Gangster Ireland!!!

Can you recommend using (or avoiding) a hosting service? I'd prefer to use an Irish one. Hosting 365 seem to offer good packages.

www.hosting365.ie/hosting_specials.php

The site I am developing is for my Primary School. What do you recommend for site development? I have use a mixture of Claris Homepage on a Macintosh and HTML (limited knowledge) before and it worked well. I plan to develop this new site using PC. Do you recommend Frontpage?

Thanks

Liam

Can you recommend using (or avoiding) a hosting service? I'd prefer to use an Irish one. Hosting 365 seem to offer good packages.

www.hosting365.ie/hosting_specials.php

The site I am developing is for my Primary School. What do you recommend for site development? I have use a mixture of Claris Homepage on a Macintosh and HTML (limited knowledge) before and it worked well. I plan to develop this new site using PC. Do you recommend Frontpage?

Thanks

Liam

First thing, does your county education service mind? I work for Kerry Education Service, on and off, and they have extensive websites covering county establishments so make sure you don't step on any toes.

Why Ireland for your host? One server is the same as any other. Go for one, anywhere in the world that is respected and cheap. I think those last two nouns discount any Irish company I know of. I'd look for a US or UK one.

Frontpage first. Avoid it. Not WYSIWIG. More like, what you see is what you definitely won't get. If it's a simple page then the best tool is notepad.

I code in (Cascading Style Sheets) CSS rather than HTML first. Any tweeking is done of the resultant HTML later.

Try this free tool. Cascade DTP at www.price-media.demon.co.uk/

CSS is very easy to learn and there is plenty on it at the W3C.

Really, purely HTML coding is rather old hat and very inflexible. I am sure you will be glad that you progressed to it, even if you are a beginner.

All it requires is the patience to do a good job, unless you just want to bang something out and not learn anything in the progress.

Hope this helps.

Can you recommend using (or avoiding) a hosting service? I'd prefer to use an Irish one. Hosting 365 seem to offer good packages.

www.hosting365.ie/hosting_specials.php

The site I am developing is for my Primary School. What do you recommend for site development? I have use a mixture of Claris Homepage on a Macintosh and HTML (limited knowledge) before and it worked well. I plan to develop this new site using PC. Do you recommend Frontpage?

Thanks

Liam

Firstly, I can HIGHLY recommend Hosting365, they offer and excellent service and are reliable and fast. I have been a customer of theirs for years and I have no complaints.

In fact, I am a registered re-seller with them so I can offer you smaller but cheaper packages on the H365 servers than H365 do because for a school site I'd say even their base package is more than you really need.

Bart.

Really, purely HTML coding is rather old hat and very inflexible. I am sure you will be glad that you progressed to it, even if you are a beginner.

I mentioned this before but visit www.csszengarden.com/ to see why css rocks. All the examples have the same html content.

I use h365 via a reseller (Bart) and have no complaints.

Cheers,
~Al
--
dab flow

Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated. I must talk to you again Bart about hosting365.


Regards
Liam

Just back to the .ie thing for a moment. I totally agree that the price charged is extremely high. It is hard to justify what they charge. However I totally agree with the restrictions they place on how one can register a .ie. You just have to look at Bill's experience looking for a .com for his business to see just how an unregulated system can not work. If they allowed anyone to register what they liked, it would ruin the credibility of .ie IMHO. I also accept that maintaining a regulated system costs money and therefore .ie domains are going to cost a little more than .com etc. I dont accept that they should cost as much as they actually do.

I love Bill's idea of having lower level TLDs such as .co.ie etc. If they were to do this then they could have an less restrictive TLD maybe, .name.ie which they could sell to anyone who can demonstrate that the domain they request is in fact their legal name.

I find myself thinking about how were all so used to the 'free lunch' attitude which the internet seems to have instilled in many of us. I think we've gotten a little to used to it. Dont get me wrong I'm as guilty as the next. I just dont think its doing us any favours in the long term because IMHO we then try to apply the same 'internet mentality' to other areas of our lives and always come up disappointed because outside of the internet there is of course, no free lunch. In real life if we dont like what were paying for we complain, we can then go to the other guy and see if he gives us a better service. When you get stuff for free or very cheaply you dont have that recourse.. Whats this got to do with domains? Well I suppose it was the discussion on the price of .ies that got me thinking. One thing is for sure. The high cost of .ies ensures that people dont just register them flippantly. On reflection I think thats a good thing.

Just my two cent.