Author Topic: Advice on Web Hosting and Design? (Read 538 times)

Seagoon · « **on:** July 28, 2005, 10:11:43 AM »

Hi Guys,

I'm looking for some advice on two fronts, web hosting, and web design.

Our church's website is hosted by a local internet provider here in Fayetteville, now I want to be charitable, but I've come to believe that Hell probably has better customer service and tech support.

For instance, recently - for the second straight year in a row - our registration expired and our website and email were both down for two days. Last year when this happened, they assured me they would automatically reregister the domain - they didn't. As a testament to their competence, when I called them to tell them our domain was not working, they answered emails sent to an address in that domain and then never bothered to follow up when it bounced.

So, anyone got a suggestion for a competent, reliable, and inexpensive web host? We desperately need to find a new one. A host who actually cares about the customer would be a major improvement.

Also, we are looking for help updating and improving our website (http://www.providencepca.com) What I am looking for are suggestions as to improving the user friendliness, attractiveness, usefulness, coherence and intelligibility of the website. We could really use an "audit" by some disinterested observers. I know the website badly needs to be improved, but I don't really know where to begin. So if you have suggestions for our church website please feel free to post them or mail them to me.

Thanks

- SEAGOON

Eagler · « **Reply #1 on:** July 28, 2005, 01:35:36 PM »

the first step I'd suggest is redoing the navigation scheme..

about everything you click on on your site spawns another window.
It looks like a site that has grown from a small simple site to a hard to navigate & understand one

what is your budget? what are you paying now a year? how many times do you update the content? weekly, monthly?

Seagoon · « **Reply #2 on:** July 28, 2005, 03:37:36 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Eagler
the first step I'd suggest is redoing the navigation scheme..

about everything you click on on your site spawns another window.
It looks like a site that has grown from a small simple site to a hard to navigate & understand one

what is your budget? what are you paying now a year? how many times do you update the content? weekly, monthly?

Eagler,

Currently the only budgeted items are the cost of hosting and a service called "SermonAudio.com" where our sermons are made available via MP3s. The site itself is entirely maintained by my wife, and grew from the simple site I designed years ago (yeah, you guessed it). She currently gets paid nada for updating it.

What would you suggest in terms of simplifying the navigation? Also, should we not spawn a new window?

- SEAGOON

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 28, 2005, 03:43:21 PM »

Seagoon, one of the guys in the building here has his own webhosting and webdesign service. He does good work, he charges $10 a month for hosting plus whatever design work is needed. I'll be glad to get his website info for you if you are interested.

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 28, 2005, 05:47:59 PM »

Sorry, waited too long to edit my other post. Here's his website

http://www.6deepstudios.com

You get 1GB of webspace and a fairly generous bandwidth. I think you can email him from the website, or at mwebb@6deepstudios.com

Good luck!

Gunslinger · « **Reply #5 on:** July 28, 2005, 06:46:59 PM »

SEAGOON,

I will whole heartedly recomend to anyone http://www.ipowerweb.com

They are not that expensive and the tech support is good.

I'd give you tips about design and layout but then I'd end up doing one for you on my own time and "my own time" isn't in much abundance these days.

Speaking of wich I'm off to mow the lawn before it rains.

Eagler · « **Reply #6 on:** July 29, 2005, 06:52:01 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Seagoon
Eagler,

Currently the only budgeted items are the cost of hosting and a service called "SermonAudio.com" where our sermons are made available via MP3s. The site itself is entirely maintained by my wife, and grew from the simple site I designed years ago (yeah, you guessed it). She currently gets paid nada for updating it.

What would you suggest in terms of simplifying the navigation? Also, should we not spawn a new window?

- SEAGOON

Seagoon
I would look into a frameset, where your links are either on top/bottom or on the left side and content changes in the main frame in the middle.
I would only spawn a new page when the content type or size dictated it or if by not spawning a new window, the user felt lost in the site without it.
Also would look at the overall font size. I viewed the site on 1280x1024 and the font was still kinda big. The average resolution is 1024 x 768 on a 17" monitor. I would code for that and not have too many fonts greater than a "2" in dreamweaver or a "10" in ms word.
just my 2 cents

Sandman · « **Reply #7 on:** July 29, 2005, 10:49:59 AM »

Seagoon,
I've been using Surpass Hosting.