Parish Web-site hosting

[gwyn]

Hello sistren and brethren,

We in darkest Abergavenny are looking for web-site hosting. Are there any major do's and don'ts?

Also, which companies give the best bang for buck?

Thanks all,

Gwyn.

[Nick Baty]

I'm using http://www.littleoak.net – good because cost only increases as you grow from acorn to oak and there's live support. They recommend rapidweaver but I'm finding this a pain – change one full stop on your site and every page has to reload. I believe this is only a problem with RW5 and wasn't the case with earlier versions.

[mcb]

Perhaps Google Sites is worth a look? It's limited relative to what you can do with full-blown web authoring, but this means that (i) fewer technical skills are needed, and (ii) there's no buck for your bang!

[FrGareth]

Pontypridd Deanery rents space with HostPapa and runs a free interface called ModX which allows multiple editors to be authorised to edit selected parts of the site - so each parish has its own parish editor and it would be easy to allow a parish's SVP secretary, etc, to edit their own pages.

We have template forms for permission to become a subeditor and dos and don't on publishing personal data - I am happy to email to anyone who PMs me with their email address.

[Southern Comfort]

It might be useful to distinguish between website hosting, which is when a company hosts your site and points searchers to it, and a company (some of those described here so far are in this category, I think) which requires you to create your site with them and use their software to do it.

There are plenty of companies out there who will simply host your site, which you have created yourself with your own preferred software.

It all depends on what you are looking for.

[gwyn]

Thanks for your replies, all very useful indeed.

We had a parish website which was free with the p.p.'s internet provider. However the parish financial wizards chose to move him to a "cheaper" provider which didn't provide free web site hosting. Thus the so-called saving has cost us a fair few quid.

Don't you just love a learning curve?

Thanks again,

Gwyn.