web site hosting

[johnsoj]

Hi Guys and girls 

can you tell me if its possible to host a web site with my virgin media account . if not were is the best place to have my web site .

sorry to ask but this is new to me .

[Anonymous]

virgin media do not offer website hosting.

[LukmanChowdhury · Accepted solution]

virgin don't offer hosting solutions. 

i'm not too clued up on this sort of thing but from what i understand:

you could do your own hosting (using a computer acting as a web server) but would need a fixed IP address (residential customers usually get residential IPs which means your internet address can and will change from time to time). 

You could pay for a DNS service or something...where your hosting computer connects to a server online and that then handles the IP address changes and stuff.... but most of that goes over my head. 

or you could do what i do and pay a company for the hosting. 

I use fasthosts - i pay them and get a server and domain (my web address) i then use wordpress on it to create a website or just create basic pages using different web development languages and databases. 

depending on what you want to host, if it's just a basic website, you could go to wordpress directly. - have a look at https://wordpress.com/start/user?ref=create-lp

it'll let you set up a quick website and post onto it. 

i'm not too clued up on web hosting and stuff but you're welcome to send me a private message here if you'd like to see my site and be given a tour of how i do things for my needs. 

[newapollo]

You could create a free forum using https://www.proboards.com/create-free-forum 

I've used this one for a number of years now and have had no problems. I have 3 forums with them, one of which I use as a test forum for new ideas.

There's even free support via their forums and lots of free themes and addons. I have different themes for Easter, Christmas etc.

You can see what my main one looks like if you look at my profile.

[Tudor]

“but would need a fixed IP address”, totally untrue. Lots of people do it on VM, I do, you use DDNS, look it up.

[LukmanChowdhury]

"...totally untrue. Lots of people do it on VM, I do, you use DDNS, look it up."

think you didn't read past that part of my comment:

"You could pay for a DNS service or something...where your hosting computer connects to a server online and that then handles the IP address changes and stuff.... but most of that goes over my head. "

pretty sure you're not using a fixed IP on your host machine but are instead connecting to a third party service that handles the IP and domain resolution... perhaps you use a free service but i don't believe my statement was "totally untrue"

[Anonymous]

you do not have to pay for DDNS. Plenty of free ones.
And VM IP addresses rarely change so you don't even need a DDNS service

[LukmanChowdhury]

Yes there are free ones. Never looked into it, I don't know the pros and cons

With regards to virgin IP addresses rarely changing, I'd personally want to minimise the chances of my server being unreachable so I'd try to avoid that gamble.

[Anonymous]

if you want uptime then hosting it on a residential connection isn't the way to go. if people are self hosting uptime isn't going to be a key requirement