Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Adult Website Host with Features!

[Cassica]

Hi I'm Cassica!

I am a student/model trying to start a new online business much like suicidegirls.com. It's basically a membership based photo library of tasteful nude photography. Since i'm a student I am really looking for a webhost that has a builder I can use (with my own designs)to get the features i need and have no idea how to use which are probably expensive from a developer.

What I need:
- paid membership accounts
- user only content
- profiles for users and models (models content like blogs, videos etc)
- 2 versions of each gallery a nice one (flash) and a basic html one both with rating and commenting enabled
- any other features like forums, live chat, webstore etc are great
- lots (preferably unlimited) space and bandwidth
- host must allow adult content
- any social networking features are also great, like users adding eachother as friends, sending messages etc. as well as user perferences such as favourite sets, favourite models etc.

So if you know of any adult site hosts that have these tools please let me know!
Thank you!!

[ldcdc]

The web design and development is not really a host's job.

What you're looking for is probably using software like Joomla or Drupal (which can be installed at just about any host) and integrate the other features as well, which means additional software. The whole setup necessary in order to have all those features neatly integrated would probably be too much for someone who's just starting a website for the first time.

There's always the option of hiring a web developer/web designer and once the site is all up and running, keep them on a retainer to help you out.

Maybe you're lucky and there is a piece of software or host out there that has something you can use basically out of the box, but I'm not aware of it. Hopefully other members are.

[Winky]

Originally Posted by Cassica

Hi I'm Cassica!

I am a student/model trying to start a new online business much like suicidegirls.com. It's basically a membership based photo library of tasteful nude photography. Since i'm a student I am really looking for a webhost that has a builder I can use (with my own designs)to get the features i need and have no idea how to use which are probably expensive from a developer.

What I need:
- paid membership accounts
- user only content
- profiles for users and models (models content like blogs, videos etc)
- 2 versions of each gallery a nice one (flash) and a basic html one both with rating and commenting enabled
- any other features like forums, live chat, webstore etc are great
- lots (preferably unlimited) space and bandwidth
- host must allow adult content
- any social networking features are also great, like users adding eachother as friends, sending messages etc. as well as user perferences such as favourite sets, favourite models etc.

So if you know of any adult site hosts that have these tools please let me know!
Thank you!!

I'm not sure you're going to find a host that has a turnkey prepackaged product with every feature you're looking for. You will probably need to manually install some packages/modules onto your server and may also require some backend programming.

I would start with a content management system like Joomla. Joomla has ecommerce modules which you can use for charging the users, it also has user based access controls, live chat modules, and social networking plugins.

[HostXNow]

SocialMedia would be good for this http://www.mediascripts.com/social_features.html

[tnhomestead]

Joomla or social media would be the easiest, Drupal is a great package but can be intimidating to someone who doesnt use it a lot. You will have to do some work to install additional modules, (pretty easy to do)or use a host that does do some custom work at reasonable rates.

[sramadan]

WordPress comes to mind, because it has a lot of widgets and what not that you can easily integrate without having any programming skills. However, the paid membership part is where you will have difficulty finding a turn-key solution.

All the parts are there like lightbox for the photo gallery (which won't require flash but will have the same fancy effects), or CMS (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc..) which won't require you to have any technical background to update your site content. However, its not all neatly integrated to give you exactly what you want. With enough skill and know-how you can put all this together yourself if you're willing to read lots of documentation and exert some effort. If not you will need to suck it up and hire a developer. Most developers can charge as much as $100/hr for this kind of work, but if you try something elance or rentacoder you could probably find cheaper.

As for the web hosting it really is separate from the whole development aspect of the site. Just do a Google search for adult web hosting providers and I'm sure you'll find a number of them at an affordable rate.