Setting up a website

Components

Domain Name

I’m looking for a UK domain name, so I started off with Nominet (the official UK domain registrar) and used their ‘Whois’ service (at Nominet_UK-Domains) looking for felixstowecardcentre.co.uk. This service confirmed that that domain is available and pointed me at their Nominet_Buy-a-Domain site.

Platform

The computer to which the domain name ‘points’.

Security

SSL - to give an https site

Website itself

  • already provided that can be configured
  • ‘do it yourself’:
  • LAMP,
  • Sphinx or even
  • wordpress.org download

eCommerce

The ability to sell and take payments direct on the website.

Other Services

  • eMail addresses
  • pseudo-eMail addresses that will forward eMails to other existing eMail addresses
  • odd looking security offers, etc

Vendors

From here there are a choice of ‘vendors’. Here’s a summary of the ones that I’ve been through so far. The prices quoted are for thetinks.co.uk, which tends to be at the basic price. These vendors seem to charge hugely more for domains that they judge to be ‘significant’ in some way.

Todo

compile list of ‘things that go with domain names’ to look into. e.g. eMail addresses and/or forwarding, SSL certificates.

Vendor Summary
Company Name Annual Cost inc VAT Details
nuttyabouthosting £4.95 £5.94 Windows hosting specialists with offices in Totnes and a datacentre in Manchester.
Pilchard £4.95 £5.94 Part of TwentytwentyMedia which is a London based company
Domains-Foundry £9.99 £11.99 Part of Ecenica Limited a large independently owned UK Limited Company founded in London in 2004
EasySpace £10.19 £12.23 part of iomart headquartered in Glasgow
Ecenica £9.99 £11.99 a large independently owned UK Limited Company founded in London in 2004
UK2 £9.99 £11.99 Owned by THG who are based in Manchester
Yay £5.19 £6.23 Guildford based VoIP provider that also does web domains
YorkUKHosting £5.99 (renewal £9.99) £7.19 (renewal £11.99) YorkUK Hosting is a trading name of York UK Hosting Ltd a company registered in England & Wales. It is based in Wall Heath on the west side of Birmingham.
GoDaddy £11.99 £14.39 US
GBNames £4.55 £5.46 GBNames is a trading name of TwentytwentyMedia Ltd which is a London based company
Voteq £5.95 £7.14 Independent company now based in Sheffield.
Spiral-Hosting £5.95 Yes Ireland
Namesco Free? ? Italy

The Card Centre, Felixstowe

An initial website already built on the FCC-wordpress URL. Here’s a bullet-point summary of this site:

  • uses a wordpress hosted site with a free plan that they are very keen for me to upgrade!
  • static site, with no eCommerce capability
  • really just an initial ‘big-toe dipped in the water’ exercise

The Website

The new website is thecardcentrefelixstowe.

Decision made, I’ve gone with the Domains-Foundry business package. Paid for one year from the 5th June 2020, with thecardcentrefelixstowe.co.uk as the domain paid for two years.

I have installed wordpress on the website and am currently trying to come up with some meaningful content. I’ve got a bit bogged down in themes and what initially I have found to be a less than intuitive user interface.

Here are some basic notes.

  • If I log into the domains-foundry-dashboard with my user details (email email not talk21) I get to the dashboard that controls the whole shebang that we’ve ‘rented’ from the Domains-Foundry for the year.
  • If I log into thecardcentrefelixstowe-admin then I get to the dashboard that controls the wordpress instance that I’ve built
  • Need to use the ‘block editor’ to produce the page and chose the best theme.

To Transfer a Domain

  1. Unlock the domain name with your current registrar.
  2. Get an authorization code (also known as an EPP code or transfer key) from your current registrar.
  3. Verify contact information on your domain name. The administrator’s contact information may be used by your current registrar during the transfer process.

Next steps

Really need to have a basic eCommerce capability up and running for June 15th, the Monday when the cardshop will open again.

Thoughts:

MUST own the URL for the website. www.felixstowecardcentre.com has already gone (with Giles’ previous website attempt FCC-previous).

… or perhaps thecardcentre.com?

Is e-Commerce necessary at all? Perhaps just a website that advertises the card centre, provides an overview of its wares and provided contact details so that customers can ask for stuff? Build up to eCommerce later?

Decisions needed:

Domain Name

thecardcentrefelixstowe .co.uk and .com (and .uk?)

What to build site on:

Hosted site (linux or wordpress-specific) With:

  • SSL
  • unmetered bandwidth

Able to set up at least:

  • one MySQL database
  • one wordpress instance

Nice to have: * at least one eMail address with supporting account

Domain Name Vendor

Need to decide on which vendor to use - see Vendors above.

‘Type’ of website:

There are two main options:

Ready-made

Lots of providers offer a ready-made, ‘just set up whatever you want’ service the idea of which is that the business can easily configure whatever website they want without having to be ‘all technical’ to get it done.

Examples that I’ve looked at are:

  1. Wordpress.com
  2. Shopify
  3. Square

… but there are many more.

A brief summary of each follows. The key factor is I think going to be cost v time to set up. … and how easy will it be to move to another vendor/model if that’s what we want to do.

