An old friend of mine was contemplating hosting his own website and asked me about my recommendations in terms of technology. I asked about his requirements and use cases. his response was:
“The start up will be educational and tutorials for anyone. Later it will grow to sell software programs, technologies and ideas“
If you happen to have a similar set of needs, I suggest at the start that you use a service either free or paid. The following services are the most viable solutions:
- www.squarespace.com (paid)
- www.wordpress.com (free+paid)
- http://sites.google.com (free)
WordPress and squarespace are both blogging platforms as well as great web publishing tools. Squarespace is more consumer friendly for web publishing but both can do the job nicely and easily.
When you start selling we will use other augmenting services including google checkout. Paypal and authorize.net. Squarespace is my number one choice. WordPress is more viable if you want to start free the upgrade later. All these services import from each other and can export to other formats. You can also
use the wordpress platform on the other hosing providers as your Content Management System (CMS).
When you start selling we will use other augmenting services including google checkout. Paypal and authorize.net. Squarespace is my number one choice. WordPress is more viable if you want to start free the upgrade later. All these services import from each other and can export to other formats. You can also
use the wordpress platform on the other hosing providers as your Content Management System (CMS).
All these are very easy startup solutions that you can elegantly use and grow. They require no learning curve. They require no admin and security hardening and defense. which are all time wasters. I am aiming at conserving your time to concentrate on your core work not on web admin, security or content management technologies.
If you still want to run your own server, then I suggest:
if you need to run your own software on a server not just traditional hosting, you can use their virtual server options instead of the traditional hosting packages.
Finally if you have lots of money and hate to keep it, you can get your own dedicated server at www.rackspace.com the ultimate in availability and reliability. too much for a startup in my opinion.
There are other technologies like Amazon’s Elastic Computing or Google App Engine, but these are suitable for more interactive online apps and services.