Nerds guide to the Net: Help with Websites

[Petey]

With so many people asking "How can I do this", "Where can I get this", etc., I thought it might be helpful for some of the "newbie" webmasters if some of the more experienced webmonkeys shared some of their knowledge. Things you've stumbled across, different technologies, tutorial pages, etc.

For instance,
Good Basic Webhosts

If you're a team that needs an external webhost, I'd suggest www.staghosting.com. It's a great free host that will give you ftp, mySQL, PHP, CGI, SSH, email, webstats, and some pretty darn good bandwidth and webspace without ads.

Good Pay Webhosts
I run two servers, so I'm not really in a need for any of this stuff here. I've got friends who have useed StagHosting and say it's reliable. However, if you want to go the pay route--or you think you're going to become the next CD, but don't have Brandon's uber-server knowledge--then check out www.ehostsource.com. All the features you could imagine for $5.95 a month.

Domain Names

www.web.com has the best rates I've seen so far, at 6.95 a year for a domain name. They don't provide DNS however, which leads me to

Free Domain Name Service

http://freedns.afraid.org will give you all of the DNS you need. Yay for the open source community.

Messageboards

Everyone has their preference. Mine is the Invision Power Board. You can download a "free trial", which is no different than phpBB or any other board. They just try to manuever you into paying for it. You can download the "free trial"--one again, don't be discouraged by the name, I just downloaded it and it's the same as always--here.

Other stuff
The First Uber Geeks have some great programs on their site.

Nothing wrong with a good old fashioned HTML tutorial page.

Invision File Manager: A great little web based file management app that lets you create an account from where you can upload, download and store files, as well as edit the mySQL database.

Also, I'm too lazy to find a link, but phpMyAdmin is an invaluable tool when it comes to editing your mysql databses. Search for phpmyadmin on www.sourceforge.net

And, finally, tips and tricks if you're dealing with a fascist webhost like mine.

Web Proxy Page.
Secure Web FTP.
Putty Download: Hint, choose to "open" rather than "save from disk". You're the only one who knows how to SSH out from your network. I suggest dialing into your central server as a proxy and then going through the HTTP socket and port 8080. Works for me.

So yeah...hopefully this will help some of the rookies in the web design world.

--Petey