Ask HN: Share hosting/domain account for friend's website?

5 points by az 14 years ago | 4 comments

I'm making a basic website for my friend's company, but I have a few questions.

Should I use Wordpress, Tumblr or other easy template website? All he needs is a nice professional theme and some basic pages (Home, About, Services, Testimonials, Contact), possibly a blog.

Also, should I use my hosting account and my domain registration account or keep everything completely separate? Am I required to put myself on as the admin of the domain?

arkitaip 14 years ago |

Treat this like any other professional project:

* create and use separate accounts for hosting provider and domain registrar. Assuming that your friend's business doesn't have an email, create a gmail account that you consistently use when signing up for services.

* Set payments for hosting/domain to automatic renewal.

* Make sure you can easily hand over the project to another developer if the need arises. This is why you create seperate login accounts for the customer, all connected via the same email address.

* Yourself as admin? Well, someone has to do maintenance; even the most basic sites require backup, adding content, updating software/libs/frameworks, etc. Just make sure you get compensated for the work you do.

* I would recommend using your own Wordpress installation because it's cheap, robust and easy to grow with. Pretty much any dev out there know their way around WP. I would NOT develop a solution from scratch nor would I use Tumblr or Posterous (way to limiting). Wordpress.com? Not worth it it the long run: even basic features cost and you're not in total control of your data (warning: if there won't be anyone doing maintenance, then go for a hosted solution! You do NOT want to leave a WP installation without regular checkups).

* There are countless of free WP themes at wordpress.org. For even more themes, ThemeForest is unbeatable wrt price and quality.

az 14 years ago | |

* I'm using his personal email. That what he told me to use. Im probably going to set up a new main gmail and setup pop3 email accounts inside for his employees to send using professional email accounts

* Thanks for remimding me about automatic renewal. I asked him if he want to purchase 2 or more years in advance, but he said no. This way it will be renewed when the time comes unless the cc# changes.

* When you say 'your own Wordpress installation' you mean installing it fresh from my hosting using wordpress.org? That's what I plan to do.

* I looked at ThemeForest, they have really nice themes for cheap. He just needs a simple basic business theme, so thank you again for the suggestion!

I told him if I can't complete the project or he's not happy with it, he owns the domain/hosting and can take it anywhere he wishes. Question was whether to save money and share accounts at first, but I agree I'm going to keep everything separate since its the safest for everybody!

Thanks.

arkitaip 14 years ago | | |

"When you say": yes, I mean using the default package available on wordpress.org.

Good luck.

fady 14 years ago |

i would use posterous. they allow you to quickly throw some thing up and also allow you to edit the html/css. you can create pages, etc..while also maintaining your blog.