Wordpress
  • Biggest
  • Can do ‘totally done for you’ or allow some degree of DIY.
  • Range of packages from free to v. expensive full commercial site
  • (Also, you can download wordpress and be totally DIY)
  • Various fix monthly charges that must be paid annually
Shopify
  • Focusses on ‘entirely done for you’ model with eCommerce built in.
  • Fixed charges
Square
  • Focusses on eCommerce capability which you can add to an existing site or get as part and parcel of a Square site
  • Usage charge, percentage on each transaction - the percentage varies per transaction type, starts at 2.5%

Strategy

Currently I’m thinking:

  • Set up something quick and simple, eCommerce not necessarily required.
  • Develop other ideas ‘in parallel’
  • Maybe add eCommerce as a component later

Just now my yardstick is the YorkUKHosting ‘Wordpress Pro’ package which offers a free co.uk domain and a free SSL certificate. Support is via eMail. Costed at £5.95/month (£7.14 with VAT) or £71.40 annually.

Voteq offer what they call Wordpress Personal, but it looks similar - comes in at £50/year (I guess £60 with VAT) but you have to buy the domain separately. So broadly comparable.

Voteq Package:

    WordPress Personal (Annually)
    * Only£49.50
    * 2 Months FREE Hosting! (save £11.88)

1 x WordPress Install
10 GB SSD Storage Space
50GB Monthly Bandwidth
FREE  Daily Backups
Unlimited x 10 GB Mailboxes
1 x FREE SSL Certificate
StackCache Optimisation Plugin
WordPress Staging Technology
WordPress Management Tools
MyVoteq Control Panel

YorkUK Package:

Wordpress Pro - https://www.yorkukhosting.com/wordpress-hosting/

FREE CO.UK Domain  Yes
Email Accounts  25
Diskspace  5.0GB
Bandwidth  50GB
WordPress  Pre-installed
WebStats  Yes
DirectAdmin  Yes
Installatron  Yes
WordPress Pro Price From £71.40/year
Domains Foundry packages
Feature Starter Business Advanced
Annual Cost £39.99 £49.99 £99.99
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Disk Space 5GB 10GB 20GB
Mailboxes 10 25 100
Websites 1 5 Unlimited
Databases 20 30 Unlimited
PHP v7 Yes Yes Yes
Linux Hosting Yes Yes Yes
FREE Apps Yes Yes Yes
Site Builder Yes Yes Yes
FREE Backups Weekly Daily - 7 copies Daily - 30 copies
Control Panel Yes Yes Yes
FREE Setup Yes Yes Yes
PHP 7 and 5.X Yes Yes Yes
Perl Yes Yes Yes
CGI Yes Yes Yes
Custom Error Pages Yes Yes Yes
CGI Scripts Yes Yes Yes
Custom Perl Modules Yes Yes Yes
Python Yes Yes Yes
WebDAV Yes Yes Yes
Ruby on Rails Yes Yes Yes
RubyGem Installer Yes Yes Yes
SOAP Yes Yes Yes
Server side includes Yes Yes Yes
MIME Types Yes Yes Yes
Mailboxes 10 25 100
Mailbox Size 1GB 2GB 4GB
Aliases Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Forwarding Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
DNS Editor Yes Yes Yes
Domain Forwarding Yes Yes Yes
Operating System Linux Linux Linux
Web Server Apache 2.4 Apache 2.4 Apache 2.4
Linux distribution CloudLinux OS CloudLinux OS CloudLinux OS
Control Panel cPanel cPanel cPanel
FTP accounts Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
File Manager Yes Yes Yes
Softaculous Yes Yes Yes
Multiple T1 connections Yes Yes Yes
Backup Power Yes Yes Yes
Fire & Smoke Prevention Yes Yes Yes
24/7 CCTV Yes Yes Yes
Databases 20 30 Unlimited
Database Size Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
MySQL Yes Yes Yes
Online Database Admin Yes Yes Yes
MySQL Database Wizard Yes Yes Yes
phpMyAdmin Yes Yes Yes
Remote MySQL Yes Yes Yes
Statistics Tools Yes Yes Yes
Awstats Yes Yes Yes
Disk Usage Report Yes Yes Yes
Disk Usage Email Alerts Yes Yes Yes
Error Logs Yes Yes Yes
Bandwidth alerts Yes Yes Yes
Realtime log viewer Yes Yes Yes
Free SSL certificates Yes Yes Yes
Off-server Backups Yes Yes Yes
Firewall Yes Yes Yes
Protected Folders Yes Yes Yes
SSL Certificate Manager Yes Yes Yes
Hotlink Protection Yes Yes Yes
cPanel Yes Yes Yes
Change Passwords Yes Yes Yes
Multi Language Yes Yes Yes
UK Support Yes Yes Yes
Online Support Yes Yes Yes
Video Tutorials Yes Yes Yes
Guarantee 30 days 30 days 30 days
Upgradeable Yes Yes Yes
Cancel anytime Yes Yes Yes

That said, Domains-Foundry do an interesting hosting package https://www.domainsfoundry.co.uk/web-hosting/compare/ for £50/year (probably £60 with VAT) that looks better than either of these.

I’ve just (16:50 Wednesday 3rd June) sent them a message asking who is the registered owner of the free eMail domain with this package. They’ve given me a ticket number #202006035333.

Setting up an account

To set up an account with anyone, will need:

  • Business type (sole trader, limited company, etc)
  • Company Number
  • Bank account details
  • Names