Large Scale Central

Need a new webpage host.

General Discussion
#1

So I think the time has come to look for a new host for my many hobby webpages:

http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/Scottychaos/

I have been building those pages since 2002…some are continually updated, others are “finished” and static…

I make zero dollars off of my webpages, they are just an extension of my hobbies, but I do really enjoy them.

I pay $45 a year for my image host, smugmug, and im willing to pay that because I need a reliable image host…(and my MLS space filled up ages ago, and the free photo hosts arent reliable enough for me) so for a new webpage host, I actually dont need much storage! just my .html files really…everything stored on MLS is only 90 MEG, which is pretty tiny…for future photo storage, I will continue to use Smugmug, so really all I need is a host for the .html files themselves, and not much more…im content with the $45 a year for photo hosting, but I dont want to pay much more than that to keep my webpages going…

I would like to use google sites, and I have moved some pages there:

http://www.scotlawrence.com

https://sites.google.com/site/scotlawrence/lvrr-survivors

but…the problem with google sites is that you are forced to use the same background for every page! which wont work for me…and its not realistic to create a separate google account for every page.

So…anyone have any suggestions for a free or low-cost, reliable, “hobby” (non-business) webpage host?

thanks!

Scot

#2

https://www.weebly.com/

is what we use for the Vermont Garden Railway Society - VGRS.US

We have upgraded a little from the Free site offering.

ALSO

wix.com

#3

Trainweb. org…Free, but you’ll need an FTP to upload stuff. (Filezilla is free.) http://www.trainweb.org/rgs/ Displays a banner add on your home page, mostly train related.

Aabaco Small Business which used to be Yahoo, Geocities…Not free, but cheap and easy to use and no adds.

Those are 2 that I use. And I’m sure there are many others out there.

Photobucket I use to store pix, if you want no adds there’s a small monthly charge. IMO, worth it.

#4

Thanks Don and Kent, I will take a look at those…

trainweb.org is out (for me) I used them for my G-gauge club webpage for many years…

yes, its free, but its really heavy on the ads…I switched the club webpage over to google sites, which I like a lot better:

https://sites.google.com/site/1991gggrs/

So that works great for the club webpage…but as I said above, I cant use google sites for my personal pages, because of the restriction of every page having the same template within one google sites account…so thats no good.

And I cant use any host that requires the use of templates…I need to just upload already finished .html files.

I did some heavy research on the topic last night, and Github looks promising:

https://alexcican.com/post/guide-hosting-website-dropbox-github/

That might work for me…my photo hosting is all set, and I have my own domain…all I need is a simple home for my .html files.

thanks! please keep the ideas coming! :slight_smile:

Scot

#5

Scott, I use Little Oak to host my NMNRR domain. Not free, but cheap. They do specialize in MAC interfaces. But windows is a big part of their hosting. Their help people are really good and friendly 24/7.

#6

Thanks Dave!

I will take a look at them…

Scot

#7

I have tried a few sites but I found I don’t update them much, mainly because Im not on my PC that much. Between using my smartphone more, the constant updates computers do, and not really getting many views on my web page, I was getting tired of it. I felt like I was wasting my time. Web pages are cool at first but unless you update it often people get tired of looking at the same stuff and loose interest. Thats what I have heard from others. What are you looking to do? Document your layout for yourself mainly or for others or just to have somewhere to store photos? For storage, any of the clouds work well, like google photos etc…

I personal really like Facebook. Lots of people creating pages documenting their layouts. If you like their page, it will show up on your FB feed when they do an update or if they post the link to a train group you will see it. With web pages you have to click on the link from a favorites folder or get it from forums or google searches. When you have 50 links to click, its a lot of time spent just to see if their are updates. I know its not for everyone but I have found creating a page on Facebook for my railroad has proven to be much easier and more enjoyable and it has worked out so much better. Its really easy, you can post updates as your working on something or running trains. No need to upload to PC first. I found I enjoy posting more and its easier to keep people updated. Its free, I can store unlimited amount of photos and it reaches out to so many more people. On average I get 900 views within a day of posting. I posted a few videos and got 1.9K views on each video in less then a day. You can do video clips and upload to FB page without going through youtube etc…You dont need to sign up to view but check out my page https://www.facebook.com/Kittatinnymtrr/?ref=bookmarks The disadvantage is older stuff can get lost.

Again its another option depending on what you want. I know some people are afraid of FB but I think if you want to reach out to more people and help, FB is the way to go today. To promote your page you invite people and post our page link to all the FB train pages.

#8

Thanks Shawn,

good ideas! i agree Facebook has its place…but in my case, I really dont care, at all, how many people are viewing my pages…

Many of my pages are for historical documentation, such as:

http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/sayrepark/index.html

http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/trolley/index.html

Those two were created for a very small audience…People who are natives of my hometown of Waverly NY, Sayre PA and Athens PA.

