Ladies & Gentlemen,

For the last 2 days, I've spent more time than a sane individual should checking out web hosting services. I believe I should have bought stock in Advil instead.

I have a club that needs a website. It's a simple club...with simple minds...doing simple tasks...only 38 members. That said, not one of us has Frontpage or a similar type product...only 4 members know that HTML is computer language and not Hold The Mayo Louie. We will not get much traffic, nor will be selling items, & pictures will be rare since all of us are not only simple-but ugly. We will however, have an active message board..and the need for various pages to keep the club stats and contests current.
No ads! Yes, I want a pay service.
As mentioned, I have spent hours perusing various services. What I've concluded is; the paid versions of Tripod, GeoCities, or Homestead may be our best initial avenue. They all provide web site building programs and either an inhouse message board or way to add a message board through the file manager.
Am I missing a better site that will allow us the same ease of web building? Of those 3...which would you deem the best?

Thank You for you time,

Buck...........
and His Dog

I think your best bet is to not even bother with hosting.. just register your name with an eNom reseller and you'll get a free 10 page website. It's pretty much the same concept as the free builders available with tripod, etc..

Since you have to register a domain name anyway.. that's killing two birds with one stone.

Cheers!

just register your name with an eNom reseller and you'll get a free 10 page website
I'm not sure that Buck would want to know what that is, let alone go ahead and do that, but maybe he would.

Do the paid versions of Tripod etc offer database support for the message board?

Perhaps Buck would be better off requesting a low volume shared hosting account in the requests forum.


Lats...

Nonsense.
All you need is a host (I won't say who) that will install the (php) message board of your choice for you, and give you say, 100 MB of space, and a gig of traffic for about $10 a month. They may even give you a discount if you pay for the year. ($8 X 12 = $96)
Shouldn't be too hard to find.
Just watch out for unreasonable offers.
Good luck.

Thanks for the advice guys! Actually, upon reflection, I am looking to create a little "dazzle" on the web site. The main problem is that nobody in my group has any web site development skills. That is why I was looking at the pay version of GeoCities or Homestead as an initial option. We could use their tools, get a little more comfortable with web site design and in a couple of monthes transfer the site we created to a better web hosting company. That's the plan anyway. I didn't know if I could eliminate the first step...is their a quality web hosting service that has web page building tools?
Also, I downplayed the "action" of the club...today at our Yahoo Group site we have had over 70 messages left by 41 different individuals...kind of a med-slow day. Wknds generate 100+ messages a day.

Thanks again,

Buck

Ok Buck, I'll give you a little newbie secret.
Get paid hosting because free hosting sucks in so many ways, I won't list them all.
At the same time, get one of those accounts at a free place with site builder materials. Follow me so far?
Now once a page is done to your satisfaction, Look at the top of your web browser for the "view" button. Hit it, and go to view scource. A note pad coded version of your page will pop up, save this to your HD in a folder with the name of your website and call it "whateveryouwant.html"
Upload this html page to your paid site, (don't forget to upload the images if there are any) and there you go.
One more thing, usually the ads are embedded, so look for something like (! -- begin ads -- ) and (! -- end ads -- ) and delete everything in between :D

olm.net/webaxxs.net (they're both the same company) is a fairly good host. They're a little bit more expensive than most of the hosts you see here, their smallest plan costs about $10 per month. they have their own site building tool called sitebuilder that's $3 a month extra. I have never used it so I can't really comment one way or the other as to whether or not its any good.

They also have a toll-free phone number for support.

Janice