[asdalol]

word of advice: stay the **** away from 1and1

[Broderss]

1&1 are the best you'll find, imo.

[Broderss]

(Original post by asdalol)
word of advice: stay the **** away from 1and1

What's wrong with 1and1?

[Kodias]

(Original post by Broderss)
What's wrong with 1and1?

1&1 are a complete joke.

I'd put Inmotion on the hosting list, although they make you pay a lump sum as opposed to instalments, for some packages > http://www.inmotionhosting.com/

http://statcounter.com/ > if anyone ever needed an alternative to Google Analytics

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ > largest forum for discussions on SEO, Adsense, etc.

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769 > Google Webmaster guidelines.

[Broderss]

(Original post by Kodias)
1&1 are a complete joke.

In what way though?

[Kodias]

(Original post by Broderss)
In what way though?

Their site navigation used to be terrible when I was using it, the hoops I had to jump through to try and cancel my account were ridiculous.

http://blog.cryos.net/archives/25-11...ervice....html
http://amplicate.com/hate/1and1
http://www.grumbletext.co.uk/vt.php?t=1242

A lot of people seem to have had positive experiences with them but personally I won't be creating an account with them again.

[jb9191]

Some of those links are really for amateurs.

The best one is for the scripts @ www.hotscripts.com

The rest are either very well known already or not very good at all.

Here are some links for vector images to create good backgrounds in PhotoShop and Illustrator for websites and custom menu's.

http://www.freevectors.net/recent/50

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/50-webs...ages-download/

Here is also a free css tab designer.

http://www.highdots.com/products/css-tab-designer/


Also web designers should look for highly professional fonts to use in graphics.

Code Light & Code Bold are two very good stylish fonts to use for headers and so on.

--------

You might also want to try Bit Font Maker for creating unique fonts.

Typetester is also good for comparing fonts against each other.

http://www.typetester.org/

HTML Ipsum is also very good.

http://html-ipsum.com/

This is a good site to cross test your site in a browser

http://crossbrowsertesting.com/

Also, if you have a MAC I strongly recommend CSSEdit as its very good.

on-screen ruler MeasureIt is very good

Format CSS and CSS Compressor are also good tools

I also suggest you check out DeviantArt for a full catalogue of graphics, vectors, actions, fonts and so on to add to your site.

[cabbage]

Can anyone tell me a good web host? I'm looking for a free, or pretty cheap one. It's mainly for messing around and trying things out at the moment. One that I can use php on would be good.

Thanks

[mfaxford]

might be worth seeing what your ISP offers failing that if your at uni then your uni might offer somewhere you can host some pages and use php.

[Chris_L]

I might be able to set you up, I run a reseller.

[RedGuy]

http://www.pixelinternet.co.uk/compa...ux-hosting.php

Starter plan, £19.99 for one year. I am currently using this deal and I get a lot of visits for my site. Very reliable and easy. You can register a domain with them too, but they are not the cheapest. I use fasthosts for my domain

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/domains/

[AWSLC]

(Original post by cabbage)
Can anyone tell me a good web host? I'm looking for a free, or pretty cheap one. It's mainly for messing around and trying things out at the moment. One that I can use php on would be good.

Thanks

000Webhost

or

123-Reg have a special on for hosting at the moment which is nicely priced: http://www.123-reg.co.uk/studenthosting/

[RightSaidJames]

If you want it on an ad-hoc basis, try NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. It's basically pay-as-you-go or pay for what you use, and its rates are really cheap especially if you don't plan on getting too much traffic.

[JGR]

I can vouch for Zernebok http://www.zernebok.com/

[Hedger]

Has anyone used any Amazon web hosting services? I only realised they offered such services when the they banned wikileaks from their servers. I'd most likely go with them if they did any good deals for more amateur / personal accounts, obviously ignoring my morals.

[estel]

(Original post by _MaLc_)
Has anyone used any Amazon web hosting services? I only realised they offered such services when the they banned wikileaks from their servers. I'd most likely go with them if they did any good deals for more amateur / personal accounts, obviously ignoring my morals.

I don't think they're aimed at power users. A9 is fantastic if you're running a webservice and might want to quickly ramp up your available capacity, but I can't see them being competitive at smaller scales.

[Mehcore]

Fatcow offers unmetered/unlimited hosting for £30/pa with a free domain and advertising credits.

[Conorrr]

(Original post by cabbage)
Can anyone tell me a good web host? I'm looking for a free, or pretty cheap one. It's mainly for messing around and trying things out at the moment. One that I can use php on would be good.

Thanks

If you just want something to mess around with then just run it on your own system.

You will need:

Apache (2.2.17)
PHP You will need a VC6 version as you will be running Apache 2

You will probably want:

MySQL

and thats all you will need, shouldn't take long to set up.

[Mehcore]

(Original post by Conorrr)
If you just want something to mess around with then just run it on your own system.

You will need:

Apache (2.2.17)
PHP You will need a VC6 version as you will be running Apache 2

You will probably want:

MySQL

and thats all you will need, shouldn't take long to set up.

Or if you want to have an all in one bundle give XAMPP a shot. Theres a few issues with the default install so I wouldn't use it as a web facing server, just for home intranet.

[derexel]

(Original post by RightSaidJames)
If you want it on an ad-hoc basis, try NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. It's basically pay-as-you-go or pay for what you use, and its rates are really cheap especially if you don't plan on getting too much traffic.

+1 NFS is really good if you're starting out. It only gets expensive when your site becomes big. (More visitors, more storage, ...)