Creating a Websites - What Software to Use and Where to Host it ?

andykolo

Finally got around to managing my Digital photo collection and want to display it online, so MSE'rs how do i do it at minimal cost


just a few simple questions to start with :-

1) What are the best software utilities for creating a website ?

Photo Reduction, Website Building for e.g.

2) With so many places to host the site what should i be looking for ?

Decadent_Fool

Does your ISP have free webspace ? That's the cheapest option, and there are some free bits of software out there that will reduce the size of your photos to a net friendly size, and create thumbnails. Irfanview is one I used to use.

I always create a copy of the photos I want to upload though, and make the master 'read only' so they can't be tinkered with by accident !

moob_2

Do you really need to make an actual site up to host the photos?

If not, why not just open a free photo hosting account with the likes of photobucket?

Stompa

http://www.sharpcast.com/

crompton

most u.k isp's give free webspace - its only usually around 50meg but hey its allright for photo hosting

musher55

The best is hard to say, if you're a beginner, the best is probably going to be to confusing.

For basic photo reduction, try Irfan View. It's very simple, compared to the likes of Adobe Photoshop.

You'll probably need some FTP software, FileZilla is free open source software and is very good.

If you don't want to write code by hand, try Nvu, it's aspiring to be like Macromedia Dreamweaver but is completely free.

Hand coding, can't go wrong with notepad, but something like Notepad++ might server you better.

Flexible_Friend

For a FREE photo gallery software that's easy to install and use, try Coppermine. Your web host needs to be running PHP and you need one MySql database. You simply create "categories" and "albums" within those categories and then upload the photos. It does all the resizing i.e. thumbnails and intermediate sizes for you automatically using GD or Imagemagik (check your web host has one of these two otherwise it won't work).

http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php

For webhosting, try Dataflame

http://www.dataflame.co.uk/