*ADVICE NEEDED* Looking to set up a Website/Portal

HowItsMade

Hi All,

I'm currently studying engineering in college and have a reasonable amount of experience in programming. (Specifically; lots of java, some php and SQL)

I'm looking to start on a personal project with the idea of scaling up in the future.

It's a basic enough idea and is as follows:

A simple website with an integrated forum, shop, news and report portal.

The problem is I haven't had much luck finding estimates for the cost of this online. Another key detail is that I'd like to develop the whole platform myself.

Can anyone advise me on how I would, develop and host this platform and the cost of hosting it?

Graham

HowItsMade wrote: »

The problem is I haven't had much luck finding estimates for the cost of this online. Another key detail is that I'd like to develop the whole platform myself.

If you're planning to develop this yourself, the only initial costs are going to be you domain name and web hosting.

HowItsMade

Any ideas about the cost of web hosting? I've no idea myself.

Graham

€10 - €20 a month would be a reasonable starting point.

HowItsMade

Graham wrote: »

€10 - €20 a month would be a reasonable starting point.

Cheers, doesn't sound as expensive as I thought.

Can anyone in here suggest what platform to develop it on?

Graham

HowItsMade wrote: »

Can anyone in here suggest what platform to develop it on?

The right platform is probably any one you already know unless you're approaching this as a purely academic exercise.

Pick a language maybe add in a framework and off you go.

Trojan

The key issue is what's the goal or purpose of the site. Every decision should flow from that.

gearoid!

Any ideas about the cost of web hosting? I've no idea myself.

You can setup a VPS server yourself and slap in some free and opensource control panel, or just use plain LAMP stack setup.

In my case, I am hosting my personal blog site (single site on LAMP) for €5 a month, with specs; 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD, 1TB Data.

For testing, developing, hobby, you could use Docker.io and Amazon AWS' free tier. Visit their page for more info.

daymobrew

Shared hosting (60 euro per year) and install WordPress would be very simple.
You can install WordPress plugins to provide a shop and forum (the latter will get lots of spam registrations!).
The news and reports can be provided by the WordPress blog feature.

And you can keep your PHP skills fresh by writing code to customise the site.

HowItsMade

Thanks guys, not particularly interested in using WordPress as I want to have set up and designed the whole project authentically.

jmcc

HowItsMade wrote: »

I'm looking to start on a personal project with the idea of scaling up in the future.

Scalability has to be designed in from the start. You don't go about scaling up a toy website. Learn about scalability and what it involves before doing it. Otherwise it is going to end up like the tens of millions of other websites that get deleted each year because they seemed like a good idea at the time.

Regards...jmcc

CatchingDreams

daymobrew wrote: »

Shared hosting (60 euro per year) and install WordPress would be very simple.
You can install WordPress plugins to provide a shop and forum (the latter will get lots of spam registrations!).
The news and reports can be provided by the WordPress blog feature.

And you can keep your PHP skills fresh by writing code to customise the site.

I was going to post the same 're WordPress for simplicity and security I would go down that route.

TheSunRise

You can host with namecheap hosting

Shared hosting for 8.84e a year

and you can upgrade your hosting if needed in the future

satguy

If you sign up to a free tier at AWS, For €1 you get one year free to try it out.
Link,.. its just a link no affiliate code or funny stuff.
https://aws.amazon.com/free/?sc_channel=em&sc_campaign=wlcm&sc_publisher=aws&sc_medium=em_wlcm_2&sc_detail=wlcm_2b&sc_content=other&sc_country=global&sc_geo=global&sc_category=mult&ref_=pe_1679150_132208650

I have a virtual desktop set up on mine with a static USA ip.

It might be a good place to start, and there is a function where you can install any kind of site you like, you do anything you like. AWS / Amazon Web Services are not as expensive as you might think, and are worth a look.

Then there is GoDaddy, if you sign up for a 12 month hosting account it will cost about €40 and the will give you a free domain, so pick a good .com one to get you started.

I run my site on GoDaddy and pay by the month €8.60 per month. It can drop to as low as €4 if you do 12 months up front.

My old banger of a site here http://www.teknoshark.com/

Hope this helps.