Trying to get a forum running sucks.

Trying to install Yet Another Forum in a subdirectory. It's a great Forum, especially since I'm a C# coder, but man, is it a pain in the butt trying to get it to run from a subfolder. Oh, and I'm signed up for and using a goDaddy account, and so far it's pretty good. Decent interfaces and such. A little annoying to have to wait so long for a db to be created, or an application folder to be created, but those are minor annoyances. The real annoyance is having to use IE. That really stinks. I hope to hook the rest of the site into the yaf code to take advantage of it's log on and such, but we'll see how that goes. I have a version 1 of this working, but with the changes I want to make, success is iffy.

Breaking down hosting

After searching for web hosts, and narrowing down the forty bajillion results to ones that supported ASP.Net, and then ruling out the ones that looked like they were made by a two year old, here’s what I came up with.

Thoughts/Caveats:

Microsoft Small Business Hosting:

http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/pricing

Probably not for me. Good cheap starter site for someone selling homemade items or such. There doesn’t appear to be any way to access the site except through the builder. Really light weight, geared for a simple site.

LunarPages:

http://www.lunarpages.com/windows-hosting/

Good site, easy to understand plans (I was surprised how hard it was on some sites to figure the plans out). Unlimited MSSQL databases as well as MySql.

GoDaddy:

http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/shared.asp?ci=9009#tabs

Seems like the wal-mart of web hosting. Prices were cheap, but (just judging off the look of the site) I’m worried about the customer service side of it. Even the basic site has Ajax supported, which is nice, as well as tons of other free addons.

1 and 1:

http://order.1and1.com/

I had to start on the five dollar plan, there were cheaper, but they were the most basic of options. A few free addons. Seems like it would be good for a basic site, or even a very low scaled business- and that’s only on the basic plans. I was disappointed after that though, I thought this might be a good one to start, then upgrade, but the ecommerce packages are just point and click setup front ends. Still might be good to do a managed server hosting on though.

MidPhase:

http://midphase.com/web-hosting/windows-hosting.php

Not too shabby of a site. They seem to have everything anyone would need, even in the basic packages. The main issue on this seems to be the price. I don’t need everything, and I can get everything I need elsewhere cheaper.

Webhost4Life:

http://www.webhost4life.com/hosting.asp

I have to go to the ten dollar a month plan to get asp 2.0? Pass.

Honorable Mention

Liquidweb:

https://www.liquidweb.com

This is the opposite of Microsoft. For a full online business. I’ll definitely consider this place when I’m ready to start taking the site live, but it’s too much too soon, I can’t afford to pay those prices for a site that’s not live.

	Setup	Email	FTP	DB	Storage	Bandwidth	Sub Domains	Domain Name	Cost
Microsoft	Free	Free	X	X	500MB			Free*	0
LunarPages	Free	+	+	SQL	5000MB	400GB	UNL	Free*	9.95/First 3 months free
Go Daddy	Free	+	+	SQL	10GB	300GB	25	1.99	4.99 Month
1 and 1		+	+	SQL	250GB	2500GB	200	3*	4.99 Month/9.99 after 6 months
midPhase		+	+	SQL	UNL	UNL	+	-	10.95
Webhost4life	Free	+	+	SQL	10 GB	UNL	UNL	8.95	4.95 Month

*to start.

UNL – Unlimited

Blank- no mention

After the first run through, it looks like my choices are down to GoDaddy, 1 and 1, and Lunar Pages. The Storage winner would be 1 and 1 by a strong lead. The DB (I’ll be using what will probably be a large sql database) perspective seems to be taken by LunarPages, with their Unlimited SQL (not MySql) servers. GoDaddy follows with a 200MB SQL Server, followed by 1 and 1 with its 100MB MySQL db. And finally the price front. 1 and 1 and Lunar Pages both have intro prices, and then they turn to 9.99 a month. GoDaddy starts and finishes at 4.99, and gets cheaper if I do a 12/24/36 month plan. The only catch to the price is that it needs to be for at least 3 months, but I was going to do that anyway.

So I guess after weighing in all of this, I’m going to end up going with the cheaper one –GoDaddy. It may not be the best plan out there, but the lower price for the middle of the road features should be fine for my sites staging area. Of course, as soon as I have the beast functioning and ready for some customers, I’ll have to do all of this again. But then I will have a functioning site that gives me an idea of what I’ll be looking for when researching for the larger solution.

If anyone comes across this and has other suggestions, feel free to chime in. Otherwise I’m just debating myself. And self debating gets you nowhere.

By the way, you may not be able to see it, but there is a little chart breakdown of the different sites. I don't have the energy to format it to fit here. But you're not missing much. Also, note to self, never write a post in word and paste it here. You knew it was a bad idea, and you did it anyway.

Quick thoughts on a Monday Morning

Basic ToDo list off the top of my head, for refinement later:

Blog
- Creation
- Hoping having the blog will keep my process moving. I'm hoping to feel guilty if I don't update, and I can't update unless I'm making progress. Plus it'll expose me to people who may be able to point me in the right direction. Eventually.

Hosting
- I want to find a cheap place to host while I develop, which can be upgraded to a business account when I'm ready to launch. I don't want to pay for the business account while I'm in the development phase.

Development
- I have a nice long list of todo items here for the application development. Design may be outsourced, as I can't draw a stick figure to save my life. I'll probably make this one it's own post.

Hardware
- Price research.

LLC
- Price Research
- Process Research

Patent Process?
- No freakin' clue where to start. I don't even know if what I'm doing has any patentable parts to it. But I want to keep it in mind as I go.

Launch
- So far in the future....

WTF?

Ok, here's the plan. I have an idea for a business, and I want to blog about the process from idea to fruition. I'm doing this because it seems like there is no established path for this already mapped out. At least none that I can find. What I mean is, there is a laundry list of things I need to do. Set up an LLC, patent the process, build the site, gather hardware, etc. etc. But in what order do they get done? Can I file a patent now? Should I file it as an LLC, or do I file it under my name? Is my idea patentable? I feel like Indiana Jones going after the holy grail. If I spell a name in the wrong order... what happens?

The odd thing is, there seems to be good info on each of these items. I can hit patent websites, I can read about LLC's, but there's no walkthrough. At least, none that I don't have to buy in a binder for a hundred bucks, under the generic header "How to start a web business." and hope it somewhat applies to me. So I figure if I do this, whether I succeed or I get a few steps in, screw it up and fail, then I'll have mapped some of it out. And maybe someone out there will find this and use it to steer themselves along better. At the same time, I'm hoping for comments pointing me in the right direction as I go.

So that's it. I doubt anyone will see this for a long while, but if you do, feel free to chime in. Anything you have to add will be welcomed.