Website Domain
 

Hi FIRST! I was wondering what location people use to host their websites. I am both looking at hosting my personal website and our team website. (seprate projects)

Right now... our FRC website is hosted on our school's domain... (anoka.k12.mn.us/AHSRobotics)

Not that that's a bad thing, but anoka2232.com would look alot better. Problem is, domain hosting can be EXPENSIVE. Any ideas on where to buy a domain?

We would probable be using Google Sites for the actual website side.

Thanks SO much!!

Re: Website Domain
 

Your team can host a static site (just HTML/CSS/JS, no PHP, etc.) on Github Pages. I've used it in the past with sites, and it's pretty straightforward if you know how to use Git, and not too hard to learn if you don't.

In terms of domains, I personally buy domains at Namecheap, you can get a .com for $10, but there are a lot of similarly priced options out there.

There are a lot of different hosts, with prices varying. To name a few: Namecheap, DigitalOcean, A Small Orange. I'd contact various hosting companies if I were you, they may be willing to discount the rates.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about websites or hosting, there's also a lot of info at the webhosting subreddit.

Re: Website Domain
 

I personally use Dreamhost for my other websites so will likely also host our new team website there. Been a happy customer for years, and if you grab a good sale you can buy a year of hosting for like $50. Ask if they'll sponsor you, they just might.

But there are literally hundreds and hundreds of great companies. Pick one you like and off you go!

Re: Website Domain
 

We've used dream host for roughly 5 years now. I dont have any complaints. We had some slow load times the first few years, but that was likely to the joomla install we were running. They certainly make it easy to get up and running and lots of options for growth.

If you're a non-proffit organization they will host and provide domain name registration for free. I can attest to that.

Specifics are here:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Non-profit_Discount

Its hard to beat free. And any time we had a server sideissues that we couldn't resolve ourselves, they've been quick to respond.

If you're affiliated with a public school, the school likely has 501c3 paperwork. See if you can get a copy to forward on to DH and you'll be all set.

Re: Website Domain
 

If your needs are simple and you have some experince with HTML, i suggest hosting using GitHub Pages, you can even have a blog and other advance features with Jekyll. If you would like help with doing this or figuring out other options, feel free to PM me here or Google my username for other ways to contact me.

Re: Website Domain
 

You could alternatively buy a domain name and address it to the school server. That would save all of the hosting costs. The only reason to get your own hosting would be to gain more control over the website and add more dynamic content.

Re: Website Domain
 

I will add another vote for Dreamhost- 2052 has been using their free nonprofit hosting for a few years now.

For my personal stuff, I've been using Google App Engine for free hosting with domains hosted at namecheap.

Domains themselves shouldn't be expensive- you should only pay $10-$15 per year for a top-level domain like .com or .org. If you already have hosting through your school (as it appears you do), you can set up anoka2232.com to show everything you already have hosted at anoka.k12.mn.us/AHSRobotics without much work at all.

Re: Website Domain
 

we have a hosting company near our team that sponsored us a domain name

hyperion3360.com

Re: Website Domain
 

I use no-ip.com for my stuff. I believe a domain name from them costs $25 per year.

Re: Website Domain
 

We have been doing this for a couple of years now. The only downside I've experienced is that you're on shared hosting, which means doing much more than PHP+MySQL can be a challenge. Our site currently runs on Django, but it's a lot of work to get Passenger set up correctly. I'm pretty sure you can run anything through CGI, but who wants to do that?

Re: Website Domain
 

I hope they give you free fries with that.

Re: Website Domain
 

I can vouch for Namecheap. $10/yr .coms, great support, no godaddy nonsense where you have to fax them a request if you want to transfer out.

Re: Website Domain
 

Also, you can get a .com for only $5/year if you have a .edu email through Namecheap's education deal at nc.me. I think the only catch is that you have to order a .me as well, but they're free on that site.

Re: Website Domain
 

I expect that the traffic to FRC team websites is pretty modest compared to, say, running a popular tech blog or e-commerce site. I use Dreamhost shared hosting for my other organization (a summer camp) and while I do sometimes wish it would serve out my Wordpress files faster, it's not that slow either.

There have been a few times I have experienced truly dismal performance, I raised a support ticket and they helped -- they're very good about that. Sometimes it was their fault, sometimes it was mine.

Re: Website Domain
 

It's not terrible running our regular site, but we also have a Mediawiki portion of our site that runs abysmally slow, and I think it's a caching issue that can't be resolved without a VPS.