syntec4":2cta9rs3 said:
Matthew, The Falco is a nice bike. I've had a bit of a blast on one and liked it. There is supposed to be a a new 1200 firestorm on the horizon...I'm already saving :lol:
I'm getting too old and I need something more comfortable... not quite old enough for a BMW yet
but I have my eye on a Guzzi Breva 1100 - but it might be some time, have to weigh up tools vs bike!
syntec4":2cta9rs3 said:
I have my site already built with Dreamweaver and I have bought a domain from freeparking.co.uk. Would I need to buy another name or could I have this registered with the same company that supplies the webspace?
That's a great start. The key point here is that owning a domain name is a separate issue from hosting it. A registrar actually registers it for you so that you own it and a web host provides you the space and facilities to do something with it. They can (and often are) the same company, but they don't have to be - from experience I prefer to keep them separate, that way a) I'm not trusting anyone to register (and more to the point, renew) my domain and b) it's easier to change one or the other at your own pace if necessary.
So you already have a registrar, you need to look for a web host. I don't have any specific recommendations - I have a dedicated server (which actually isn't as expensive as it sounds) but my host only do servers. However, shop around and I'd suggest looking for somewhere that gives you a 'Plesk control panel'. Plesk is the most popular control panel software, it manages a server (I have it on mine) and gives each customer a web-based management interface for the domain, where you can set up email addresses etc. You can try it out here:
http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk8/demo/
Compare various specs that you see - eg web space, bandwidth etc. Difficult to know how much bandwidth you need, but as an example, my wife's site (shameless plug) at
http://www.nordljus.co.uk/en/ has lots of pictures and about 500 or so visitors a day, and uses about 25GB/month.
Also make sure that you get PHP and MySQL (they are fairly standard, although I would recommend a Linux-based account rather than Windows) - you don't need to know anything about them but lots of photo gallery, blog, forum etc programs use this combination. Also check out whether they do backups, especially if you will be keeping things on there that you don't have a copy of on your computer... although having said that, I would never trust anyone to do backups for me. NB Plesk includes a utility for you to easily back up your entire domain.
Once you have found a host, sign up, tell them what domain you are using and they tell you what name servers to use. You then go back to your registrar (freeparking), sign in and you can change the name servers (which define where the domain is hosted) and within 24 hours it should be working. Then you can look around for a gallery program to install - I think Coppermine is popular but there should be plenty of others to choose from.
Oh, and check the terms of the web host, how long you need to sign up for - hosting really is a commodity, if you're not happy or find a better deal, you have control over where the domain points to so you can change it at any time (subject to moving gallery etc).
Phew, sorry for the lengthy post... it sounds a bit daunting, but once you figure it all out, the flexibility of being able to do whatever you want with your domain is worth it. Let me know if you need more info!
M
