Website building and hosting

[MacNimon]

A few months back I started work on a website, relating to my old workplace which has since closed down...a bit of history, loads of photos, videos and other stuff (concentrating largely on my old workmates, rather than the company - it's partly designed as a way for people to keep in touch with each other as well as taking a trip down memory lane)

My site

Anyway, I've designed and hosted the site using 1&1's Websitebuider software, at a cost of ?5.49 per month. I don't mind paying that at the moment while I'm still working on the site (I've actually still got quite a lot to add to it, as well as a lot of tidying up to do) but once the site is complete there will be very little activity required from myself other than the odd minor update.

When I reach that stage, would it be possible to move the entire site (exactly as it is) to another cheaper hosting? Or would that not be possible because I've used software provided by current hosts 1&1? If I changed hosts would I then also have to start work on my site again from scratch? Like I said, I don't mind paying the ?5.49 each month at the moment while it's a work in progress (even though I haven't had much time to work on it over the last few months) but once it's complete it'll basically be sitting there idle as far as I'm concerned apart from minor details, and I feel that this amount is possibly pretty expensive for something I won't be doing much with. The site has been pretty popular with my old friends and workmates and after all the work I've put into it, I wouldn't like it to disappear.

So can anyone give me some advice on what to do? At the moment I just want to create the best website I can (for a complete novice) Long term (after it's complete) I'm simply looking at keeping the site online for as long a possible, as cheaply as possible. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Pip Madeley]

Well for long-term hosting I'd recommend Streamline.net.

I know some will be shocked at that, but for basic web hosting, they're very cheap and reliable. My 'Allo 'Allo! site is still hosted by them and it's never down.

[Philipnet]

A good test for edit-ability would be to download the existing site to your PC/Mac, edit it there and then view the local copy in Internet Explorer.
Caveat: This will only work if the pages end in .htm or .html . If they end in .asp .php it won't work

[MacNimon]

A good test for edit-ability would be to download the existing site to your PC/Mac, edit it there and then view the local copy in Internet Explorer.
Caveat: This will only work if the pages end in .htm or .html . If they end in .asp .php it won't work

How would I go about trying that, Phil? Every page ends in .html

The closest to that I've ever tried is to save a webpage as a Word document, but that didn't save any of the links. Do I just save each page individually?

Sorry if I don't seem too bright here...all this stuff is new to me, I'm just learning as I go along