Help me build my own website

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blkrb0t

blkrb0t

It's Nothing Personal
Herald
I've finally registered a domain of my own using bigrock.in. I need to find a host now to have my website online. Please suggest me any reliable and affordable hosts that I might take a look at.

My website is going to be a personal blog with both texts and pictures. I might also add my own webcomic sometime in the future, and would like to design my website with that in mind. (Something like say XKCD or Penny Arcade, but with more emphasis on word blog than the comics.)

Now, I would like to know what knowledge should I have to build it, keeping the future expandability in mind? Apart from basic HTML, my knowledge of web based languages is null. I am willing to learn everything that I require on my own.

Any personal experiences are fine too, I just like to learn. It's sort of a hobby project of mine as of now.

Thanks :)
 
Have been using stablehost for a few of my domains. The service is reliable and quite cheap. As for the actual website, I would suggest that you install WordPress. The maintenance part becomes trouble free and you can concentrate on the content.
 
logistopath Do they have the facility to pay through Debit Cards? I can only pay through SBI debit cards online, or offline if other methods are available.

And about WordPress, is it the only option? What about Drupal? Is it too complex for a beginner. I've heard it's quite good when future expandability is kept in mind. I also liked some of the websites built with Drupal, they have a sort of elegant feel to them.

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techygeek I've heard that you're the Drupal expert over here, so I'm tagging you. Please guide me through the process of selecting a suitable host and how to go about with the installation of Drupal/WordPress. I'm more inclined towards Drupal, even if it has a slightly bigger learning curve.
 
@blkrb0t

I had the same situation with debit cards, can pay only on sites that accept payment in rupees.
I went with whost.in . using for the past 6 months.

In terms of speed and all nothing great to talk about, but at Rs. 200/ month i seriously cannot ask for more. You can visit the links in my signature to see how drupal websites run on it. They are built using drupal and hosted at whost.in.

Best part about whost.in is the server performance is good enough for the price we pay and downtimes are almost nil.

For selecting a host I generally ask for these details :
1) php setting: max execution time ; shuld be bare minimum 30s , 60 or >60 is what I prefer.
2) php setting: memory limit: atleast 64MB, more the better. whost has 256 so good.
3) php and mysql versions. mostly is never a problem.
4) php max file size upload: depends on how much will be the max size of a file you will upload on you blog thorugh php (not ftp)

and sadly also the criteria that it should accept in Indian Rupees.

Apart from whost.in the other that comes to mind is hostdime.in . @swatkats has a mention about them on his blog.

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Regarding the CMS choice.
I went with Drupal roughly around 3-4 years ago when wordpress was called to be only a blogging cms. Things might have changed.

But still Drupal gives you more flexibility when you are ready to dig into codes and write your own modules and themes.

If you are not looking to code at all (not even in future) then I feel wordpress is more functional with out of the box features and modules available.

But if you like to code then Drupal is for you. There is lot for you to explore without coding. For the first year I never coded a single line in Drupal and had made a blog with all the bells and whistles, also a resource sharing portal for my engineering batch :-P . Also a online test system with almost no coding at all. So once you learn Drupal you can go about building any kind of site even without no coding. I am not sure about the availability of such modules for wordpress.

Most of that may or may not apply to you but still felt worth mentioning.
The requirements you stated are pretty easily met with Drupal using no coding once you know the right modules to use.

Drupal is know for its flexibility in terms of future expansion.

P.S. Drupal is bit more resource heavy than wordpress. but works fine on normal shared hosts with not too many visitors.

Once you decide let me know. I will give you links to help install Drupal.
 
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@techygeek @swatkats How is hostdime.in? Their plans look affordable for the price, especially their Linux shared web hosting plan for 1 year. But are they reliable?

And since my domain is registered at bigrock.in (for 3 years btw), should I get it transferred once I go for a suitable hosting plan?

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@techygeek After seeing your updated post, I've decided to go with Drupal. That's exactly what I need.
 
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@blkrb0t Nice!

btw no need to transfer your domain. Let the hosting and domains be at 2 different places. Usually the hosts are not well experienced with domains and vice versa.
 
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Its pretty easy to do what you want in Wordpress and I'm sure Drupal too, as @techygeeky said.

Even comics will be easy. Just keep asking as you face problems, will pitch in. :)
 
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@blkrb0t I am not against Drupal or anything, and I have in fact attempted using Drupal 6 and 7 for a couple of sites I created, but as you mentioned, the learning curve is definitely steep. Wordpress OTOH has very little learning curve. It is not just a blogging tool any more. There are several options and customizations available that can make your site into anything you desire - a portfolio site, a blog, an online shop, event management site, etc.. To give you some perspective, I had created a WP site for a small convention organized by my college - with online registration and all. There is one other big project I am single handedly working upon right now - again, another conference information and registration site (First National Midterm Conference of IAOMP | | First National Midterm Conference of IAOMP). These are just examples to assure you that you wouldn't be losing on the future expansion front, when it comes to WP.
Again, I designed a site for my friend (K.K.Uthaman Dental Care and Implant Centre | The future of dentistry....) completely in Drupal 6. I had to read through a lot of stuff before managing to put the site together though. Drupal 7 is definitely better, I suppose.

