Catherine’s Comments (group member since May 31, 2017)

Catherine’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Since I’m a computer tech, I thought I give my two cents worth in this tread. What you choose depends on what you need in the long run. You don’t want to change your system, since that’s a hazard. Most of all, you don’t want to get hacked, since that’s even more trouble.

If you want a simple blog, go with wordpress.org. That way you don’t have to worry about the security issues.

You need three things if you want something else. A domain name, webhost and an engine.

About domain name, choose a seller that’s cheap and where you own your name. Not all sellers let you own the name, if so you can lose it if somethings go wrong.

Bluehost is ordinary, not good, not bad. The issue with host are the speed of access and the security. Bluehost cheap accounts have a lousy speed since they overbook their servers, and if your visitors are overseas it can be impossible to access your site. When you compare host, look at your plans percentage of memory and transfer capacity, then ask for the reduction rate during high server load. That will tell you how much they overextend the server.

You also want to compare the server up time warranty, this tells you if the server works.

You need to know the control panel of your account. If it’s something else than cPanel, don’t use it. This is ease of access, but most of all a security issue.

The server should run on Linux, not on Windows. This is a security and price issue; in my view, a Linux server are less vulnerable and a Windows server usually more expensive.

Your plan should have at least 3 SQL-databases, you might want to have an e-mail list in the future and it’s always good to set up an extra site where you can test everything before you crash the live site. You will crash it, that’s part of running your own website. ;-)

Choose a memory limit where you use max 50% of the available memory, otherwise you slow your website down too much. Images, mails and files take up most of the space.

If the host charge you to upgrade the account, they are on the shady side. There might come a time when you grow out of it, and it should be easy and free to upgrade.

Back-up is important. You either do it regularly yourself or let the host do it. Bluehost has a backup service, my experience is that it doesn’t work as intended. When you need the backup its usually not there.

The last thing you have to decide is about the engine. There are plenty out there, but only two that works really well. What you choose depends on what you want it to do.

If you want a blog with a blogroll an a few promotion pages, choose Wordpress. If you want a smart site that promotes information depending on what the viewer looks at and eventually add a store, choose Drupal.

Drupal is much more complex, hence longer learning curve, but there are no limits to what you can do and you never paint yourself into a corner. Wordpress has a shorter learning curve, but if you want more than a blog, you will outgrow it.

Regardless of what you choose. NEVER USE the automatic install with the host. I know it’s convenient, but it’s a major security risk. There are YouTube videos and sites all over internet telling you how to do a manual install, it’s not complicated.

Regardless of what you chose, the easiest way is to buy a professional theme with an install package. It cost around $20-$40 and its wort every dollar. Remember; it should be an install package, not just a theme. The seller usually provides information on how to install it. We usually uses Themesnap and Themeforest, but there are plenty out there.

A good theme is responsive, so it adapts to different devices. It uses html-5 and not flash. It uses a standard framework like Bootstrap and it’s written in PHP and JS (JavaScript). You don’t need to know what that means, but if you choose it you can’t go wrong.

Color and images is easy to change, functionality and where things are on a page is difficult to change if you can’t code PHP and JavaScript.

When you host your own website remember to back-up the site and always download and install the latest updates. If you want to keep you site safe, don’t run strange code like really-funny-i-hurt-your-site-but-looks-great widgets. A lot of the widgets that share on facebook and twitter are security risks and slows down your site. JavaScript games is another bad idea.

It’s not easy to run your own site, if you want to keep it fast and secure. It’s very rewarding, since the sky is the limit and you can do a lot of things out there. The most important: you control your information. That’s why I always run my own sites.

Hope this help and didn’t confuse too much.

Catherine

Some of my sites, all of them run on Drupal.
www.catherinelind.com (In this site I don’t have to add things to the menus or blocks. Everything is automated. I just add the text and images.)
www.houseofcath.com (this site uses suggestions, depending on what visitors look at. This is new, so it’s not much information. Has an Amazon affiliate store on it.)
http://griph.photography (not my site, but I made it. Here the images are categorized and when you click on the text above, it shows the images in that category. Suggestions change depending on what you visit.)