[TreeSaw]

Ok...I have taken upon the daunting (hopefully not so much) task of creating a very basic website for our LUNA Chix team and I need a little guidance:

We're thinking that buying our domain name so we don't have a lengthy address (we're looking at www.nylunachix.com and it appears to be available) would be our best bet. So, what I need to know is:

1) Where should I go to get our site name (i.e. who's the least expensive as we don't really have a budget for this sort of thing)?
2) Web hosting fees -- we don't want to spend a lot and want complete control of our content. I have used FrontPage and a little Dreamweaver so we're planning a pretty basic site to convey team information, a few pics, event & clinic schedule and our ride calendar...nothing fancy and we won't really need much bandwidth (or so I think). Again lowest cost alternative would be great as this is an out-of-pocket expense for me.

That being said...what do you recommend and why?

Of course, if any of you want to assist with design out of the goodness of your heart (ok, I could probably pay you in mini luna bars too) we would welcome the input & assistance.

Thanks!

 

[BadDNA]

You'll need to buy the domain name like you said, I buy mine at godaddy.com but I'm not sure if there's anything less expensive out there now. You'll also need to have DNS service so that visiting systems know where to locate www.nylunachix.com, for that I use dnsmadeeasy.com and again, there may be cheaper solutions but they are fairly easy to use and relatively cheap. Lastly you need a place to host the website (actually you need this in order to set up your DNS records) You could try Google applications for that http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions_spe.html I've played around with it and it's fairly easy to use, no web editor required, you do it all with their tools. They even give you directions for setting up your DNS records and you can also set up email with them using gmail as the backbone. Feel free to ask me if you have any other questions.

Edit: Actually, going back a looking at your needs again, I'd highly recommend using Google for your project. The setup is easy enough like I said and it can be set up with a calendar that you can allow other people access to add events on. We're actually using one for our ride and trailwork schedule here for all of our local stuff.

 

[binary visions]

I have two domains through GoDaddy and support two others from coworkers. Nothing but positive things to say about them. Setup was painless, and their customer service department has been very responsive to the couple requests we've made.

I also signed up for a Google account for another domain and their user interface is friendly like all Google applications, but I found it lacking for a power user who wanted complete control over everything. Just an initial impression, though, and perhaps I simply haven't found all the tools... and it will likely not bother you anyway.

 

[geargrrl]

ditto on godaddy, very inexpensive and good service