Hi, I don't know a lot about websites but i'll soon be needing one. A friend of mine set one up for his small company which was fine but slow to load. He also found that on a particular day when he got a lot of hits, he was charged more.

I don't know anything about what I need but here is my situation:

I am making 'adult' dvds. I want downloadable footage, pics, video messaging and picture sending to mobiles. i will be featuring some footage on a site which gets a million hits a day and obviously hope that some will then move onto my site (my web address will b at the bottom of the footage).

Can anyone suggest a type of set up i'll need, what to look out for etc? Ive heard getting a dedicated server is the way to go but wondering about what I can put on the site in terms of amount of Mb's. Any help, links, tips would be great!
Thanks

Well the setup depends, but a managed dedicated server may very well be the way to go. Could you give us any sort of idea how much space you think you'll need? As for what content you can put on your website, the size is only limited by the amount of space you have.

I have no clue!
I want 4 pages which will b 'free'. one for pics, one for pics for mobiles, another with 4 free 20 second clips and another with a free clip for mobile phones.
then the rest of the site would be for subscribers. im looking to make a film a week and give subscribers, if they dont buy the dvd, ten 30 second movie clips per week. add photo shoots too and the same offers to mobile phones.

so basically, a 4 page free area and then 4 sections for subscribers:
movie clips page(s), pics, movie clips for phones and pics for phones.
this will archive and grow as i go.

Well then it sounds like to me (depeding upon the size of everything) that a shared account will work fine for you. We're really going to need an idea of about how much space that you think you'll need before being able to help you out some more. There are many good solid providers that we can point you to.

not completely sure what u mean but the vid downloads will be approx. 4 to 6mb each.
what do u mean, 'space'?

By space I mean the actual size of space for the files that you're going to have. It looks like you're going to need a good 200+ MB if you plan to have lots of pictures, movies, etc. Perhaps more would not hurt to be safe. Your're also going to have to look at the bandwidth/transfer amounts which that can be explain as when people visit your site, they download everything which adds up to be your transfer.

I see, so if i had 100 members and two 4mb move files on the site, id need at least a bandwidth/transfer amount of 800mb for everyone to c everything?

Yes, that's pretty much how bandwidth works. Anything you download from the website will be added to the total, that includes, pages, media, etc. If you plan on this website being a fairly large site, you're going to need a fair amount of transfer, but keep in mind that you can always upgrade if need be. It pays to start small and then upgrade as you need it.

If you plan on having several 4 - 6 mb adult videos, that are free for anyone to download, I would imagine that you would need a considerable amount of bandwidth, as everyone and their dog would download those.

If I were you, I'd get a reseller account somewhere (generally a larger shared hosting account). This will give you some exposure to the reseller / dedicated control panel, so that you will be familiar with it when you move up to a dedicated.

I would get a plan with about 1gig of diskspace, and about 20 gigs transfer / bandwidth. This should be enough to get started. Be sure to specify that this will be for adult hosting, as a majority of hosts do not allow this.

Your friend was charged more money because that particular host allowed people to use extra bandwidth, and charge for it. I would go to a host that would simply suspend your site when it reached the bandwidth limit. That's easier to deal with (simply upgrade the account) versus getting a huge bill out of the blue.

Good luck.

This is probably obvious, but make sure your host allows for 'adult' content. That will significantly narrow down your choices when you hunt for one.

Jason

http://www.findmyadulthost.com/
You might want to search this directory for some options.

Originally posted by DSD

Your friend was charged more money because that particular host allowed people to use extra bandwidth, and charge for it. I would go to a host that would simply suspend your site when it reached the bandwidth limit. That's easier to deal with (simply upgrade the account) versus getting a huge bill out of the blue.


Just look for a host that runs a control panel which offers notifications of usage - this way, if you're approaching a resource limit you can choose whether to upgrade plans or pay the overusage fee... Getting your account suspended when you exceed resources could turn out to be a pain.

Hsphere control panel offers this, as Im sure several others do as well....

Also, this may have already been mentioned, but try searching here (http://adult.findsp.com/Hosting/) for companies that will host adult content

Hope this helps...

That's great - thanks a lot, people. I appreciate the help.

check out the shared hosting section there are a bunch of good hosts there, and lots of them are helpful and friendly

One last suggestion, it wouldn't hurt to run your choices by here just to see if you can get any sort of information. Trying a search on your potential hosts doesn't hurt either. Try contacting them and asking some questions that you may have to get a feel for how things work.