"gary" said:
after realizing i have 1048 processed photos from mousefest trip, probably will end up culling out 200-300 or moreof those, i still can't post them all here,
is it hard to learn how to make a webpage?
is it expensive to have a webpage?
would i be better off with a gallery hosting service, such as pbase?
eagerly awaiting your answers, i'm sure many of you have this knowledge, and this is such a friendly place, i don't feel i'll be flamed for not knowing these things
gary
1) Learning how to make a simple, basic web page is so simple you can learn it in 5 minutes. Once you have your feet wet, you learn one new thing at a time forever, and eventually you know how to make a better web page. Try an HTML for Dummies book, and I guarantee you'll find it not only very simple to learn, but fun as well, since web pages are a creative endeavor just like photography.
2) Depends on how much storage space you need. You probably already have a small amount of web space that you could use for a simple site of a few pages and a few small pics or graphics; most ISPs give you 10mb or so of space. There are also lots of places where you can make a web page for free with automated software, such as
tripod. Those have space limits, though, so you won't be able to post many pics.
3) Again, that depends on what you want to do and how much you want to post.
Photobucket has free image hosting with size limits, and paid hosting for a fee, that you can link directly to from message boards and web pages. Places like Shutterfly, DotPhoto, etc. offer free photo hosting with pretty much no limit on the number or size of pics, but you can't link directly to the pics.
After many years of having a very small web page hosted on the free space I got from my ISP, I finally outgrew the 10mb limit and decided to start paying for enough server space to host my web page and all my pics. I went with a company called
DreamHost; they're a prety good company with very little downtime, good pricing plans, and lots of goodies and extras thrown in. I knew HTML before I went in, though, so I have not used the services they offer to help you build a page, and I have not used their customer support, so I can't comment on them.
My current web hosting package is called Crazy Insane Domain. It includes 200gb of storage space at startup, and 2tb of bandwidth, and both the storage space and bandwidth grow by a fixed amount each week, which is like getting free upgrades. The plan includes up to 3,000 email addresses (I use 3), and 24-hour email tech support, and best of all includes registration of a domain name (mine is willcad.org). It also includes plenty of more technical extras - you can install message boards and chat servers and MySQL databases and all sorts of other stuff. I pay $120 yearly, which breaks down to $10 a month; if I pay 2 years in advance, it drops to $7.95 a month.
The biggest advantage to having my own paid storage space is that I have more than enough space and bandwidth to host not only my web page but all of my digital photos, too. I don't use a gallery software, I create simple HTML pages for my pics; but there are gallery softwares available free or cheap. I love having all of my pics available to share with my family and friends, and include in my trip reports. All of the pics you see me post here are actually hosted at full resolution on my web space.
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My advice to you is, find out how much web space you have from your ISP and use it to create a simple, basic web page with just a few medium-res images (1024x764 or so). Once you get the hang of the process of making a page, uploading it, and making additions and corrections to it, then you can think about getting more space and uploading more pics, or maybe even uploading all of your pics to the web as a form of backup.
Take things slow, one step at a time. Like anything else, a web page is a complex structure built from simpler components; once you learn the simple components, putting them together like Legos becomes easy.
