Hi Andrew, This has been discussed a number of times on the PHPUG[1], you will probably find some useful information in the archives over there.
On Monday 28 August 2006 12:16, Andrew Errington wrote: > Anyway, I want to set up a domain for a small company belonging to a friend > of mine. He has a home page with his ISP, and obviously from that position > we can take two further steps toward internet nirvana: > > 1) Get domain and redirect it to home page > 2) Get domain and independent hosting > > I came across an ad for iSERVE Ltd. (NZ's most popular web hosting company, > apparently). For $38/yr I can get a domain name, and I can have web > traffic and email redirected (presumably to my ISP home page and email) for > free. > > $38 for a domain and free redirection seems cheap enough not to have to > think too hard about it. Has anyone used/is anyone using iSERVE? iSERVE are usually regarded as a good hosting company, although they did have a security issue with their hosting not so long ago (discussion in the PHPUG archives again). > How tightly tied are 'having a domain' and 'hosting a domain'? For > example, do I need to care who I register my domain with, and who I host a > domain with? I have no idea what to advise my friend, or where to get help > from, hence asking here. The domain and hosting aren't really tied to each other. You get your domain and then assign some DNS servers for that domain. In turn the DNS records you setup provide the pointers to the server where your HTML pages are hosted. Some registrars such as Discount Domains supply DNS servers for you to use, otherwise your hosting provider will setup DNS for you or possibly let you do it yourself through a control panel. Also as you have noticed, some registrars provide redirect services etc. > My friend's website is tiny. 10Mb provided by his current ISP is more than > adequate. No server-side interaction is needed (no PHP or databases), > although an email form would be handy. Finally, only one email address is > required, but three would be nice. The email addresses thing depends on who is hosting your mail server for you, which is usually the same as your web hosting but doesn't have to be. > If I make a mistake in choosing hosting companies, what are the likely > problems unravelling the mess? Is it simply a matter of waiting for the > domain to expire and re-registering with a new company? You can change hosting at any time by changing the DNS servers that your domain uses. > I think that registering a domain name and redirecting it to the ISP > homepage would be fine, but maybe it's worth going all the way? The major > reason not to would be the $20 per 28 days hosting fee (which is iSERVE's > current basic price). The only major reason to go with a proper hosting account over his current ISP's service is features PHP/Python/SQL and flexibility WRT email accounts etc. There are other things to take into consideration as well such as redirects aren't good for search engine results etc. hads [1]http://phpug.org.nz -- http://nicegear.co.nz New Zealand's VoIP supplier
