Temporary Website Hosting

[Don]

In response to some discussions this morning, I'm researching a business idea.

There are some mini's/conferences that don't do any of their planning or advertising of their event anywhere but Facebook. Obviously, some people don't like or use facebook. (Spare me/us the comments here, please.)

The idea that I'm researching is to offer temporary website hosting for these smaller events. For one cost (as yet determined) the event organizers could have a place online for (a time yet to be determined) to advertise their event, and potentially accept registrations or email comments, etc. The hosting would be either BYOD (Bring your own domain) or hosted on a subdomain. All sites would be based on WordPress.

What do you think? Let me know your comments.

[k6ccc]

Great idea!

 

[TheDucks]

My ISP (and I think, most Paid service) include a small) WEB space on their servers, even for Home users. It is not like these kinds of use would be high traffic, so I think they would be fine with local club use.

Another option, is a NAS or older PC (Linux has a smaller footprint) on the DMZ port of your router (if not a dedicated account).

But I support the idea of a low cost plan to be run by someone to knowledgeable, to avoid vulnerabilities (and the havoc they cause).

 

[canadianchristmas]

I personally use buyVM I mention them because they offer a $20 a year VPS. I run an icecast server and a nginx server on mine, it works well and it costs about $30 a year once you factor in a domain.

There are also web specific hosts that offer things like turn key wordpress installs.

I think there is a huge amount of cost effective hosting services available, you just need to look, and maybe be a tad bit technical to know how to get it running properly and securely.

I don't know.. I just think there is a lot already at our fingertips.

I think people just go for things like facebook due to ease of use and convenience.

[Don]

FWIW, and in case anyone wonders/cares, I already have a web hosting business out there. This would be an add-on to the business for those holding a gathering and don't have the skills needed to do some of the items you folks have mentioned above. All of which are great ideas, btw.

[canadianchristmas]

To add, I just had another thought pop into my head..

Github or gitlab pages. (My personal choice would be gitlab)

But you can use both of those for free static hosting and you can run static site generators like hugo or jekyll and it will automatically serve (build) your site whenever you make updates or changes. You just have to make or find an existing template.

Alternatively you could just use plan old html pages with no static site generator.

The only downside is that this does not allow for server side scripting, so no PHP, or Mysql databases. However you can use third party services for these functions. With things like Forestry.io, Formforsite, Un-static or a myriad of other (often free) similar services with varying degrees of customisability and functionality. Which can help with registration and form systems. And for payments you could use things like paypal or stripe to handle the payment processing externally.

But I think this is truly the the least expensive option available. It would cost around $10 a year for the domain.. That's it.

Furthermore I personally really love static sites, and enjoy using hugo in particular to build my sites. Static sites also load way faster than CMS based sites, as there is no server side rendering going on to serve your page content.

And with both github and gitlab they offer free SSL certificates and keep them renewed for you. On a VPS you can do the same thing with something like certbot, but it just takes more setting up. Github/Gitlab are just ready to go without any thought haha.

If you know how to use it properly, you can get a lot for free...

Edited February 1, 2022 by canadianchristmas
clarification & spelling error

[Jimehc]

I have a question - which is driving more traffic to the event ?

Which would also explain why the Official Light-O-Rama Facebook page has so many active users topics...

As it is appealing to a much larger audience..

Edited February 2, 2022 by Jimehc

[canadianchristmas]

2 minutes ago, Jimehc said:

I have a question - which is driving more traffic to the event ?

I'd say it somewhat depends, as your website will need good SEO to be viable, at least for search engine queries.

It adds an extra step to manage.

 

Facebook on the other hand could be easier to share about on the platform, and is basically brainless. Hence what I was saying about convenience.

I would say a well put together website will always make you appear more professional. Furthermore mini's and events like this are usually advertised on forums, and various groups. So really it's just a matter of sharing the website link around.

In the end though you would have to track the analytics and compare. I'd also say it comes down to the types of people and demographics you are trying to appeal to.

There is no one size fits all, but for mini's I would say a website is best.