Website hosting and administration and xoops!

[bloodline]

Hi all,

I need some help.

I want to host a website, normal boring website: www.mydomain.com

I already own mydomain.com and registered it with register.com a few years ago. But I've done nothing with it.

I also want to run an xoops site associated with that domain, but separate from the main website, ie forum.mydomain.com.

I currently use earthlink to host my ahsodit.com domain, and they are pretty good. No outages, loads of mail boxes, full access to A records, C records etc...

I breifly spoke with wayne about planetxoops for hosting the xoops forum... but I want to know how the best way to set this up would be?

My requirements are:
1. At least 10 mailboxes + email forwarding
2. A separate Website and Forum, but on the same domain (ie www. and forum.)
3. No more than $20 per month in total :-)


Can anyone help me?



please note that my domain is not actually called mydomain.com :-)

[bloodline]

I guess what I'm asking is: Can I buy some serverspace from planetxoops, and then run xoops in a subdirectory of the main domain.

All the installation docs I've read, assume you want to have Xoops as the first thing the user sees when they enter your Domain... But I want a normal web page as the first thing the user sees.

bloodline wrote:
I guess what I'm asking is: Can I buy some serverspace from planetxoops, and then run xoops in a subdirectory of the main domain.

All the installation docs I've read, assume you want to have Xoops as the first thing the user sees when they enter your Domain... But I want a normal web page as the first thing the user sees.

Xoops can be installed in subdomains with a single click from the administration menu.  The problem, and one that most CMS engines share, is that Xoops isn't intended to be run in a "shared configuration mode" across multiple subdomains and installations.  The last real attempt I ever saw for a package to do that was like Postnuke all those years ago and it didn't work then either.

My opinion is, just put up a CMS engine that you're comfortable with, in the normal fashion and forget all the "forum.", "news." and soforth.  

I don't really understand why you'd want to split up the hosting and run your forums on a different site anyway.  Maybe you can explain?

Wayne

Ah!

Re-reading your comment, I see what you want to do.  I thought you wanted Xoops in your root directory shared with your forums which would be underneath a subdomain..

But I want a normal web page as the first thing the user sees.

Ok.  This makes sense now.

In the cPanel interface, you can one-click install Xoops in a directory (say for example /xoops) then create a subdomain for "forums.mydomain.com" and point it to that directory.

Once that's done, you can set /modules/newbb (the forums) to your default Xoops start page and anyone who goes to forums.mydomain.com would see the Xoops forums by default.

This would leave you the ability to use a standard index.html in your root directory so that anyone who types in http://mydomain.com would see that instead.

That being said, if ALL you want is forums, I would suggest that you install better forums, like PHPBB than Xoops.  

PHPBB is also a one-click install from the cpanel interface and is actually intended to go into a directory underneath the root dir.  This is what I did with Whyzzat.com

Wayne

[bloodline]

I don't really understand why you'd want to split up the hosting and run your forums on a different site anyway. Maybe you can explain?

That was just me trying to figure out how I was going to do this...

I realise now that the problem is far simpler that I made it out to be :-)

All I need is for the www.mydomain.com url to bring up a stardard web page, and then the user can click a link to get into the CMS if they so desire  (I happen to like XOOPS :-) ).

I can easily do this if I install XOOPS in its own folder ("forum" for example) instead of in the root... Then I can link to its start page (/forum/index.php right?) from my main index.html page...

If that all makes sense... then I can just use Planetxoops (though dreamhost looks like it might be a better deal) to host the whole thing!

[bloodline]

Wayne wrote:
Ah!

Re-reading your comment, I see what you want to do.  I thought you wanted Xoops in your root directory shared with your forums which would be underneath a subdomain..

But I want a normal web page as the first thing the user sees.

Ok.  This makes sense now.

In the cPanel interface, you can one-click install Xoops in a directory (say for example /xoops) then create a subdomain for "forums.mydomain.com" and point it to that directory.

Once that's done, you can set /modules/newbb (the forums) to your default Xoops start page and anyone who goes to forums.mydomain.com would see the Xoops forums by default.

This would leave you the ability to use a standard index.html in your root directory so that anyone who types in http://mydomain.com would see that instead.

