Hosting our own website

[Sickboy]

I'm considering hosting our own website soon. We are about to get a 2MB connection (up and down) here and I'm wondering if that is enough. Also I am not really web-savvy so could do with some basic advice on how to get started.

[cat5e]

For access to the Intrent you might want to read this.

Link to: How can I find My Home Personal Computer/Server on this "Huge" Internet World? (http://www.ezlan.net/myip.html)

As for Webserver?

There are Free solutions consist of easy to use programs, to $20K Multi CPUs Solaris Servers.

You have to define what you need to do.

:cool:

[Sickboy]

The website will initially consist of just a few pages but will eventually be an online store and will therefore need a secure area for storage of customer details. Not envisaging huge traffic levels in the foreseeable future.

[richard_cocks]

If you want it permanently up, a popular solution is to get a small box running linux with apache; an old PII 300 would probably be ample, you could run a webserver off that and also at the same time probably use it to route your internet connection and run stuff like iptables.

As for whether the connection is enough, well it really depends how popular you think the site would be, but for just starting out a small site it's probably plenty, you just want to be sure it's a stable machine.

[r8500]

Most ecommerce sites do well with just a 1.54 mb connection. You should be fine.

[cat5e]

I would go backward on such a project I.e. find first the type of Store software that you are comfortable with, and the specific package that would go with. Then I would build a server that is within the specs to support it.

:t

[Sickboy]

Thanks Cat5e - that leads neatly into my next question; can anyone recommend a good shopping cart/catalogue program? It needs to be easy to update/modify and preferrably inexpensive. I've played around with Actinic and found it OK but I was wondering if anyone out there has any real experience with it or other packages.

[Eric Legge]

Have a look about what http://www.wilsonweb.com has to say about shopping carts.

Eric,
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk

[cat5e]

Ok.

Let take one more step Back.

The nature of the shopping card might depend on how customer payment is done.

If you are going to run big sums of money, and you can get you own Credit Cart account then you can choose and independent Shopping cart Software package and you are on your own.

Enter the term shopping carts into Google search and you will get a lot of reading material.

However if you are a small scale operation, and does not have your own Credit Card collection capacity, you can attach your self to one of the available services.

As an example you can open an account with Paypal.

You install on your server the following free program.

When people buy on your site the payment part they are automatically transferred to Paypal. They can use their credit card with Paypal, and you get the payment minus small commission fee.

Link to: Shopping Cart for PayPal. (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/shopcartpaypal.html)

This is a popular Independent Solution. It is $395, you can download a trial first.

Link to: eComm PRO. (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/ecomm.html)

:D

[Sickboy]

Thanks again Cat, we do have a merchant account and we also have a Paypal account (not sure about the US but the commission in the UK isn't that small). I've downloaded eComm Pro trial and will weigh it up against Actinic then decide.
Thanks for your help.