Recommended server for club ?? Any ideas?

[bobt]

Hi,

Our club has been using Vicnet (Victorian Library) as our ISP for mail and as a host for our website. Vicnet has now decided to close its Internet doors and is chucking all its clients out in the cold.

Any recommendations for a reasonably priced host for an Incorporated Association? I think I might need to learn Wordpress now, so it'll need to be a host that can manage that. We have registered a domain name, but that's as far as we've got so far - and they only gave us until the end of January to go ...... bummer.

[hoffy]

Our club has been using a free wordpress site with a domain name bolt on. Email is all gmail.

We are also looking at buying some hosting as well, as while wordpress is pretty good, it does have it's limitations. We will, though, stick with gmail, simply because it is very easy to use by our committee members on many different and varied devices.

What club are you a member of Bob?

[bobt]

Our club has been using a free wordpress site with a domain name bolt on. Email is all gmail.

We already use Gmail for most things, but our one public email address is the Vicnet one, and that will go.

We are also looking at buying some hosting as well, as while wordpress is pretty good, it does have it's limitations. We will, though, stick with gmail, simply because it is very easy to use by our committee members on many different and varied devices. What club are you a member of Bob?

I'm in Eastern Suburbs, and I've acted as webmaster for years. Things are changing though, and websites need to be increasingly modern, sophisticated and functional. I think ours is starting to look tired (much like me).

Ideally, I'd like the site to do all sorts of stuff, but I lack the depth of computing knowledge to do it. At present I just use a WYSIWYG web program that handles our immediate needs. It seems a few clubs use Wordpress and find it OK - which club are you with?

[hoffy]

Bob,

I'm with the Blackwood Photographic Club (in SA).

Our website is http://blackwoodphotoclub.org/

You can do a lot with wordpress - an awful lot. I have also found that the learning curve is not too difficult, if you are relatively savvy. I would suggest even setting up a test site to start off with and take it from there.

[bobt]

Bob,
I'm with the Blackwood Photographic Club (in SA). Our website is http://blackwoodphotoclub.org/
You can do a lot with wordpress - an awful lot. I have also found that the learning curve is not too difficult, if you are relatively savvy. I would suggest even setting up a test site to start off with and take it from there.

Thanks for that - yours is a nice website, and the sort of thing I'm aiming for. The Wordpress ones seem fairly similar in style but they do present the clubs quite nicely. You club present well and looks inviting from the outside, and that's what it's all about really.

I was just reading your initial thoughts about joining a "real world" camera club, which i also did after being on-line at first. Similar thoughts - but each has it's own advantages.

I've just started checking out providers, but http://www.justhost.com/ might be worth a look.

[hoffy]

No probs - there are plenty as well. I believe that this place used to use hostgater. I have also used dreamhost in the past. They all cost around the same for shared servers.

The other important thing is to regularly keep content up to date. Something new at least once a month is pretty good.

[ricktas]

Have a look at at AP site advertiser hostgeek

[CandidTown]

Went thru a nightmare of choosing a reliable shared hosting company a while back.
Settled for Hostgator which is reliable and fast enough for me and stopped looking.
None will give you 100% availability and as with all shared hosts the speed will be a factor.

As for the website try this:
- Install WordPress
- Google themefores to find a wordpress theme you like. The good ones wil be around $55, or you can just use your free them that comes with wordpress.
- Post a job on Freelancer for a wordpress website design. Tell them what you want your website to look like, or give them a link to a site that you like and they'll 'replicate' it for you. This job on Freelancer should not cost you more than $200, possibly less.
- learn to manage/update Wordpress, which is very simple. Youtube will have a lot of tutorials on it. Back up your database/site regularly and you're up and running.

End of January is almost 2 months away...
All this you can have easily done before Christmas so you can enjoy a stress free holiday.

[bobt]

Went thru a nightmare of choosing a reliable shared hosting company a while back.
Settled for Hostgator which is reliable and fast enough for me and stopped looking.
None will give you 100% availability and as with all shared hosts the speed will be a factor.

Thanks for this link and the advice - and thanks to Rick too for his suggestion which I'll follow up as well. It's all useful stuff for us to ponder as we navigate the various alternatives, so hopefully one of these will end up being what we want. It's always hard to know exactly which way to go - especially when one's knowledge is somewhat stretched. One man's small amount of knowledge gets blown out of proportion when looked upon by others who know even less!! Should be Ok though, especially when it gets past the dreaded committee process!

[hoffy]

The one thing that you need to do is put it all into perspective.

In reality, a host for a photography club website is not what I would call mission critical hosting. Hosting on a shared server (that is reliable) should in reality be sufficient.