That being said, if ALL you want is forums, I would suggest that you install better forums, like PHPBB than Xoops.  

PHPBB is also a one-click install from the cpanel interface and is actually intended to go into a directory underneath the root dir.  This is what I did with Whyzzat.com

Wayne

:-) You are too quick!

Cheers Wayne, I'll go with Planetxoops via the referal then ;-)


Yeah, PHPBB is a nice simple system... but I just don't feel very comfortable with it... maybe I could install both and see which I prefer?

maybe I could install both and see which I prefer?

Probably the best idea, but... if I were you, I'd consider the intent of what you're trying to do far more than the software.  If you're going to host news/images/etc, then Xoops (or RunCMS).  If you're ONLY wanting to do forums, then my favorite (largely because it's free) is PHPBB.

Each system has its quirks and each takes a bit of getting used to but you can handle it.

Wayne

[bloodline]

Wayne wrote:

maybe I could install both and see which I prefer?

Probably the best idea, but... if I were you, I'd consider the intent of what you're trying to do far more than the software.  If you're going to host news/images/etc, then Xoops (or RunCMS).  If you're ONLY wanting to do forums, then my favorite (largely because it's free) is PHPBB.

Each system has its quirks and each takes a bit of getting used to but you can handle it.

Wayne

The thing is, PHPBB would probably better suit me to begin with, which would be basic forum use... but I would want to expand it over time and use some of the cool features of XOOPS as I get the thing running with users etc...

bloodline wrote:
The thing is, PHPBB would probably better suit me to begin with, which would be basic forum use... but I would want to expand it over time and use some of the cool features of XOOPS as I get the thing running with users etc...

Then start with Xoops (or RunCMS).  It's almost impossible to "trade up" these days as NO ONE apparently writes upgrade programs any more.

Wayne

[bloodline]

Wayne wrote:

bloodline wrote:
The thing is, PHPBB would probably better suit me to begin with, which would be basic forum use... but I would want to expand it over time and use some of the cool features of XOOPS as I get the thing running with users etc...

Then start with Xoops (or RunCMS).  It's almost impossible to "trade up" these days as NO ONE apparently writes upgrade programs any more.

Wayne

I figured as much :-/

[Doobrey]

bloodline wrote:

My requirements are:
1. At least 10 mailboxes + email forwarding
2. A separate Website and Forum, but on the same domain (ie www. and forum.)
3. No more than $20 per month in total :-)

I've used dc-hosting for a couple of sites (local & friends businesses), never had a single problem with them. Dunno about forums, cos I've never had to set one up but they do the usual MySQL,php,perl  etc.
Choice of Linux or Winblows servers with several tariffs to suit your needs, mostly depending on the monthly bandwidth but from what you need it'll start at £40 a year for 512mb a month upto £250 a year for 4gb a month.

And before you ask I'm not on commission.

[bloodline]

Doobrey wrote:

bloodline wrote:

My requirements are:
1. At least 10 mailboxes + email forwarding
2. A separate Website and Forum, but on the same domain (ie www. and forum.)
3. No more than $20 per month in total :-)

I've used dc-hosting for a couple of sites (local & friends businesses), never had a single problem with them. Dunno about forums, cos I've never had to set one up but they do the usual MySQL,php,perl  etc.
Choice of Linux or Winblows servers with several tariffs to suit your needs, mostly depending on the monthly bandwidth but from what you need it'll start at £40 a year for 512mb a month upto £250 a year for 4gb a month.

And before you ask I'm not on commission.

That's quite high... dreamhost seem to be the best value I've seen at the moment, but it provides services I don't need.

-Edit- Yeah, DC seem good value actually :-)

I've moved this topic to the Coffee House because it doesn't seem very Amiga related at the moment.

Best of luck

Wayne

The thing that's going to be a killer for most anyone is the data transfer / bandwidth per month.  Xoops creates HUGE pages, so every pageview is much larger than a static Web site.

Wayne

[bloodline]

Wayne wrote:
I've moved this topic to the Coffee House because it doesn't seem very Amiga related at the moment.

Best of luck

Wayne

Cheers Wayne, I appreciate your help! :-)