Website host question

[HWooldridge]

I'm hoping some of the computer gurus can help me with this question. I started a website through Yahoo! in early 2004, which has a Merchant Store with secure credit card processing and all sorts of other features I don't need. I built the website with their propietary web program, called SiteBuilder. Although I've gotten a lot of work off the 'net, most of it is custom so it's completely unrelated to the Store features or processing CC's. I'm paying almost $1500 a year in website and CC fees with not much return on same from since the stuff I sell over the Web only amounts to about that much income - so I'm working real hard just to break even on the services.

Therefore, I'd like to move to a simple website with 4 or 5 descriptive pages, a links page for other sites and an email address to contact me. My question is, how best to do this? Would I be better off approaching Yahoo! for a drastic downgrade in services or simply migrate only the pages I want to another ISP? I registered the domain name with Yahoo so I also don't know if that causes a problem trying to move.

In any case, I'm looking for suggestions to cut costs...Thx, Hollis

[rthibeau]

I use a web hosting service that costs me about $120 a year which gives me 3 domain names and up to 300 subdomains....email for all....and all that extra stuff you said you don't need and I don't use either. With the same service, I registered a separate domain for the local VFW....that's $89 a year. And then I added a separate domain to my regular service for $19.95 so I could use the subdomains for other people who wanted a simple web presence. So I have way more web capacity than I will ever use, but the price is reasonable and others get to share it. You can transfer your domain name registration to any other hosting service whenever you want, unless you're locked in to a long term contract. If you want to let customers pay by credit card, they can use PayPal......add in a 3.5% PayPal fee to your prices plus the postage/shipping costs. The pages you have now can be copied over to a new service. The only other issue is: do you want to run the website yourself (do the computer work to make and maintain it) or let someone else do that.

[rthibeau]

as an example: Hand Forged Wrought Iron Designs and Home Accents : www.comalforge.com
a more or less cut and paste exercise...:)

[KevinD]

I'm certainly no webmaster but I have a little server space at cheap-domainregistration

I use their economy plan @ $3.99/month. I followed a link from ClarkHoward.com so it's got to be cheap. LOL

I mostly use it to host pictures that I want to share with friends.

Like...

Tractor Rides - November 24

and

National Ornamental Metal Museum

[tzonoqua]

Hello Hollis,

Not sure if this will help or not, but does your internet service provider give you free webspace? I know most do here in the UK, but I am not sure about over the pond.

I use my free webspace (50mb) and as I use an apple computer I made my website using iWeb, which is simple to use- drag and drop. I just ftp it to my webspace and point my domain to that page with web forwarding.

I think I pay around

[HWooldridge]

I appreciate all of the responses. I should explain that the fees I paid include credit card processing for last year but the website hosting fees were $480 for the year from Yahoo. That was OK when business was good but the price of gasoline has sent the craft market into the dumper - I'm still doing custom forge work and machining but I'm moving the website ASAP.

BTW, I did all the work on my site - photos, graphics, text, etc, but I used Sitebuilder - which probably only works in Yahoo. I think I'll reduce the site map using Sitebuilder and then migrate it to another service provider.

Richard, PM on its way to you.

Thanks again for the input...Hollis