Hi y'all! This is my first posting here on this forum. I've been browsing all morning and this seems like a good place to ask some of my questions. I have noticed most of the answers I've seen are not spam filled self-promotion. I appreciate that.

I have been building websites for several years. I write HTML code by hand and am familiar with CSS enough that I use it all of the time. I may not be the best designer. Anyone interested can view my personal website at Rocky Fields and if you have comments, good or bad, I'd appreciate hearing them.

I've recently setup a small webserver for my day jobsite. It's running Apache and has MySQL and Perl and PHP as well as Python available. They all work. I recently added a search engine, PhpDig, and a Perl powered forum and WebCalendar. So I do know something about webservers and websites.

That said, I am seriously considering starting a webdesign business. I think I could find a few clients, build pages for them and offer them hosting as well as maintenance services making the sites pretty much plug and play for them. So here are some questions...

I have no clients (although I have a couple of solid prospects in mind) so what type of hosting plan should I be looking for? Reseller plans seem too expensive for someone that doesn't have any clients as yet.

I plan to keep my clients restricted to small sites with primarily static content. I have seen plans where I can probably offer design, hosting and maintenance all for a small initial design and a low monthly fee.

Whadda ya say? Should I launch this balloon???

Thanks for any advice you all may care to contribute.

Best Wishes to all for the Holiday Season!

Frank

I guess either I posted to the wrong forum or, as I've re-read my posting, it's really difficult to figure out what I am talking about!

What I really want to know is, do I need a reseller account or is it possible to find a hosting service that would allow me to add (here I run into vocabulary problems) virtual domains and set up other ?"virtual"? sites for a small number of clients? I have an idea to setup up a site with my domain name something like "www.mybusiness.com" and if I can find a few clients, have their sites at something like "theirbusiness.mybusiness.com". Am I thinking of this wrong?

I am looking at WebStieSource and it looks to me like I might be able to do what I've just described with a something less than "reseller" account. Does anybody know anything about these folks at WebSiteSource? Fact is, $35 a month isn't bad if I had some clients but I will be mostly hosting just myself at the beginning, so I'd rather not spend that much until I know I can have a little success with this business?

Does this message belong in a different forum?

Thanks in advance for giving some thought to my questions.

Frank Louden

Hi Frank,
Welcome to the forums. I think a reseller plan would suit your needs fine. There are all types of reseller accounts available now.
Some hosts offer multiple domains within one account for one price and then you will find some (like us) that are on pay-as-you-go where you pay for the reseller plan and then ADD your seperate accounts at a discount.

Each type would have their own advantages :-)
I would suggest emailing a few different providers just with some pre-sales questions and see how well they repsond.

Its a jungle out there so do your research!

Not to trash your business plan, but I do think most people these days who look for a website are savvy enough to at least want their own domain name. If they know nothing else, they know they want www.myname.com, rather than myname.yourname.com.

That said, I also think a reseller plan would work best for you. I know you were talking about cost, so your other option would be to choose a host you like, and then 'resell' their smallest personal hosting plan to your own customers - you would buy it from the hosting company, then set your own price and sell it to your customer. This would leave you in the situation of managing their hosting account, and giving them access to the server at the same level you have (you'd have limited access with a shared plan). Doing this would likely MAKE you less money in the long run.

The advantage of the reseller account on a VPS is that you have control over your server, and can add your clients and give them the exact amount of space you want, set the prices you want, etc. Most VPS plans come with an interface such as C-Panel or Plesk that allows you over-all access to all accounts on the server, but at the same time provides a separate interface for your clients. They can set up their own email accounts, change their FTP passwords, etc, which eliminates them asking you to do all this for them. But their access is limited, so they can't 'break' your whole server.

Another advantage is that most hosts have levels to their reseller VPS plans - you can start by buying the smallest package for just you and a few others, but when the time comes to upgrade to a higher packages with more space, etc, it is often just a matter of upgrading your license with your host - not moving all your sites to a new machine as you need more space. Ask this of the host before you buy - hopefully you will have a lot of clients, so upgrading features is important!

In the domain name area, if you do decide to go with reseller hosting and allow your clients their own domain names, many hosts ALSO offer domain reselling - you can actually register domains for your own clients by using their reseller programs, which is another level of service you can provide, and another avenue for some profit for you.

I hope this has been helpful, but yes, definitely do your research to find the deal that will work for you.

Thanks Martie and Melody Ann. I am doing some research. It gets pretty confusing to someone that has spent a lot of time coding by hand and now I am looking outside of the website at what's going on there. I recently decided to set up my own host, not for production but for experience. So I have installed Apache, Perl, PHP, WebCalendar, YaBB, PhpDIG, MySQL and Mambo on my laptop just to see if I could. So far, it's only got one small glitch and I think that is because I'm pretty unfamiliar with MySQL. Live and learn huh?

Having some issues who do you apply to fix them? To the forum, your hosting support or who?

I'm not sure who you ask this question of? If you ask from the perspective of a client of mine, they should ask me for assistance. But, they will not have access to their pages to make any alterations. I have set charges for page additions, edits and so forth. I build and host their pages. As I have imagined it, these will be fairly static pages. If they want a domain of their own, I can arrainge that and build their website as well. That would be a different proposition than this plan.

If I need help with a page, I would most likely research the issue and attempt to solve the problem. If it is something I just don't seem to be able to get a handle on, I'd go to the language forums if it involved Perl, PHP or something like that. I do not anticipate a lot of these types of problems though because I am the page designer and as such, I'd better have a good design to start with. Hopefully, a client would understand this up front. It would be a part of their participation.

As far as people wanting their own domain name, I'm not so sure a lot of smaller businesses are that savvy. In fact, the people I plan to approach would generally be a bit reluctant to even consider a webpage or website. My intentions are to provide a website and insulate the client as much as possible from the technical aspects. Anyone that might want to be more involved would want to look at a different sort of plan.