Cheap Domain registration and web hosting?

[Anastasis]

Hi - I am in the process of designing my first website for my sister-in-law's puppet theatre parties. She has chosen a domain name, but I'm wondering if any of you can recommend a cheap domain name and webspace provider.

For my domain which I only use for email forwarding purposes at the moment I used 123reg who for .co.uk addresses charge £2.59 per year with hosting from £1.59 per month with £9.99 setup fee for 100mb of space. This seems reasonable, but I'm wondering if there are cheaper as she doesn't need any more than 10mb if that.

She, like me, uses NTLWorld as an ISP, who I know provide 55mb of webspace free, but experimenting with my domain I can only redirect to my NTL webspace addressed as (for example) www.mydomain.co.uk in a frame but all the links show that it is really hosted at homepage.ntlworld.com/myntlusername.

Ideally, I want her website to be hosted on her domain name, not by forwarding.

So can you recommend anyone. Someone has suggested www.register4less.com who charge $14.95 for a year for 5mb of space including domain registration of a .net, .com or .org address. This seems very reasonable, in fact really very cheap, but I don't know if they are any good or if there might be something better.

Any recommendations?

[Nor]

Perhaps someone can bring me upto speed aswell but I've never been very sure of the companies who offer you a free domain name with hosting. Not exactly sure how you seperate the 2 if you want to move hosts. They may end up charging you a sizeable fee, someone will no doubt know that can tell me though. I'm actually in the process of finding out as I got hosting and a free domain last year from a company and since been cut off, with no idea how I actually retain the domain name, since their hosting was woeful. Bet they want £100 or something for it.

I just don't know how a company can offer webspace plus a .com address for $14.99 though, just seems far too low to actually end up getting a proper service. At the end of the day, spending an extra few quid is better in my opinion than dealing with a company who never answer your emails.

Personally I don't think you can go wrong with www.easily.co.uk who are £10 for 2 years for a .co.uk or www.123reg.co.uk who are slightly cheaper I think. Then just get the basic hosting package from www.i-websolutions.co.uk £10 a year I think for the basic nthw package with 100mb and php/mysql.

I-web are the folk who provide webhosting for here incidently.

At the risk of being sycophantic I went for the whole hog with i-web, I got the 'special offer' hosting service & they sorted me out with a domain name too.

There are probably cheaper ways via the links already posted, but for a 'one stop shop' i found i-web very good.

[Stuartbe]

You wont get better than I-web for the hosting m8 - I think there is a speciel offer for member - Send a PM to KP for details.

[Nor]

oo I didn't realise i-web did domains aswell. KingPhoenix is the guy here who does the hosting stuff.

[Anastasis]

Originally Posted by Nor

oo I didn't realise i-web did domains aswell. KingPhoenix is the guy here who does the hosting stuff.

I've just taken a look at the domain name purchase options and they look expensive compared to other providers like 123reg.

However, the web hosting for NTHW members starting at 99p per month for 100mb of space is very good. And if you pay a year up front you get another 10% off. This looks a really good option for my sister-in-law.

Just a question about this. Reading the information on the i-web site, it says that by using what they call add-on domains (costing 50p per month extra per add-on) you can host more than one domain in your webspace. So being somewhat of a novice on this (please forgive my ignorance ), does that mean that more than one domain can share the same webspace as if they are completely independent websites?

The example I am thinking about is that if I buy a years hosting from i-web for www.mydomain.co.uk I can also, by buying an add-on domain, host my sister-in-law's site and have that accessed as www.sisterinlaw.co.uk ?

[Nor]

Yep thats exactly what happens mate. I have 2 extra domains sitting on my main webspace at the moment. Will give you my domains names just so you see it in action. My main domain is www.smartreg.co.uk (its just running a test version of phpbb atm that I use to mess about). I have www.spv-guild.com (which I got from 123reg.co.uk) and www.madeinscotland.net (which I haven't set up yet) as add on domains.

To upload content to the add on domain you just specify a folder within your main webspace and it goes in there. To ftp to my spv-guild.com website I still use ftp.smartreg.co.uk for example. I think add on domains cost £4 for a year, or 5 for £15. Its seemless though and its not like forwarding to ntl webspace where you see the ntl domain name in the links and stuff. Hope this helps. I don't really want to sound like a salesman for i-web but I've used a few webhosts over the past few years and i-web seems among the best. They've had a few problems lately but hopefully its a thing of the past and the staff (kingphoenix) have been more helpful than you could hope for.

[Stuartbe]

Originally Posted by Nor

Yep thats exactly what happens mate. I have 2 extra domains sitting on my main webspace at the moment. Will give you my domains names just so you see it in action. My main domain is www.smartreg.co.uk (its just running a test version of phpbb atm that I use to mess about). I have www.spv-guild.com (which I got from 123reg.co.uk) and www.madeinscotland.net (which I haven't set up yet) as add on domains.

