website question

[don dougan <dondougan@zzzzzzzz>]

Tom,

For what it is worth, I've done all my own website work on Homestead.com

http://www.dondougan.homestead.com/indexdd.html

They offer several packages, of which I have use the Silver package,
costing about $90 per year.

They provide the hosting and software which is both versatile and fairly
easy-to-use (you don't have to know HTML), and their customer support via
email (which is what I've used) has always been good for me.  They are
regularly upgrading the software to offer more options.

 From what I've seen of other hosting packages, Homestead is not the most
idiotproof - but it gives you as the site-designer a lot more options
than most prepackaged hosts.  Though they offer some pre-set templates
for making a site, you don't have to use them.

I also don't go in for the fancy animations and sounds that are available
(the visitor are there to see MY work, right?) but they do offer a lot of
options I don't choose to use.

Homestead offers the automatic optimizing of images and thumbnails, but I
prefer to use Photoshop to do all that before I upload to the server --
it just gives me more control over my images.  If you don't already have
and use Photoshop the Homestead software will work fine.

When I was first getting onto the web, I also used Yahoo as a host (at
the time, circa 1999-2000, both Yahoo and Homestead were free), but
Yahoo's software was not as versatile as Homestead's.  I am sure Yahoo
has upgraded their software as well.

good luck with your site

Don

http://www.dondougan.homestead.com/indexdd.html