Creating a website...help!

n.hughes1

Hi

i was wondering if someone can help me out with a few things in regards to designing a website. Its my first time so i am a little unsure about a few things.

First: I need a host, does anyone have any suggestions? Something fairly cheap but reliable, the site i am designing is for a wedding photographer but will not be too complex.

Where is the best place to register a domain, is .ie best for something localised like this, should i go for a package with hosting and registration together, again any recommendations - preferrably a host that provides good support and easy to use.

I am building the site in Flash as this is the one i am most familar with. What size would be best? I don't want it to fill the whole screen and was working around 650 pixels accross, should i go a bit bigger - ie 800 or more.

Lastly i assume i have to embed this flash file into a Dreamweaver file, if so is there anything else i need to know, any special scripting in dreamweaver page for search results?

sorry if i seem quite clueless but any advice would help.

Kind Regards
N.Hughes:D

PowerHouseDan

This will prob be moved.....
2 Hostings companys.

www.hosting365.ie
or www.letshost.ie

and for Domain i have always used www.register365.ie

irlrobins

PowerHouseDan wrote:

This will prob be moved.....

It will, but in future please report any threads that require moving.

PowerHouseDan wrote:

2 Hostings companys.
www.hosting365.ie
or www.letshost.ie
and for Domain i have always used www.register365.ie

Hosting365 are good, I'd add Blacknight.ie as another top quality hosting site. Their registration fees for a .ie are also lower than hosting365.

Moved to Webmaster/Flash

mikhail

I've used hosting365.com too, and found them good.

Rollo Tamasi

n.hughes1 wrote:

I am building the site in Flash as this is the one i am most familar with. What size would be best? I don't want it to fill the whole screen and was working around 650 pixels accross, should i go a bit bigger - ie 800 or more.

Lastly i assume i have to embed this flash file into a Dreamweaver file, if so is there anything else i need to know, any special scripting in dreamweaver page for search results?

sorry if i seem quite clueless but any advice would help.

Kind Regards
N.Hughes:D

650 is fine.
Don't go over 800*600 though.
There is nothing else to do other than embeding the flash file.

Make sure you use a preloader on your fla and if you can load in content from external swfs to reduce the load on the end user.

Also make a HTML version and give users the choice between the two.

I'd recommend you use the same company for both hosting the website and purchasing the domain name as you seem to be fairly new to this.

I have only ever used Blacknight hosting and found them to be very good. If you search boards for "blacknight" / "hosting365" / "letshost" you should get back a few threads on them and then you'll be able to make up your own mind.

tommycahir

i currently use blacknight.ie for hosting for 2 companys that i have done websites for and as irlrobin says they are quiet cheap for domain names and they have just upgraded their packages too so now u get more space than ever

DJB

Personally I host in Hosting365 for all my sites (i.e. clients sites) and register domains with register365 too. Recently I became aware of a nice deal from hostireland (www.hostireland.com) - 9.99 for a .ie with any hosting package and their hosting packages seem quite reasonable. Haven't tried them out but haven't heard anything bad about them either.

For fixed width sites, I tend not to over 760 pixels wide. You have to cater for the 800x600 users (and take into account the scrollbar and stuff). You should be fine with your 650 though.

For embeding flash into a web page, you can use the standard code. Dreamweaver has an insert flash button that does it for you. However, IE6 has an update that requires you to click on the flash file before being able to do anything with it. It's some security update about embed's. Anyway, if you want to get around this, use this little javascript app for doing it. It'll save you loads of hassle (or annoyance most likely) down the line...

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

Best of luck!

Dave

mneylon

There are advantages and disadvantages of choosing to go with .ie over .com
If you do a search here you should find plenty of threads discussing the pros and cons.
The one thing I would say is that you can probably get a better choice in .ie than in .com. There are still plenty of generic domains available in .ie, while you'd find it hard to get the same choice in .com