I’m just past being dangerous, and need some guidance. I’ve got a homepage (www.sallee.org) that was made over a single weekend typing html into Wordpad, with a very small amount of later adjustments. I did it several years ago as an experiment, and haven’t really touched it since. I’ve also got a complete PC running in my basement, acting as a backup for my music collection plus a few other items there. I want to go to a next step –

1) Better homepage. Are there some templates out there, or a package I can buy? I know about software such as Dreamweaver and Homesite, but I’m looking more for “templates for stupid/lazy people”. I could download and tweak code from somewhere else, but would prefer to have my own from the start. Problem is - while I can understand, or at least figure it out technically, I have NO artistic abilities whatsoever. Something along the lines of the Sonic Blue site – header across the top, side bar, good colors, etc. would be about right. Ideally I’d find a “fill in the blanks” template that I can start off of, or a package that had a dozen or more to choose from. Basically, I need the design side, I can fill in the rest.

2) Hosting. I have this fully functional PC (Athlon 700, 256 RAM, XP, lotsa hard drive space) with no real purpose in life. I also have cable modem that seems to finally be stable. I’d like to be able to host my homepage off of it, and avoid the monthly cost my old ISP charges me. I’d also like to run my own e-mail from it as well, and set up addresses that anyone in my family could use. I don’t get many hits on the homepage, and don’t plan to have much up in the way of downloads, so I think the setup can take it. But I’d like a “plug and play” software that I can install that would walk me through the steps I need to host my site and run my own e-mail.

Any ideas or direction-pointing would be appreciated!

On the hosting, what ISP do you have for your cable modem. Most will not give you a static IP address so as to avoid exactly what you're trying to do. There are several dynamic IP address services that will route the domain name for you, but they cost money, so at that point you might as well pay for a host. At least, that's the conclusion I came to when I was looking into this about a year ago.

As for templates, check out Open Source Web Design. I think I'm in the same boat you are with technical ability combined with lack of artistic ability,m and I think it worked out okay for me using some of their stuff.

Redhat Linux 8 is about the easiest thing I've seen yet for a linux distro.. It's almost scary how good it is. Basic web hosting with apache is a fairly well documented project.. and redhat comes with a modest setup when you install the server option.

As for GUI web design.. the only thing I've used is the mozilla editor.. which makes supprisingly good pages.

The nice part about setting up a redhat box.. it doesn't cost you anything but time to give it a shot. if you don't like it.. nuke it and start over

Hey, that's perfect! I kept looking for templates, spent hours on it. I'm an accomplished googler, but never came across anything worth a damn. Most were yahoo and tripod pages, very very basic, where the search on the word "template" brought up pages where those users had forgotten to delete that word out of theirs before they uploaded.

This is perfect for me, thanks!

Didn't someone on this board start that site?

Argh, I'll bet you're going to be right. I'm on AT&T broadband. I'm running two PC's through a Netgear router if that helps anything stay static. IIRC, even if I never turn the PC off, things still get changed on the fly?

Any chance of just running e-mail from it?

Right now I pay about $10 a month for hosting with an e-mail address.

I've really never used Linux (sorry everyone), it could be worth a shot, if the cable company will allow me to work it this way. Hmm, I think maybe I'm also looking for a tutorial / book about the whole darn subject...

If your IP address changes (which it likely does, and there won't be any way to change that with your current service), then you'll have to get a dynamic DNS service in order to allow anyone to access your machine from the internet at large. Especially if you want to run your mail server there, as SMTP delivery is very tied into DNS.

Yeah, you put that much better than I did.

I believe most of those are pay-based, aren't they? Otherwise they'll have to advertise somehow.

I just decided to go with a host for my site. I get a lot more from them that I don't think I would have been able to set up on my own. Just keep that option in mind. Otherwise, I know you'll have a fun project on your hands

Well if you find that you can't host on your own box, you might want to give this crowd a go.
When I was researching setting up my own web & e-mail domain last year this was the host I chose. I just have not gotten around to doing anything about it yet....

Oh and be careful about setting up your own mail server, make sure it gets set up correctly and does not get hijacked by some spammer.

My 'dynamic' IP has changed two times in the last four years. One of those was when they replaced our cable modem, and the most recent (Feb or Mar I think) was when Cox@Home (not a valid link, UBB just thinks it is ) switched over to Cox.net (ATTBI). The reason it is listed as dynamic is so they reserve the right to change it if they need to.

The way my broadband provider gets around users hosting their own stuff is by blocking incoming to port 80, as near as I can tell. Outside people cannot access my site (using IP only, my stuff is for a select group of people ) if it is on port 80. I ended up having the server listen on port 6669 (IRC) and it works fine.

Your provide could very well behave differently though.

Hehe, I don't want to get into a hosting war with you, but I can beat that with no problem:
www.wiserhosting.com

Yours gives you 100MB for $84 a year (granted, the first year is free), with a $30 setup.
Wiserhosting gives you 6GB, every feature you could want, and webmail, for $70 a year. Seriously, these guys are great. Very responsive to support queries (they allowed me Telnet access when I wanted it), and very little server downtime (except for a few short unexpected instances).

Those guys are who I would suggest to anyone (if you're not going to try the personal server route).

Another thing is that many ISPs also block port 25 (SMTP) so that you can't run your own mail-server either (especially if they block port 80).

Stig

Some block incoming *and outgoing* SMTP (if it's not to their own server)

If you don't decide on doing your own hosting, email me and I can give you a REALLY cheap deal on hosting your dns/email/web site with almost no limitations. I can also setup webmail for you.