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I am a novice programmer in Website development. Just to get some experience, I am interested to try the following things:

  • Have my own personal website
  • Build some Ruby on Rails project for Web Development
  • Run some PHP scripts as well
  • Would want to have Subversion installed on the Server
  • Would like to install either a Continuous Integration Server (CruiseControl.Net or CruiseControl.rb)
  • Create a blog in my website (I want to get some hands on experience on this, and thus would not want to go for WordPress, or any CMSLite ready made Blog installers)
  • In order to create a blog, I would probably need database instances running (SQL Server or any other)
  • In future, I may even want to create a forum type of thing for my website, where users can read and post stuff in it.
  • If the above thing works good, I might want to try building a small Social-Networking site
  • Would also want to have a email service (Heard that Gmail can be integrated to our Website, not sure how it works)

I have never done any web development before, except for creating some trivial HTML/CSS pages. In order to achieve the above tasks, please advise me on the following:

  • Does a .com domain name makes more sense? (I was trying for a name, but the .com version of it was already taken. I only have myname.me version of it). Is it okay to go for domain.me? Does it make any difference?

  • Which Web Hosting do you want me to go for? I was amazed to see several types of services:

    • Regular Web hosting
    • Reseller Hosting
    • VPS Hosting
    • Hosting on the cloud (Such as Amazon EC2)

Now, I am tempted to go for either VPS hosting or Amazon EC2. Who would not want to have a dedicated processor and memory? (But, I am not sure, if I really need it for my usage)

But, this comes for some price! I am ready to pay 15-20$ per month for this. If there is any web hosting provider who can provide me with all the above mentioned support for less than 10$, I am ready to sacrifice having a VPS.

  • I would be glad if I get SSH feature.

I do not need more than 1-2 GB RAM and 5-10 GB Secondary Storage. Dual core processor is okay too.

Please help me with this. Also, please let me know if there are any services that are cheap and reliable for me to do the above things. Thanks in advance.

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wow.. this really does not belong here. – Neal Apr 13 '11 at 21:39
Where else can I ask this question? – Shankar Apr 13 '11 at 21:41
@shankar, it was moved for you – Neal Apr 13 '11 at 21:42
@Neal: Thank you :) – Shankar Apr 13 '11 at 21:51
2  
I thought I would get some assistance (atleast for the non-answered questions). I still feel the question is properly put starting with what I want to do and asking for suggestions on how to achieve it. I'm sorry if it doesn't please you (or anyone here) and thank you for the Down vote. – Shankar Apr 13 '11 at 22:18
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Apr 13 '11 at 21:41

closed as not a real question by John Conde♦ Apr 13 '11 at 22:11

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Website development and Website hosting are two very different beasts. If your primary goal is to learn how to develop I would recommend using a local desktop. You can install whatever you want (apache for webserver, development environments, libraries, etc) and play and learn as much as you want for no cost.

Once you have a sense of what it is you want to build and that you want to expose it to the general public you can do so either through your own internet connection, via a free hosting service or if you really want a paid service.

I think a lot of development is about learning and playing and there's no reason to pay someone >$200/yr for the privilege.

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Thanks for the reply dough! However, right now, I need some website to be put up. I will try considering some basic hosting services. I will learn more and buy a VPS or any similar thing once I am done with something significant. – Shankar Apr 13 '11 at 22:20

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