(and yes, “hometown”, singular, was grammatically correct! :wink: )

There is a big facebook group for “The Valley”…thousands of members, so I know a lot of people have seen those pages…I dont keep track of how many though…

Other pages are for LVRR fans, Alco fans, etc…I know people use and enjoy them, but again I dont know how often, and that doesnt matter to me at all…

My biggest page by far, in terms of audience, is my Ariens page:

http://gold.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/Ariens/

That gets a lot of traffic! (although “a lot” is relative…out of curiosity, I plugged it in to google analytics…1,600 page views a month! which for my pages in general is huge…although for anyone who actually cares about views for career or financial reasons, its nothing! :wink: )

So yeah…audience size and traffic means very little to me…people view some, dont view others…exact numbers mean little to me either way…I hear occasionally things like: someone used one of my pages to plan a railfan vacation!

http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/Scottychaos/NY-Alcos/

It was ONE person! :wink: but they loved the page and found it very useful…things like that do mean a lot to me…

So…i make my pages so that at least a few people will find them interesting…but I dont care about growth or even knowing my audience size. Facebook wont really work for what im doing…although we might make a facebook group for some historic FerroEquineArchaelogy tours a few of us do once a year…Facebook might work better for that than the old forum we have been using…forums are dying, being taken over by Facebook for hobby discussiion overall…but i like my webpages they way they are…

thanks,

Scot

#9

Scot

I agree for what you are doing a web page is best. I do it to share what I have been doing and hopefully motivate people to do different things like scratch build etc… and maybe give others inspiration. That’s how we all learn and pick up ideas from others.

#10

Hi just to let you know, I use E-host.com

This is what I use for my church and train club. I pay for the clubs site so it is a hobby and not a job. If someone else is paying the bill it’s a job.

The club site is houstonagg.com

Jim

#11

Last year I had to switch web hosts. The one I’d used since 2008 was going downhill as far as reliability and support. Currently I’m using SiteGround, and so far I have no complaints. They were also very helpful in getting everything moved from the old host to the new one:

https://ua.siteground.com

#12

Don’t know if you’ve settled on something yet, or how technical you are, but I’ve moved everything web-related over to digital ocean. It requires a bit of knowledge to set up and maintain, but I have complete control of everything, since basically I’m renting a VM. There’s full ssh access, and you can essentially do whatever you want as far as configuration, installs, etc. There are plenty of “one click” installs and tutorials for getting things up and running. If you’re technically inclined, it’s a nice option.

#13

Don’t know what their existing prices are, but 1n1.com used to be my hosting & domain provider. They might have a package that you could move the photos over and combine everything into one bill?

edit: sorry, thats 1and1.com not 1n1.com

#14

So Scot, it’s almost a month later, have you found a good hosting company?

Greg

#15

Greg Elmassian said:

So Scot, it’s almost a month later, have you found a good hosting company?

Greg

Greg, no, I havent. :frowning:

The only good contender (that isn’t too expensive) that I have found so far is Github.

Sounds like it could work, but it has an unusual setup procedure, and its not what Github is really meant for.

I know I shouldn’t, but i’m still procrastinating because technically MLS is still working for me! :wink:

but its a gamble…maybe it will sit there and keep working for a few more decades, or it (the web storage) could disappear at any moment.

So…im still in flux on the whole issue…

thanks,

Scot

#16

When switching from 1and1 a few years back I did a lot of research…that’s probably not applicable anymore. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-foot-in-mouth.gif)I frequently ran across the recommendation that you separate the hosting from the domain registration - and can’t even remember the reason for that.

Anyway, I ended up registering via Namecheap, and hosting via Veerotech. Hosting is around $65 a year and has a great spam filter. Domain is about $11/year.

I have been very impressed, especially after my experience with 1and1.com. Great and fast technical support; no outage problems. I also use them for my email.

#17

Go with GoDaddy for domain name reg… keeping the site separate from the nameservers helps resist attacks.

My website people are $100 a year, pretty dang good for 750 pages and a million hits.

Greg

#18

…

I know I shouldn’t, but i’m still procrastinating because technically MLS is still working for me! :wink:

but its a gamble…maybe it will sit there and keep working for a few more decades, or it (the web storage) could disappear at any moment.

…

I don’t know what any of these guys are talking about, but I have a primitive question: You have back-ups at home of all your pictures and text, right?

#19

If you’re moderately technical, you could use Digital Ocean. I really like owning my own server (a VM, really) with full control of how it’s configured.

Want a larger upload_max_filesize in PHP? Three seconds with your favorite text editor. Want to serve multiple virtual domains from directories of your choosing/configuration? Three minutes with your favorite text editor. Want to install some odd tool, run a custom version of apache, or do something silly like install sl? Whatever you want. Of course, the downside is that it’s all on you: screw it up and you have to fix it yourself.

They do snapshots, so backups are covered. And for $5 a month, it’s a way to keep my hand in as a sys admin (not my day job these days)

#20

Bruce Chandler said:

When switching from 1and1 a few years back I did a lot of research…that’s probably not applicable anymore. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-foot-in-mouth.gif)I frequently ran across the recommendation that you separate the hosting from the domain registration - and can’t even remember the reason for that.

Anyway, I ended up registering via Namecheap, and hosting via Veerotech. Hosting is around $65 a year and has a great spam filter. Domain is about $11/year.

I have been very impressed, especially after my experience with 1and1.com. Great and fast technical support; no outage problems. I also use them for my email.

Thanks! hmm…that veertech could be a contender! their basic plan is $3.95 a month…thats doable. Thats $48 a year, more than the $25 a year I was paying for MLS, but its not too bad…

If I did that, my annual webpage costs would be:

$48 for Veertech webpage hosting.

$45 for Smugmug photo hosting.

$15 for Godaddy domain hosting.

Thats $108 annually… Nine dollars a month.

Still a bit pricey for just a “hobby webpage” that earns no money itself…

but if i want to keep my pages live at all, That is probably just the price that will need to be paid! :wink:

I know most of those webhosts also offer space for the photo hosting, but I already have so much on smugmug that it would be a pain to switch it all over now…

thanks!

Scot