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Web hosting/domain name purchase on a student budget

elsiegee40

By elsiegee40
in Web Development

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elsiegee40

elsiegee40

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My son needs a website for his university portfolio which he is building from scratch. It won't have huge amounts of traffic and isn't that huge (currently 90Mby). He is concerned about security.

 

Do you have any suggestions on where would be good to purchase both from on a student budget please? What pitfalls does he need to watch out for?

 

Sorry for sounding like I know nothing; it's because I haven't a clue. Thanks for any help you can offer.

LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
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Does he want a server that "just works" or that he has a lot of control over?

 

Reason I ask is I use OVH and get a VPS for about £2 a month - means I have complete and utter control over my own virtual server. Great from a security POV - as soon as something like heartbleed gets reported, I can remote in and patch it!

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elsiegee40

elsiegee40

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Does he want a server that "just works" or that he has a lot of control over?

 

Reason I ask is I use OVH and get a VPS for about £2 a month - means I have complete and utter control over my own virtual server. Great from a security POV - as soon as something like heartbleed gets reported, I can remote in and patch it!

 

How often do you end up patching and how do you find out when it's necessary?

Soulfish

Soulfish

Posted
Posted
I'd recommend Tsohost. Their basic package is £15 for the year. A .co.uk domain name is £3.35 but if I recall the minimum registration is 2 years for .co.uk domains so £7. Thus £22 in total for a reliable service.

 

https://www.tsohost.com/web-hosting

 

Another recommendation for TSO. I've been with them for years now, and their support is brilliant. Great when you don't want the hassle of running a server/VPS.

 

Saying that I'm also looking to use OVH (well probably their cheaper Soyoustart subsidiary) for some projects where I need a dedicated server in a datacenter somewhere. They seem to be fairly decent for low price dedicated servers/VPS's where you need more control than basic web hosting :)

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LosOjos

LosOjos

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How often do you end up patching and how do you find out when it's necessary?

 

I only manually patch things when it's a major security hole like heartbleed, the rest of the time I have a cron job that automatically applies security updates every night. My VPS has Debian installed, but there are lots of other options when you set one up, including cPanel which seems to be used by most hosts.

 

Oh and I have it send me an email when updates have been applied with details of what was updated and any notes from the logs.

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Edu-IT

Edu-IT

Posted
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If it was me, I'd go for something that is already managed, especially as it's just a portfolio website which you've said is only about 90 Meg. Time is better spent on Uni work than patching a server, in this case?

 

The OVH VPS and So You Start providers do look useful though so thanks for sharing those!

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LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
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If it was me, I'd go for something that is already managed, especially as it's just a portfolio website which you've said is only about 90 Meg. Time is better spent on Uni work than patching a server, in this case?

 

The OVH VPS and So You Start providers do look useful though so thanks for sharing those!

 

Totally agree - I missed the part about it being a portfolio website! VPS' are great if you want total control but a pain if all you want to do is get a website up and running quickly.

Arreks

Arreks

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Does he even need to pay? if it's something simple like a portfolio he could just use 000webhost (free, popular) or even tumblr! 000webhost I use all the time when I'm developing basic designs to show people before I move the files onto my web server. The servers they use have never had any major problems or security concerns if he's concerned about that.
corieltauvi

corieltauvi

Posted
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I set up a Wordpress site from Godaddy when my youngest went to Uni to study Computer Science. Luckily, at that time it was only £1 a month - lucky because the idle s@#$ never used it.
Edu-IT

Edu-IT

Posted
Posted
Does he even need to pay? if it's something simple like a portfolio he could just use 000webhost (free, popular) or even tumblr! 000webhost I use all the time when I'm developing basic designs to show people before I move the files onto my web server. The servers they use have never had any major problems or security concerns if he's concerned about that.

If it's being graded is a service like that reliable enough to provide the person 'assessing' it a good experience? And can you use custom domains with those services?

Arreks

Arreks

Posted
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If it's being graded is a service like that reliable enough to provide the person 'assessing' it a good experience? And can you use custom domains with those services?

 

 

99.9% uptime as far as I've seen, I've been using 000webhost for example for the last 5 years as a professional platform and never noticed any problems - and yes you can use custom domains, they're very quite flexible and have SQL/PHP already installed.

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browolf

browolf

Posted
Posted
99.9% uptime as far as I've seen, I've been using 000webhost for example for the last 5 years as a professional platform and never noticed any problems - and yes you can use custom domains, they're very quite flexible and have SQL/PHP already installed.

 

I just moved all my stuff to 000webhost as I was having intermittent routing issues with hostinger and it's much better! (free vs free)

I like how I can just add more sites with their own database.

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TechKat

TechKat

Posted
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For hosting, I recommend DigitalOcean.com. SSD-based cloud VPSes, cheapest is $5/mth and you only pay for every hour you use it. So running a $5 server for a day would merely cost a cent. It's a whole virtual server for you to manage and run yourself. And you don't even need to be an expert. The service offers pre-made images with web hosting abilities in just one click and has an excellent community section for all help you might need.

 

For a domain, I know that namecheap gives free .me domains for students. https://nc.me is the website to it, and it only applies to .me domains. I think you have to produce some information that you are a student (ID card or something) but free is better.

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