For a 5 page web site, it should cost you much less than $20 per month for web hosting. Domain registration can be much less than $35 per year.

What is the purpose of your web site? Will you need a shopping cart? How much disk storage will you need? How busy do you think your web site will be? If you don't know html, how will you create and maintain your web site? Do you know how to use FTP? Frontpage? Do you want a Unix based or Windows based server?

The above are just some of the things to consider as you shop around for web host. If you search google "web hosting", you will get thousands of web host. Some are actually companies with the hardware/software, some are re-sellers. If you can give us some more info, we can give better answers.

Dan

Thanks for the response Dan. Hope I can answer some of your questions.
1. My web site wil be about the computer crafts that I make, for one thing. Custom candy bar wrappers for weddings, birthdays and holidays. Custom clocks (faces) and photo restoration will also be on the site.
2. I won't be needing a shopping cart. People will Email me directly to discuss what it is that they want.
3. I'm really not sure how much storage space I'll be needing. I'll want to put in my own graphics, pictures (examples) of wrappers and clocks that I've designed. This might fit onto three or four pages for now, considering what I've seen on other web sites.
4. I don't think my site will be getting hundreds of hits a day. Maybe a few at a time.
5.As far as maintaining my web site, I'm not sure of all the options, I'm very new to all of this. This is where I'm looking for answers and help from you guys. I guess there are programs out there related to web building. I probably have something on my computer right now, right?
6.No, I don't know a thing about FTP or Front Page.
7. I believe that I want a Windows based server.

I hope this will be enough to give you a better idea of what I want to do. Again, this will be a small site with my crafts on it. Sort of like a 'Mom & Pop' type of store. Nothing fancy but enough there to let you know what it is I offer and good graphics to show my prodocts off.
Looking forward to hearing from you guys,
Steve C. in N.J.

I am using Netscape so I guess I can use Netscape Composer to build a web page, right?
Comcast gives me 25 MB of web space for a web 'page'. Should I go with that first instead of shelling out money for my own web site? I just like the iea of having my own web site and my own name on it.
Take care, Steve C.

I would use the Comcast free web space to get started and learn to put the web site together. Then moving to your own domain is little more than copying the existing web pages to the new host (FTP). 25MB is more than sufficient for 5 page web site with graphics. Type of plan you are looking for is very basic type of package. You can compare companies like 1dollarhosting, catalog.com, etc. I am not recommending them (have not tried them), but you should be aware of such nearly free web hosting.

The reason I asked for Windows vs Unix based server was because Windows based is almost always more expensive. I sounds like you want to go with the Unix based web host, they will be cheaper and you would not have to learn Unix in most cases. However, if you use Frontpage, then the Unix host must support Frontpage extensions (not as uncommon as it used to be).

Which version of Netscape? 6.2 or higher? If not, and you want to use Composer, I suggest you take a look at the composer from Netscape 6.2 or higher, it looks much better than the stuff from Netscape 4.x. You might want to check if you have Frontpage or Frontpage express, many people seems to like it. To learn about html, you can look at sites like w3schools.

I didn't give the specific url to any of the sites I mentioned, just search google using it as the search word.

Dan

Thanks Dan, I'll give Comcast a good looking over first. I'm using Netscape 4.75. I'll look at Composer and see what I can do with it. Maybe go for the 6.2 version but I do thank you and appreciate your advice and time.
Thanks, Steve C

I've got clients using the free space that came with one of their DirecTV subscriptions, and they are (relatively) happy with it. On the (nearly) free hosting packages, often access to expanded features is harshly limited (or services a web server normally provides by "default" are turned off), and more fully featured packages at those same sites are substantialy above industry rates.

If (when) you move to a better hosting package, look for something in the $99 a year range with a good feature bundle including PHP, MySQL database, and a variety of pre-configured scripts you can integrate into your site. UNIX based hosting will suit your needs just fine.

Many plans in this range will support FrontPage, but I'd suggest staying away from Frontpage in the first place. Using Frontpage (or Express) ties future development of that site to Frontpage software on webservers supporting Frontpage because of all the proprietary junk it crams in. When I inherit a site that was previously developed in Frontpage (or with MS Office products), its often easier for me to paste all the site text into a plaintext editor (to strip the formatting) and then back into new documents, rebuilding the site and all its links and formatting from scratch. That's a lot more labor that my client gets charged for, when using a less obnoxious development program (and Netscape Composer is fine) would ahve let me either cut and pasted directly (preserving the internal links) or just modifying existing pages to incorporate the new "look and feel".

Steve, Netscape Composer is very easy to use! I prefer version 4.7. I tried the newer versions and was not happy with them at all!! As you learn more about HTML you can spice up your pages. It's all very easy to do. My isp gives me 100 mb of webspace and I have many pages with lots of graphics and I'm not close to using all my space!
There are lots of tutorials online for using Netscape Composer. Good luck!!

Steve, how do you get online? Dial-up? DSL? Cable? Most ISPs will offer a certain amount of free (no-bells-and-whistles) web hosting space, and will register a domain name for you. That's the first place I'd look.

I'm using cable to get on line. Could never go back to a phone line. Comcast is very reliable.
Steve