploaded photos. I'll try a link to a specific photo from my album on the group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/T27Ow...ode=tn&order=ordinal&start=1&count=20&dir=asc
I'm certain that I will see the nice sunset photo from the western LI Sound but non-members should be blocked from viewing this content (hope I am right about this). I am not suggesting that you make a Yahoo group but I suppose that it is another possibility (just not sure if Yahoo groups allows e-commerce among other questions).
To join my group prospective members must submit a short bit of text that had better contain something about sailboats or the Tartan 27. If not I'm likely not to approve them into the group. It is a minor PITA but I have 4 people acting as moderators for this purpose.

In a sense, all this buys you is it would take your content out of the 'public domain' and make it available only to those who take the time to register - which might be enough to stop curious Indian web surfers from stumbling on your content. It also could provide you with a list of people, their IP addresses and the ability to deny access to some to your content.

There are some ways to protect photos and the folks that probably know the most about this are the owner/operators of porn websites (how do I know this?).

I guess SailingDog is busy as I have a feeling he knows a good bit about all of this.

cal24 · Mar 22, 2011

I used to host my own web sites, but found it was too much of a hassle. A better option for me is a combination of WordPress and Flickr. All of the photos are uploaded, organized, and access controlled (mine are public, but "all rights reserved") by Flickr. I use the "pro" version of Flickr which is about $25/yr.

With Flickr, you can limit image access to public, private, friends & family, or a particular group. If you are concerned about the protecting the image itself, you can

Upload a lower resolution image
Watermark your images
Copyright your images
Restrict access to your images

Since I also take a lot of sports photos (my daughter is the athlete of the family), I also use Adobe Lightroom that allows you edit / watermark hundreds of photos at once - and has a one-button upload to Flickr.

Wordpress also has e-commerce plug-ins to provide controlled access to content, but I have not used them yet. No need to know HTML with WordPress (except to cut/paste image URLs from flickr).

I would be happy to show you what it looks like to administer a WordPress site (see also URL in my signature).

Mark

ArtificialReef · Mar 23, 2011

I used to run a hosting business and may start another, but I have used this site extensively and they are really helpful http://php.opensourcecms.com/ On this site you demo all sorts of open source content management systems that are free to use, even commercially. I would be willing to help get you set up if you need it. Pm me and I will give you my personal email addy.
Cheers, ArtificialReef

Photo Bug · Mar 25, 2011

Take a look at www.highpowersites.com. I use them for a hunting lodge site that I built and maintaine. You will use there tools to build and host the site. They have a lot of templets that you can use or you can build it your self. I use there website tools because it is easy to have a site up and running quickly. You can also build an ecommerance site. It cost about $20 per month (www.kowikilodges.com). I also bought a templet from templet monster.com for my photo website. (rcaphoto.com) I would say stay away from something like a flash templet. Way to hard to learn. Nothing wrong with network solutions, I used them for 10 years. I use godaddy now because they have good phone support, but you have to wade through all of that up-selling crap.

Phil Herring · Mar 25, 2011

I second the vote for WordPress, but forget the free edition. That's the system people are using and programmers are writing for these days. You can hire someone to set it up for you for very little money and have a programmer modify extensions if you need custom applications.

WP installs in about 60 seconds on any server running PHP and mysql, which is pretty much every server in the world. So you can host it anywhere. No html required.

Web Site Help??

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Alien