What I am trying to say is, do not ignore WP. Drupal is good, but WP is better, IMO. My suggestion would be to create a trial site using both WP and Drupal. See which one works better, and suits you better.

Disclaimer: I am not a software techie. I do not know what coding is. :P
 
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logistopath I think WordPress is a good tool too, but Drupal is better from what I've heard. It has a steep learning curve, but since I'm willing to learn it's not going to be a problem. My goal is not to have the website running up and above as soon as possible, or even getting fame or making any money out of it. I'm here just for the learning process. Maybe I will create another website in the future using WordPress.

techygeek I will be buying the web hosting soon from hostdime.in, I would like your help as to how I go about installing Drupal on it. Just point me in the right directions and I'm good to go. Thanks for your help so far, really appreciated.
 
A little off topic but if you want to learn coding why start with something that is already built . Start from scratch that is the best way of learning . Now on to the topic . As mentioned above wordpress has been evolving and now it is not just a blogging tool any more .I don't know much about Drupal but it needs much more resources to run the same . From what i have read over the internet Drupal can be made to do almost whatever we want to do but once if you want something that is not a default behaviour of Drupal you have to do much more . Since you are saying that you do not need much I strongly recommend to build something on your own there are lots of tutorials on how to build a blog . This will be a great learning experience too. Don't worry about the commenting systems and stuff you can use disqus for that and histats/ Google analytics for tracking your site .
 
@challapradyumna yea nothing beats development using no cms at all. but that way too time consuming and i feel more and more sites are built using CMS/framewroks these days and for hoobbyists and all CMS are a good start.

I started using Drupal. but then when I felt the need to add some functionality not existing already I went and learnt PHP MySQL and bits and pieces of javascript jquery and stuff. Now though I work only on Drupal but I am sure if the need arises I can develop from scratch.

being from a IT background, that really did help.
@blkrb0t

Ok nice.
Give this a try: Quick install for beginners | drupal.org

Lemme know of any doubts you have.
 
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If you just want to learn, then it's best to learn in a local development environment. There's nothing wrong with hosting your site online, and then experimenting with it, but I've found that it's easier to create sites on my machine, and then just clone them when I want to take them online.

If you're using Linux, then you've probably already got everything you need to start installing Drupal/Wordpress locally.
If you're on Windows, then download and install Uniserver (one of the better WAMP stacks) and get going. Or install a linux VM.
You'll need to tune the settings a bit to get your site working properly, but that's part of the fun.

@challapradyumna
Though there's nothing wrong with creating your own CMS, the problem with creating a new CMS without prior experience is that you don't even know what features you need or even what's actually possible.
But once you've experimented a bit, and know what you want, what's possible, and what technologies you have available, then you'll be better placed to create your own system.

@blkrb0t
Installing Drupal's really easy.
1) Create a database on your webserver, and note down your mysql username/password
2) Unzip Drupal directly in your public_html folder (not in a drupal sub-directory).
3) Type in your website name in your browser, and the installation will begin. Just enter your database details, and you're done.

Don't use the one click installers. They mess up your site updates.

If you haven't bought hosting yet, then go ahead and install it on your computer first. The process is the same. And developing locally is far less painful than developing on a remote server, especially when you're installing and uninstalling dozens of new modules and themes, and creating new ones of your own.
 
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Since the OP said he only needs to host some text and images I suggested that. Building locally is the best way. Get easy PHP if you are on a windows machine..
 
Just bought shared web hosting from hostdime.in. Still waiting for the Name Server and cPanel details, will be getting it within 24 hours from now. Going through the quick installation guide of Drupal, will experiment with the site once I get it set up.

ch@ts Is the three step process enough to install Drupal? The link techygeek posted details other sub processes to carry out too, such as renaming the default.settings to just settings.
 
@blkrbot : The renaming is necessary

I think chats might have forgot about it. Neways what he says is correct apart from this extra step which anyways the installer will prompt you for. Go ahead with the installation even if you have not read the link. The installer wil tell you what all you need.
 
Go with MySQL.

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Drupal works best with MySQL. It works with any of the databases just fine, but when you would be searching for problems or tutorials and if they need database queries., most of them will be based on MySQL
 
I've followed all the steps now, but the when I try to open the website it is showing as "Server not found". Should I wait for sometime before the Name Server change I listed in my registrar take effect?

I've installed Drupal on the host btw.

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Ignore the previous post, the site is online now and Drupal is working.

I've installed Drupal in a directory labeled "mywebsite" in the public_HTML directory. When I type in the url of my website I get taken to a page which shows something like
Code: 
Index of /
[LIST]
[*]mywebsite/ 
[*]cgi-bin/ 
[/LIST]

I have to press on the "mywebsite" link to go to my website. How should I fix this?
 
Either
1) edit your domain in cpanel to point to the mywebsite folder instead of the public_html folder

OR

2) copy the contents of your mywebsite folder into the parent directory. No need to reinstall Drupal.
 
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