Best Technologies to use to develop and host a small website

[LicKWiD_IcE]

Hi,

I am helping a friend with a small website, I was thinking of "developing" the thing myself using just HTML and JQuery (Will need some data access though). I was wondering whats the best technologies to use given the following requirements:

1) No licensing required
2) Free hosting (or at worst max R 50.00 a month)
3) Site will require Registration
4) Site will be like a catalog so I need to find an easy way for client to manage catalog items (They should be able to update products on mobile by just uploading an image, putting in details or a caption)
5) Database will store Catalog Items and Registration Details
6) DB Size will be maximum 1 GB (I'm not counting Logs!)
7) At best 100k hits a month so B/W not that heavy, more like 100 hits a day average.

I was going to use the following techologies: MVC4, JQuery, EF, SQL Express (I can do it fairly easy 1 day excluding static content on these platforms but I don't know the cost of hosting and the rules around SQL Express etc)

I'm looking for a better route since I'm also looking to use this opportunity to learn other technologies, so will Drupal,Wordpress or Joomla be applicable here?

OR I could use Java/PostgreSQL/MySQL

Can I not just create a blog on wordpress or something that requires registration in order to view the blog? wouldn't that be the easiest / cheapest route to go?

 

[|tera|]

Yes and yes.

Wordpress would be the best option to go for. Cataloguing would need to be managed by a Wordpress plugin, there are hundreds, so look to see what suits you.

 

[Hamster]

Off the top of my head you have:
www.winhost.co.za for .net
www.serv.co.za for php etc (cpanel)

If you go cpanel route you have an online installer for lots of software including wordpress which is pretty much the best way to go these days if you quickly want to get a site up and running.

 

[LicKWiD_IcE]

Thanks for the response folks. <3 MyBB. @Teraside are you talking about hosting my own wordpress solution or actually going the route of registering @http://x.wordpress.com and just have a dns?

@Hamster that's what I was looking for, I have no experience with these cpanel things (afaik It's just a tool that enables me to manage what's hosted right?) , I've always just hosted in apache/tomcat and IIS. Will definitely check that out.

 

[Hamster]

Yeah. Cpanel is the admin section for your site. Basically that is where you setup subdomains, ftp users etc. you'll see

EDIT: i can't remember where but there was a site that had demos of all these systems etc on it. Maybe google cpanel demo.

 

[shogun]

Although I love the MVC / jquery / sql server combo... for what you want, wordpress is the clear winner. I'd say self host (i.e with an ISP). You could throw it on a pay as you go azure account, or host with an SA hosting provider. You get really tiny hosting packages with all of our local ISPs that would be suitable really. Some of the ISP's (afrihost I think is one of them) have an automatic wordpress install if I remember (i.e. via the control panel you can click a button and have wordpress ready to work on).

Find a theme (themeforest is a good place to start) and put it together in a few hours rather than spend a day or two on MVC.

 

[|tera|]

Off the top of my head you have:
www.winhost.co.za for .net
www.serv.co.za for php etc (cpanel)

If you go cpanel route you have an online installer for lots of software including wordpress which is pretty much the best way to go these days if you quickly want to get a site up and running.

Texo and DomainCheap (check my signature) are great hosts with excellent, brilliant support as well.

Although I love the MVC / jquery / sql server combo... for what you want, wordpress is the clear winner. I'd say self host (i.e with an ISP). You could throw it on a pay as you go azure account, or host with an SA hosting provider. You get really tiny hosting packages with all of our local ISPs that would be suitable really. Some of the ISP's (afrihost I think is one of them) have an automatic wordpress install if I remember (i.e. via the control panel you can click a button and have wordpress ready to work on).

Find a theme (themeforest is a good place to start) and put it together in a few hours rather than spend a day or two on MVC.

The thing is with Wordpress, you don't even need Themeforest or the likes, you go to the Theme section within Wordpress and search for a Theme according to your needs and it gets displayed. You can preview it on your site before you install it and everything.

The same holds true for Plugins. You can't preview it, but you can search for Plugins without even leaving your site. Wordpress is truly an awesome CMS.

All the hosts mentioned above have Wordpress installs available. Just make sure it's the latest build once installed though, which is easy enough to do with 2 clicks, upgrade, sure, yes, done.

 

[LicKWiD_IcE]

Thanks! after googling and reading here.. it seems like that is my best solution. I will host on a local provider, most like afrihost. Get wordpress setup, a theme and start going . I know I should be find this out for myself but I'm taking a shot at asking here... When setting up wordpress (on a hosted in environment) does it have it's own DB built it for the content etc? or does it need to talk to MySQL? I'm asking this because.. I want to get the cheapest hosting that offers a wordpress installation, but whats the use if they allow wordpress and it needs a DB and I've got to pay for that too.

 

[|tera|]

Thanks! after googling and reading here.. it seems like that is my best solution. I will host on a local provider, most like afrihost. Get wordpress setup, a theme and start going . I know I should be find this out for myself but I'm taking a shot at asking here... When setting up wordpress (on a hosted in environment) does it have it's own DB built it for the content etc? or does it need to talk to MySQL? I'm asking this because.. I want to get the cheapest hosting that offers a wordpress installation, but whats the use if they allow wordpress and it needs a DB and I've got to pay for that too.

It uses MySQL which is 99% of the time included as part of the hosting package. Normally they say you are signing up for package 1 which includes 2 MySQL db's etc.

 

[LicKWiD_IcE]

@Everyone sweet, thank you all for your help. I'm fairly confident this is the best route to go =)

 

[|tera|]

@Everyone sweet, thank you all for your help. I'm fairly confident this is the best route to go =)

Don't make the mistake to assume that larger hosts like Afrihost are automatically "better". I have been a Texo client for more than 4 years with no issues, we have 2 sites running 24/7 and no hassles at all.
I have a few sites (personal sites) and a business site on DomainCheap, a new website for my brother in law and it's running very sweet.

Both have the infrastructure to match that of Afrihost and their support levels and personal one on one service will surpass that of Afrihost by a mile, since there are less employees (they aren't as big as Afri).