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Wanted: Info and Talent

It’s time, again, to revamp the blog. I’ve never had my “very own” website before (I feel like I’m moving out on my own all over again). Can you help me out with any of these things:

UPDATE: Friday Feb. 25th, 8:48am

1. URL: I know I can get a .ca domain for $10 from about a billion people. However I think a .com would suit the URL I want a bit better. Anyone have any idea how much those are and where to get it? purchased this morning through dotster.com.

2. Hosting: Where, Who, How Much? going to go with Site5

3. Software: Should I stick with MT? Or move to Expression Engine or WordPress or something else entirely? Recommendations? I’m a big fan of the open source movement, so I’m going to go with WordPress. It’s time to try something different anyway 🙂

4. Design: I have a definite concept in mind, and just need someone to put it all together for me. I don’t have $149 USD to fork out to the Moxie Girls (or anyone else for that matter), but I’m willing to negotiate and bargain for cash & barter services if you, or anyone you know, is looking for experience and/or a little cash on the side. Negotiating with a couple people to get it all up and running.

Thanks! And thanks again everyone for all your helpful input!

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14 thoughts on “Wanted: Info and Talent”

  1. I know you’ve already made your choice, but I just wanted to back up what peanut said about godaddy. I’m sure they’re find for domains only, but their hosting is stupid. For “security reasons” that no other ISP in the world seems to require, they don’t have a standard Perl installation, which makes a *ton* of scripts (notably, the ones made by the company I used to work for) not work.

    they made us lose sales because they’re stupid. that’s annoying.

  2. Heya… I’m weighing in on this one. It’s a big part of my service to my clients to ensure they get really great hosting.

    Site5.com is it. $6.95 per month, with discounts for yearly purchase… And they’ve got a ton of blogging, forum and other software already ready to go for you. Additionally, there’s 3 different types of stats, so no need for anything else. Tons of room, and bankable bandwidth — You’ll never use it all… Even if you had a streaming webcam.

    I’ve had about 45 or so clients sign with them, and none have yet switched in the 6 or so years I’ve been referring them. I get absolutely nothing for referral, but if you do use my work domain to refer, you’ll be in good hands with them (you would anyhow).

    Oh, and service? I’ve never waited more than 15 minutes for an answer, day and night.

    There you go.

  3. Boy do I need to call you 🙂

    GoDaddy has terrible Customer Service, IMO. I just finshed a website design for someone who was with GoDaddy and I ran into multiple problems with their servers. MT 3.15 will NOT install and run. I don’t know about other blog software though. I also had problems with Gallery, and other issues with their MySQL setup.

    I can get you a domain and hosting with my current host for a year, with domain name for $45 US. That includes 333MB of space, 5 GB/Month of Transfer and a boatload of other goodies, like subdomains, mailing lists, yadda yadda.

    I’d also be more than willing to do the install, setup and design for you, bater for goods and services. Call me dahling.

  5. Sue: same here! I always knew it as Verve Hosting, but evidently people are supposed to make cheques payable to Verve Publishing, so there you go. I’ve shopped around recently and did find a better deal, specifically with DreamHost http://www.dreamhost.com/shared/comparison.html For me I’ve been very happy with Verve, especially their tech support. I’m staying with Verve only because it would take a long time to update all my scripts and settings and databases if I moved.

    I’ve only ever used namecheap.com for domain registration (and am a very satisfied customer), but I have also heard good things aboug Go Daddy.

    MT and WordPress are pretty much equals in terms of how good they are. Both get their share of … unsolicited advertisements … sent to the comments, so you probably can’t base your decision on that. Both are free for personal use, but WordPress is free in both the “it doesn’t cost any money no matter what you use it for” sense as well as in the “free software” sense, meaning that people are allowed to make their own version of it. The second part doesn’t matter too much to most people, and that’s fine.

  7. I just switched to WordPress myself, and I quite like it for one-person blogging. Highly recommended.

    As for domains, I use Dotster for my domains, and love it. It’s friendly, easy, and secure (at least, for me).

    Our company is considering starting a hosting site, including hosting for weblog sites specifically – with stock (but customizable) installations for every user. I don’t know how much demand there is for a service like that, but if it’s what you want, you could be our first test case. Domains would be included in the price of hosting, so it might save you some time/trouble in that respect as well. If you’re interested, let me know.

  9. domain: dotster.com (if you buy a .com, you get the .info for free!)
    hosting: site5.com (love them. thank tanya!)
    cms: mt 3.15 isn’t teh suck.
    stats: statcounter.com
    design: oy. i need some help with that one, myself.

  10. My brother does some web design for a living. I don’t know what his workload is right now, but I can find out, if you’re interested. You can email me, or let me know through your comments!

  11. .ca domains generally cost more — CIRA charges … $11 or $12 for them, I doubt you can get ’em cheaper than at-cost.

    My company has .com’s for $12.99 CDN, and .ca’s for $19.99. It’s nice to buy things in CDN… 🙂

    I’m a big fan of both my employer (who, if you’re interested in, I can sell you on offline) and my host, ehosting.ca. they’re lovely.

    I like WordPress, but it’s sadly totally unsuitable for my purposes (which includes hosting like, a zillion sites.) It would probably work wonders for a single-blog site, though.

  12. Go-daddy is prolly the cheapest. And for as often as you use them, the service is good. I have most of my domains there, and my work will be transferring 14 domains there as well
    Site 5 is pretty good for hosting from what I hear. I don’t have personal experience with them, but several people I know deal with them, and all are quite happy. Cheap like borscht.

  13. I can help you out with the design and installing WordPress or MT if you like. We can work out a barter arrangement around you helping me to reorganize and redesign my spring/summer wardrobe, cuz every time I see you, you manage to be well dressed.

    As for hosting, I use Verve Publishing which has a variety of tasty packages and quite good back-end tools for stats, etc.

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