Web Page?

[John Locke]

Charles,

To get something professional-looking up and that includes e-commerce capabilities, you really might want to consider paying someone to get you up and running. Sounds to me like you'd only need a main page, a gallery or galleries, an "About us" page, a "Contact Us" page or simple link, and then the ability to accept payment either through PayPal or an e-commerce provider (both of which require coding to link to their systems). That would be a rather small site, so it wouldn't cost you too too much to have someone do it for you.

Cafepress.com. allows you to sell photos and "data" disks, so that might be an economical way to start out. If you pay for their "Premium" shop plan, you can customize the page so that it matches your site. Customflix.com. only charges $50 per title and will allow you to sell DVDs and VHS tapes on their site, complete with professional packaging and printing. Either of these will work if your products are photos and videos of arts and crafts. But if you are wanting to sell the art and crafts themselves (such as pottery) then you'd have to go with something like PayPal or another type of e-commerce provider (FYI: non-PayPal e-commerce providers require that you qualify first for their services, then require a fee and/or percentage on sales).

There are lots of things to consider besides just linking photos and videos...which encoding to use for video segments (or how to offer video segments for a variety of players), how to compress with minimal loss of quality, how to setup links to interact with your e-commerce choice, etc. etc.

P.S. By the way...FTP means File Transfer Protocol. FTP programs allow you to upload your site and contents up to the server that will be hosting you.

[David Hurdon]

I'm with John, Charles. It's taken me seven years to go from turning on my first PC to operating three web sites and running a part-time video/digital content creation business. If I'd known where I was headed I'd have hired help. I don't regret any of the learning, and it's all useful to me today in one way or other but if I had intended to sell products or services when I began, time would have been of the essence and time disappears like cash in a casino once you start trying to teach yourself everything. Concentrate on your strengths and hire into your weaknesses. Have you got time to teach yourself to be a talented graphic artist, so that you can design your own logo?

David Hurdon

[Federico Dib]

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles French : I've looked at Ready Hosting, 500mb space & unlimited d/l $99 yr. Sorry but I'm just trying to find someone to kinda walk me thru this.
-->>>
Beware of the "unlimited" word in hosting.... specially if you are going to have video and/or audio... Be sure to read the small print in their Terms Of Service, as I´ve seen quite a few "unlimited space or transfer or both" that will block you if you "abuse" the space... and Video and Audio sure consume a lot of resources... and the "abuse" term can be quite subjective.

So if you´re going to hire hosting space.. ask your hosting to be sure...
Also I will reccomend to go for the hostings that Tell you exactly how much resources are you allowed to use... even some of those have restrictions on AUdio and Video.. so ask first..

I tell you this, because I´m in the difficult process of finding a host like the one you need myself... and It sure is taking a lot time and research to find one that fits my needs and is not runned by a 15 year old who will drop out of business in a few months.