Until recently, my only method for creating Internet-facing websites was using a client-based program to create static pages: NetObjects Fusion or just straight HTML-editing with Emacs. I've now tried out a CMS: Joomla!, an offshoot of Mambo. I would have to say Joomla! had a bit of a learning curve with modules & components, sections & categories, and menus & content. Not too bad, though. It's nothing like any of the wikis I've used other than you edit the site using the site.
Up to now, I had used doteasy for free web hosting. I had gotten tired of my sites hosted by them being down for brief periods often & on all the time. I also did not like not being able to use any scripts, wanting to get away from static pages and go towards a more self-managed setup so that anyone involved with the organization behind the site could edit the site and not depend on a client-side program.
I looked around and found a good candidate to try: Free Hostia. So far, it's been 10x better than doteasy. I registered my domain for $20 using paypal on a Sunday morning using their interface. The email address I specified for my user account and my paypal account's email address weren't the same, and they noticed that. So then sent me an email just 11 minutes of when I signed up. Within 20 minutes of my reply saying it was okay, I got another reply saying it was all ready to go. I couldn't believe it could be that fast, so I did an nslookup of the new domain I requested, and it was there! That's 50x times as fast as doteasy which I had to wait 24 hours before being able to do anything with the new domain. And this was on a Sunday no less!
Setting up Joomla was a breeze. I simply filled out a short form to create a MySQL database, and then another short form to create the Joomla instance, and within 5 minutes, I had a working CMS. Additionally with the domain, I got a subdomain of Free Hostia to play around with, too. So I decided I would put the Joomla instance in that instead of the domain to try it out before committing to using it for the new site. I wish I hadn't done that though, because I ran into a small glitch with Free Hostia in that when I then tried to install a 2nd Joomla instance, this one on the new site, Free Hostia's interface for creating it through a database insertion error. But to Free Hostia's credit, within 1 hour of my submitting a trouble ticket through their website, my problem was fixed & off I went with the 2nd Joomla! instance.
3 comments:
Here's a video, which actually shows how setting up a free hosting account with FreeHostia and setting up Joomla is done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiDXWxykHiQ
You can see by the lenght of the video that it actually takes less than 5 minutes.
Joomla Form does not work in Freehostia Chocolate Free hosting package.
freehostia will not allow you to send mail from php or smtp if ur a chocalate customer.
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