Web Hosting/Domain Registration

So, I need to set up a website soon for my latest million dollar idea. I've never done it before, so I need some guidance, if anyone has any thoughts.

Details/questions:
My partner in the affair is a programmer at EMC, and knows a thing or two. He'll be building the program (basically a big database/calculator), but I'm not sure what he knows about building websites. Are the DIY builders available on godaddy.com etc useful at all for an ecommerce application?

What's the story on secure payment? I'd rather not be responsible for holding credit card information if there's much hassle or liability involved. Any thoughts?

Is there any advantage from one registrar to the next, other than price? How about hosting? Any advantage to registering/hosting from the same place?

I have done some research on the subject- enough to know I could use some direction. Any thoughts would be appreciated (and may reult in a beer, if ever we should meet)

Ct,

I got a business doing this. I'll be happy to completely help ya out for that said beer and lots of referrals. PM me.

-Stephen

ctenidae said:

My partner in the affair is a programmer at EMC, and knows a thing or two. He'll be building the program (basically a big database/calculator), but I'm not sure what he knows about building websites. Are the DIY builders available on godaddy.com etc useful at all for an ecommerce application?

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I don't have any experience using GoDaddy's site builder but if it is similar to all the others I have seen then it would not be very useful for eCommerce. You will need server-side programming for eCommerce and I do not believe the provided builder has that capability, but I may be wrong.

ctenidae said:

What's the story on secure payment? I'd rather not be responsible for holding credit card information if there's much hassle or liability involved. Any thoughts?

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I did some research on secure payments this summer so the following is from memory which may or may not be 100% accurate.
Depending on the level of customization you want you have a few options ranging from letting PayPal handle your transactions (cheap) to total customization which involves SSL certificate, internet merchant account, payment processing gateway, and other things that I am forgetting (expensive). PayPal offers a solution kind of in the middle which allows total customization of your website and shopping cart while PayPal does the payment processing invisible to the customer. Check out https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside for more info.

ctenidae said:

Is there any advantage from one registrar to the next, other than price? How about hosting? Any advantage to registering/hosting from the same place?

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Some place will give you free or discounted services with a domain purchase. Other than that there are not any major differences for my experience. Just make sure you have full control over the DNS setting for your domain.

Do *not* register your domain name with your hosting provider. Repeat, do *not* register your domain name with your hosting provider.

Reason: if everything goes south with the provider (they fail to provide the level of service they sold you, won't admit it, etc...which sometimes does happen), if you registered through them they may have put *their* info in the contact portion of the whois record and they effectively own the domain. If you register elsewhere, you can make sure that *you* own the domain and can point it at another hosting provider if necessary.

As far as actually building the site, most competent programmers are capable of handling HTML and CSS; however, very few of them are also competent graphic designers. If you want your site to look good, you probably need a graphic designer involved (or someone with similar talents). I know of a good one who does freelance, so feel free to check out http://www.m2creativemedia.com; if you want to see what happens when you let someone with a programming background do a website, look at mine.

Personally, I like http://www.hostgator.com/ for hosting and use http://www.gandi.net for registrar purposes; check out the forums at http://www.webhostingforums.com, too, as they're a really good resource.

On my gallery, I've got a shopping cart setup to sell prints; the cart uses the Paypal interface so that I never touch anyone's credit card info (which makes me happy, as I am about as familiar with Payment Card Industry standards as I want to be). Buyers don't need Paypal accounts, either; they can just enter CC info and send me money.

Thanks for the input, guys. Stephen, check your PMs.

Good tip on teh registrar/host seperation thing- makes a lot of sense.
Good to hear PayPal does an invisible-to-the-customer thing. I like it.
I'll check out the m2 creative media deal. My brother and sister-in-law are both designers (though more industrial adn clothing) so that's a resource I'll tap, plus one of my best friend's husband is a website designer. All good resources.

Thanks again guys- I knew I could count on AZ!

As others have said, you definitely do not want to register your name through your hosting company. The company I manage a couple domains with is http://www.aletianic.com/. $10 per year and I have complete control. They also provide automatic renewals.

My hosting plan is with http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/. A good low price with tons of features. I've been with them for almost a year and have no complaints.

I hope this website isn't for publishing those pictures of us...

Marc said:

I hope this website isn't for publishing those pictures of us...

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Only if your check doesn't clear.

I have hired a good person from Argentina via http://getafreelancer.com/ to help be in ecommerce reconstruction. You can bid out projects there. You need to be clear what your needs are to get an accurate bid. If you hire someone that way, stick with them if they do a good job for you. Otherwise, put to bid other modifications.

Hint: php & mysql. Check out: http://opensourcecms.com/

ck