Anyone has a commercial site at Yahoo?

[Ross]

I had some web design experience before so a company asks me to do a
small commercial site with Yahoo's Starter web hosting package
($11.95/mth). I have to work on-site though. Yet the company doesn't
have any web authoring applications. They want me to use Yahoo Site
Builder, at least for now.

Here are my question:

1. The package includes the support of Paypal, but does it support
taking credit card payments?

2. How good is Yahoo Site Builder? What are its limitations?

3. If I start with Yahoo Site Builder, but find its limitations, is it
easy to switch to other tools such as Dreamweaver? To get my project
going without wasting time, is it better we decide on one tool and
stick to it through the whole project?

 

[Rob McAninch]

Ross>:

I had some web design experience before so a company asks me to do a
small commercial site with Yahoo's Starter web hosting package
($11.95/mth). I have to work on-site though. Yet the company doesn't
have any web authoring applications. They want me to use Yahoo Site
Builder, at least for now.

Unless they currently have a site built with that tool, then use the
tool you are comfortable with. You're the web designer. Either
take a machine to the site or have them lease/buy/build you one.

Here are my question:

1. The package includes the support of Paypal, but does it support
taking credit card payments?

If it supports PayPal then yes you can take credit cards if you do
what PayPal asks of you. Or you can just interface directly with
PayPal and skip the Yahoo stuff.

2. How good is Yahoo Site Builder? What are its limitations?

Don't know but I've never seen an online tool that was very good
beyond a homepage for someone who has no web authoring skills.

3. If I start with Yahoo Site Builder, but find its limitations, is it
easy to switch to other tools such as Dreamweaver? To get my project
going without wasting time, is it better we decide on one tool and
stick to it through the whole project?

If they want you to learn a new tool there's a learning curve they
have to pay you for (specify that it's an expensive learning curve).
Unless they have an existing design team that you have to integrate
with then there's no reason not to use what you already know.

I'd say the key reason behind them wanting you to use Yahoo Site
Builder is so that they can take over after you get the site up and
running.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Yet the company doesn't have any web authoring applications. They
want me to use Yahoo Site Builder, at least for now.

If cost is an issue, show them Nvu.

 

[Andy Dingley]

I had some web design experience before so a company asks me to do a
small commercial site with Yahoo's Starter web hosting package
($11.95/mth).

The real question here is why on earth you would ever host anything with
Yahoo.

 

[Ross]

The real question here is why on earth you would ever host anything with
Yahoo.

That's why I want to know what's bad with Yahoo hosting? What's your
opinion?

 

[Philip Ronan]

That's why I want to know what's bad with Yahoo hosting? What's your
opinion?

I just look up the details on Yahoo's website:
<http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/compare.php>

To be honest this looks like great value for money.

 

[Andy Dingley]

That's why I want to know what's bad with Yahoo hosting? What's your
opinion?

First of all, I wouldn't want to do anything with Yahoo because the
Yahoo branding is visible on it and that hurts the business' own image.

Secondly I just don't _trust_ Yahoo. There are any number of privacy
issues with Yahoo, going back for years. I even quit all my contact with
egroups (including the W3C lists hosted there) when Yahoo bought them,
because of this.

Thirdly I've had technical dealings with Yahoo from time to time before
and never found their technical competence to be impressive. Better than
MSN, admittedly.

Fourthly (and this is the main one) I don't like their domain
registration system for a register+host package deal. Just read the
traffic hereabouts for what a perennial nightmare this is, if you ever
want to move hosting somewhere else. It's often said that you should
never register where you host, and not without good reason. Personally I
do use a combined host and registrar, but I consider that particular
host to be more trustworthy than typical.

Finally, those prices aren't even impressive. Now I don't actually care
about this (the hosting charge is one of the smallest costs in the whole
deal) but that's not a price that's making me sit up and think "oh,
that's cheap".

 

[mbstevens]

That's why I want to know what's bad with Yahoo hosting? What's your
opinion?

I did a small commercial site for someone who had already bought hosting
there.

Miva came into the mix, and I did not like it. They probably have a
wider selection of stuff to use now. Check whether they have both
CGI/Perl and PHP available now. That would be about the minimum
acceptable service. Still, you might want to take the job anyway.

 

[Philip Ronan]

First of all, I wouldn't want to do anything with Yahoo because the
Yahoo branding is visible on it and that hurts the business' own image.

Untrue, unless I'm missing something. Where's the Yahoo branding here, for
example: <http://www.mswrite.com/>?

But most of your other points are valid. Yahoo offerings are often flawed
one way or another -- Yahoo Groups is a particularly revolting kludge. I'd
certainly wait to hear other people's experiences before jumping in at the
deep end.

I thought the prices were pretty good though, for what you get.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Untrue, unless I'm missing something. Where's the Yahoo branding here, for
example: <http://www.mswrite.com/>?

Egads! That page is 950 KB (that's just the HTML: not including images!)
for about six lines of text, a 19 point bullet list, five navigation links
and a little contact details.

It took a good ten seconds to download on 2 Mbps ADSL. No doubt it would
take at least a minute or two on a dial-up[1] connection.

Viewing the source, there are thousands of lines of MS-generated,
commented-out XML junk.

____
[1] Yes, people do still use these.
http://message-id.net/[email protected]

 

[Philip Ronan]

Egads! That page is 950 KB (that's just the HTML: not including images!)

I realise the design is lousy. I was just pointing out that it doesn't
contain any automatic Yahoo branding.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Untrue, unless I'm missing something. Where's the Yahoo branding here, for
example: <http://www.mswrite.com/>?

Yahoo will still be sending their usual 1pixel web bug(s).

Also, last time I looked - this may have changed - you were subject to
Yahoo's bandwidth policies. If your site were to get slashdotted, or if
the images were hot-linked from elsewhere, then the page served gets
very messy as it sprouts Yahoo's "Bandwidth exceeded" images. This was
my main complaint about their hosting last time I looked seriously at
it. Commercial hosting should have better policies for bursting
bandwidth - it does happen, and it might be the best sales lead you get
all year.

 

[Philip Ronan]

Yahoo will still be sending their usual 1pixel web bug(s).

I just took a look at the source of mswrite.com, and ... HOLY CRAP WHAT A
MESS!! You're right, it does appear to have some invalid server-generated

Also, last time I looked - this may have changed - you were subject to
Yahoo's bandwidth policies. If your site were to get slashdotted, or if
the images were hot-linked from elsewhere, then the page served gets
very messy as it sprouts Yahoo's "Bandwidth exceeded" images.

Well 200 GB a month sounds like a lot to me. (I have to pay extra for
everything over 1 GB :sob