To upload content to the add on domain you just specify a folder within your main webspace and it goes in there. To ftp to my spv-guild.com website I still use ftp.smartreg.co.uk for example. I think add on domains cost £4 for a year, or 5 for £15. Its seemless though and its not like forwarding to ntl webspace where you see the ntl domain name in the links and stuff. Hope this helps. I don't really want to sound like a salesman for i-web but I've used a few webhosts over the past few years and i-web seems among the best. They've had a few problems lately but hopefully its a thing of the past and the staff (kingphoenix) have been more helpful than you could hope for.

I thought that the slow site access was down to the porn that KP was downloading

[Anastasis]

Originally Posted by Nor

Yep thats exactly what happens mate. I have 2 extra domains sitting on my main webspace at the moment...

Thanks Nor, that's really helpful, and no, I don't mind you singing the praises of i-web, it's just what I want to hear, that is to know if they are any good.

When you register domains with 123reg, their control panel handles web-forwarding by allowing you to specify framed or non-framed forwarding either to a single page or not, by entering a url to which to forward to. In the case of my NTL webspace this is homepage.ntlworld.com/myntlusername.

So how does that work when your webspace is with i-web? Would I enter an IP address as the URL to www.mydomain.co.uk? And what of my sister-in-law's domain when I make that an add-on domain in my i-web webspace - how would I specify this separate website using the 123reg control panel web forwarding? Would I do this URL as an IP address with a sub-folder, e.g. xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/sisterinlawfolder ?

Apologies again for my dimness about this, but as I said this is all relatively new to me and I want to be clear on what I can and cannot do before signing up.

[Nor]

Just ignore the forwarding stuff mate. If you go into the 123reg control panel you'll find Change Nameservers at the bottom. Its just a case of adding the name servers of the i-web hosting in there. Your domain name is still registered with 123reg, but when you type in www.mysistersdomain.co.uk it doesn't go anywhere near 123reg anymore, it just looks up the webspace at i-web. Hope that makes sense

[Nutty]

I had a look at IwebSolutions, and I think www.web-mania.com do better.

Their starterpack at £1.99 a month, or £25 per annum gives you 50MB storage, 1GB bandwidth, 1 sub domain and 5 email addresses.

Whereas Web Mania for £20 per annum gives you 500MB storage, 6GB bandwidth, unlimted email addresses, unlimited subdomains, and all the usual perl, php, cgi, and SQL database for free. I'm with them and they're pretty good.

[Nor]

There is a different rate on i-web for nthw folk (£10.69 for 100mb 2gb), but the quantity offered by web mania still beats it. I was with eukhost for the last year, and their offer blew everything out the water, sadly my website was slow as hell and they never returned my complaint emails

At the end of the day we're talking about paying pennies for hosting here. If the hosts are quick and they actually return your emails, thats whats important I think.

[KingPhoenix]

http://www.i-websolutions.co.uk/nthwwhosting.html



Thanks guys

[Anastasis]

Originally Posted by Nor

Just ignore the forwarding stuff mate. If you go into the 123reg control panel you'll find Change Nameservers at the bottom. Its just a case of adding the name servers of the i-web hosting in there. Your domain name is still registered with 123reg, but when you type in www.mysistersdomain.co.uk it doesn't go anywhere near 123reg anymore, it just looks up the webspace at i-web. Hope that makes sense

Thanks for your help with that - I would have done completely the wrong thing. I've registered my sister-in-laws domain at 123reg, so all I think that remains is do now is to sign up with i-web.

With the matter of the above, does that mean that when someone types in www.mydomain.co.uk this is looked up somewhere and gets referred to the nameserver at a web host who in turn redirects to the physical area on their servers?

How does a novice like me find out these things other than finding forums like these and getting help from more knowledgeable guys like you and others on here? It seems like a bit of a minefield. There must be beginners guides to this sort of stuff.

Anyway, thanks again for your help - it is much appreciated!

[Anastasis]

Another thing Nor or KingPhoenix - I have just gone to the NTHW pages on i-web to register for web hosting of the NTHW Package 1 and the first thing it says in the list of options is: "I am transferring my domain name"

Am I? I thought I was registering for web hosting whilst leaving my domain name registered with 123reg. If I am required to transfer my domain, what happens when it next comes up for renewal? 123reg currently charge £2.59 per year + VAT for .co.uk addresses whereas i-web charge £8.99 including VAT for the same. Consequently, I'd like to use i-web for hosting and 123reg as my domain registrant.

Sounds a bit mercenary I know, but I guess everyone is looking to get the best deal. That said, i-web's price for hosting is really good so I would be keen to go with them if push came to shove.