• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Domain and web site hosting advice please CONCLUDED THANKS

AJB Temple

AJB Temple

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Wix have lost our business with a ludicrous 37% increase in domain hosting and over 100% increase in web hosting. We have some proper IT experts on here and I'm hoping for some simple guidance. I've looked oin line but almost everywhere seems to use sucker pricing of cheap for a year then massive ramp up when hassle to change is a factor.

I want cheap domain hosting for two or three domains.
I want cheap, simple web hosting for three very small business with no more than 10 web pages each. Must have transparent pricing and not require 2 or 3 years payment up front (many do this and as the payments go to the US getting money back may be fun if I dislike the features)
Don't need many bells or whistles
This is local, UK customers only, volume of potential customers is low and I don't care about international visibility.

Any recommendations chaps from personal experience, preferable of UK or Amsterdam based hosts?
 
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Would be helpful if you gave some indication of what you mean by 'cheap'. My two domains are with Zen.
 
If your website is completely static (i.e. html/javascript/images and no server-side scripts) then render.com is a good option for the web hosting (it's free for static sites and not too much traffic). Once you get server-side requirements (think contact forms, databases, that sort of thing), you'll need something else (or to pay render.com some money!) and the price can go up quite quickly - I used to use Google Cloud but it got more and more expensive over the years so now I only use it for my contact form and my "GPX Generator" motorcycle route planning website.

As for domain name registration, I use https://www.uk-cheapest.co.uk but the important thing to note is that it doesn't have to be the same company as the web hosting company. The domain name supplier can just point your domain at whichever web host you want. Note that I have no idea what uk-cheapest are like as a web host: I only use them to provide the domain name service.
 
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Thanks Dr Al. I am aware that I don't need the domain host and web host to be the same, but it makes life simpler if the domain hosting cost is sensible. I've already initiated the transfer off Wix with a DTA. One of the sites needs e-commerce features such as availability calendar, online booking and payment processing (without exorbitant fees of 4% to 8% as sone appear to charge!), the other two sites are static and just have minor edits occasionally. I will take a look at render for the statics as I might just be able to shift them wholesale.

I am currently having a look at Hostinger, which has a UK server (among others) and seems to have the features needed for the most active operation, but is a shot in the dark as there is no trial basis.

Rog, thanks muchly for the Zen recommendation. They get good reviews but they don't really do what I want as I would have to up skill myself on web site design and train someone else (not IT savvy) on how to do regular site edits. Hosting is certainly a good price and they are UK which is good. Of necessity I'm really looking for a platform that has plenty of templates, d&d customisation and ideally AI design features. It has to be really simple for a 3rd party to log in and alter key things once I've got it running. Hence I must have a backtrack facility in case the site gets broken.
 
For our westnorthantswoodturners.co.uk site we use the £4.99 pcm unlimited package from Netnerd.
This is fine for our purposes although we don't use any e-commerce facilities and there's a max of two domains. Don't use our somewhat amateurish website as a guide to how it should be done!
As you want three websites you'd probably need to upgrade to £8.99 pcm..
On the rare occasions I've needed it, I've always found their customer support helpful.
Duncan
 
Thanks very much guys. I went with Dr Al's advice for the domain registration at "cheapest". Really very cheap indeed but oddly it wasn't actually the cheapest for the e-commerce site I am now building as Hostinger did a 3 year deal on that and we will shift it in 3 years if they get too silly. Decided to take the punt on them for site building as I am in something of a press to get this going for her and get an online payment system moving pronto.

As soon as you dump Wix their customer service department tries to get you not to leave with a barrage of emails. This was triggered by the payment cancellations. I think Wix has become the blob. :cautious:
 
I can highly recommend zen also for hosting, excellent customer service and a very good company to deal with
 
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