Decentralized web site: Realistic?

[(Pete Cresswell)]

I want to put up a web site for my high school class.

Minimal traffic expected, but the heavy hitters will be photographs.

Kneejerk reaction was to solicit money and open up an account with some provider
or another.

However I see ongoing hassles there. Mainly around the relentless nature of
monthly charges. e.g. Classmate Smith gives me fifty bucks today, and then
can't understand why I want even *more* money three years from now.

Meanwhile, it's just dawned on me that all the material does not have to be in
the same place.

I've got fifty megs available to me as part of my email provider's package.
My guess is that the text-only portion of almost any system I can conceive of
will fit in less than half of that.

I'm thinking I could solicit web space donations from classmates instead of
money and store graphics here and there. Biggest hurdles would appear to be
entrusting UserIDs/PWs to me and the inevitable changing of same without
notifying me.

However I'd guess that the major providers like AOL and Earthlink have
Add/Change/Delete access to their users' web spaces integrated with their
proprietary UI's and not accessible via FTP utilities like CuteFTP. True?

Bottom lines:

- Is the separation of graphics and text realistic?

- Given a distributed model, are there alternatives free-space-wise?

 

[Dylan Parry]

- Is the separation of graphics and text realistic?

You are likely to find it a maintenance nightmare, and even then a lot
of free hosting providers do not allow you to host images on your site
and include them on pages on other sites.

Besides, it wouldn't be that expensive to host a site anyway. You are
very unlikely, for your type of site, to need more than 50-100Mb of
space, and this you can get for peanuts. I'd recommend Affordable Host
(http://www.affordablehost.com/cpanel.shtml) with the Single X or Single
A plans.

 

[Neal]

I want to put up a web site for my high school class.

Minimal traffic expected, but the heavy hitters will be photographs.

Kneejerk reaction was to solicit money and open up an account with some
provider
or another.

Have you checked with the school district to see if server space is
available? If it's being used as part of your curriculum, the school's
system may be able to host it.

I don't know where you are posting from, but in the US there are all sorts
of grants for utilizing technology, and perhaps your district's technology
coordinator can help the class set something up.

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

You are
very unlikely, for your type of site, to need more than 50-100Mb of
space, and this you can get for peanuts. I'd recommend Affordable Host
(http://www.affordablehost.com/cpanel.shtml) with the Single X or Single
A plans.

I like it - especially the spacing of the feature sets/prices.

$72 per year for the 200-meg/PHP/MySQL DB I can rationalize just on the basis of
having a playpen for myself.....and the high school class site as the primary
toy.

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

Have you checked with the school district to see if server space is
available? If it's being used as part of your curriculum, the school's
system may be able to host it.

I don't know where you are posting from, but in the US there are all sorts
of grants for utilizing technology, and perhaps your district's technology
coordinator can help the class set something up.

This class has been out of high school for a looooong time...part of the web
site will be "In Memoriam"....and it won't be just one or two people....

I'll give the district a call, but conversations with a guy who used to be their
one-and-only DP guy haven't been encouraging - they've outsourced 100% of their
work.

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

with the Single X or Single
A plans.

Wanting to start with an "X" account and then move to a paying account if/when
things look like they're working out; I'm reading the provider's web pages...but
am not clear on domain registration.

I've already got my domain registered with InterNic and am paid up for the next
five years or so.

Is there any danger of AffordableHost somehow taking over the registration and
billing me for that? Seems like they have to make money somehow....

 

[Dylan Parry]

Is there any danger of AffordableHost somehow taking over the registration and
billing me for that? Seems like they have to make money somehow....

No danger of that. Just point your domain to the Affordable Host name
servers when you've registered an account; you won't have to change your
registrar. Tina, who runs the company, is a regular in this newsgroup.

 

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

Tina, who runs the company, is a regular in this newsgroup.

Excellant!