What process do I need to take to create a website? How much $$$?

[rjx]

The site would mainly be for the public to download video & audio of political documentaries / footage / speaches / & articles / PDF's etc. Like a progressive multimedia data base!

I would also like to have a personal blog that I could share my thoughts on (front Page) , and maybe have a little discussion board.

Here is an example of the sections I would like to have:
LINKS
GALLERY
POEMS
VIDEO
MP3
PDF
WEB ARTICLES
GUEST ARTICLES
CONTACT
GUEST MP3's / Video

I assume that the main concern would be site capacity? I have many hours of both video and audio footage that I would like to upload, and I keep finding more! Plus I would like the users of the site to be able to upload any political multimedia that they might have and want to share with the world.

Well what I have mentioned is more of a brainstorm.

How much am I looking at here? What are the steps?


Thanks for any help.

[Mizmoon]

1. How tech savvy or not are you?

Like most things it's expensive if you want someone else to do all the work for you, or you can do it cheap if you learn how to do it yourself.

How much can you do on your own?

[rjx]

4. Can you recommend a good resource site?

That I can learn about making a site. I could determine how much I might be able to handle.

How much on average am I looking at if I have someone does it for me... or at least get me started?

thanks.

[sir_captain]

6. Hundreds of dollars

You're much better off going to the bookstore and buying a book on the subject.

Here's a link to Cnet's webhosting reviews: http://reviews.cnet.com/Web_hosting/2001-6540_7-0.html?tag=cnetfd.dir

[rjx]

7. Hundreds....

For start up? Or also for monthly / yearly?

[sir_captain]

9. If you want to pay someone to design and code your site

that'll cost several hundred dollars at least. Basic webhosting will run you a hundred or so dollars a year. However, in your case, as you want to be a media host, the bandwidth costs will likely cause your hosting overhead to be much more expensive--how much more is entirely dependent on your traffic.

DU's fundraising, for instance, is mostly for bandwidth costs, I would imagine.

[sir_captain]

2. The site capacity is not the biggest problem

The biggest problem is bandwidth. Most webhosts have a cap on the amount of bandwidth you're allowed to use each month. Going above that cap costs money--it's like a cell phone plan. Let's say you had a 100mb video and 50 people downloaded it. That's a total of 5000MB of bandwidth, which is likely to be way above your allotted total.

You should go to cnet.com and take a look at their section on webhosts.

It sounds like you want to have a pretty complicated setup. You're probably going to need to look into php, asp, or some simliar scripting language in order to run your site. Go to a bookstore and get reading!

[KurtNYC]

3. Bandwidth and copyrights

Part of your consideration should include whether you have the rights to distribute the content you have. There is a big difference legally between linking to content and actually hosting/serving it.

Another consideration is the amount of traffic. I know a hosting service that charges $5/month for up to 50 Gigs of traffic (eg. a 100 Mb file downloaded 500 times) and 2 months out of the year you can use as much as 200 Gigs for no penalty. That is just to help you ballpark your cost.

[yvr girl]

5. If you want people to be able to upload items, you are not talking a basic

site. You need security, passwords etc. Also, some sort of content management system.

It's always cheaper to get a free-lancer to do the work, they have less overhead.

Bandwidth will be an issue. Memory is cheap, storing the site will be the least of your worries.

[rjx]

8. Thanks for the help :)

I will check out cnet and I now have some direction as to how I should go about this.


Thank you.