• Web Hosting and Email for Non-Profit
• Web Hosting for 7-yr-old
• Domain Name Registrants
• Web Site Design

Web Hosting and Email for Non-Profit

I am helping the non-profit Kairos Youth Choir set up a web site, and would appreciate any recommendations for web hosting+domain name registration, and email list management. I'm not a professional - have done this a bit once for Neighborhood Moms, using my own personal free earthlink web space and doing some quick and dirty stuff so that I now know what html/ftp/cgi-bin are...) Other than avoiding Verisign/Network Solutions, any other tips? Our budget is of course limited, but so are our needs - eventually we do want to put samples of our music on the site but everything else is pretty simple - photos, text, a calendar, email aliasing. I've been looking around and iPowerWeb looks good. Any other recommendations? And any tips on how to extract ourselves from relying upon Yahoo Groups for our email list management? It's just awful. Thanks! Natasha

As you probably know, there are tons of cheapie hosts that provide a lot but give you poor service. iPowerweb was one of the places I checked out; in fact, they may have been one of the few hosts that actually responded to my inquiries. I wound up choosing gisol.com because they provided Mailman- a web-based mailing list software program. Their tech support has been less than stellar, but hey, you get what you pay for. These places keep changing what they offer, so I'd go down the list comparing their offerings before choosing.

One piece of advice I read is to have the company doing your domain registering be different from your webhost. Lots of places offer first year free but you have to be sure that they register the domain in your name, not theirs. Otherwise you'll have trouble if you want to walk. I used godaddy.com where you can register for $8.95 a year.

Here are some things I've done for us: created several POP3 email accounts and aliases for directors and board members; created three mailing lists- board, members, alumni; created a password protected subdomain for members only; created a subdomain for storing files; installed a free PHP calendar program (from sourceforge.net) which sends email reminders (you need CronTab) and works off a MySQL database. I recently went through our website and changed all our mailto links to a javascript which has cut down on the amount of SPAM we receive.

Now I'm about to do the same thing for my temple, but I'm first checking into accepting credit cards online (have to get my butt to the phone and call our current merchant account)

Got a fussy baby so I'll stop here. Feel free to email me, and I look forward to reading the other replies you get. Sophie

Web Hosting for 7-yr-old

My 7-year-old would like to have his own e-mail account, and if possible, a website (we've been building one). Does anyone have experience with domains that provide one or more of these services, specifically in a kid-friendly way? I'm interested in issues like the enforced advertising on the correspondence and/or webpage; the amount of screening of advertising and other unsavory material that might otherwise reach the child's inbox, costs, and anything else you can think of . Thanks-- L. C.

My husband's company, PagePoint (www.pagepoint.com) also provides hosting for $12/month. Feel free to email him at aaronATpagepointDOTcom if you have any additional questions. cain