Hi there, I want to finally create my own website for photographs and I'm looking for some recommendations for companies to buy a domain name from and if anyone has experience editing their website in linux, that would be great. I don't plan on buying or selling anything, just basic stuff like Galleries, Contact, News etc. I know there are free alternatives out there but I don't want ads so I don't mind paying for it every year. Any help would be greatly appreciated. - thanks

I use GoDaddy, because someone I trusted recommended it, and I've been quite satisfied with their service. I know they are not the cheapest, but their tech support is superb. I've used them for over a decade now.

Inmotion Hosting is also an excellent outfit. I had a short gig with them a while ago.

A web search for "web hosts reviewed" will turn up a number of articles that you might find helpful

breadbin,

Our local community group in the UK uses Astutium as our web host on a WordPress website.

Astutium:
https://astutium.com/application-hos...-wordpress.php

The website was built years ago by a local website designer and then one of our group edits the site as required.
It used to be me until recently, when I decided it was time for somebody else to volunteer.

WordPress is very easy for the group to self-manage and the hosting cost is £9.99 per month.

There is also an annual charge of about £15 for the domain name renewal.
Astutium support is excellent and rarely needed.

A friend in our community group is having his own small website built by a local web designer who will also arrange the hosting. The build cost is considerably less than our original one and the hosting charge is the same.

He is not buying or selling anything either. He plans to use it simply as a platform, but one which he actually owns himself. He did not have ownership of his previous website and that is a point that some people overlook.

Naturally, the website will not contain any adverts.

I am not on commission, but if you want further details of this designer and would like to view his portfolio, please message me through LQ.

You may have already seen this blog regarding installing WordPress on a LAMP server:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ed-2023-38976/

I used those instructions to create a test website, nothing more.

You can design your own website, but it is so cheap to have a professional designer do it, with the great advantage of making sure that it is secure.

With regard to maintaining a WordPress website, Linux does not really come into it. It is simply a matter of editing WP via its Dashboard.

All you are doing is basically operating a web browser. Whether the browser is in Windows or Linux is irrelevant.

https://wordpress.org/documentation/...ation-screens/

On the other hand, most hosting is done on Linux servers.

There are two hosting companies I will NOT use even if they paid me: GoDaddy and Wix.

GoDaddy have had repeated security breaches, service outages, and numerous ethical controversies.

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Thanks for the recommendations! I had a look but I don't really know what to go for.

@frankbell - inmotion seems good. I was looking at the $6.99 a month package for a year with the free domain name and EU datacentre. How does it work then to make a website? Can I just copy the HTML files over to my account folder? It will be pretty minimalistic. A couple of HTML pages linked together and thumbnails linking to images maybe.


@beachboy2 - what is the difference between the astutium and just regular Wordpress? I had a look at Wordpress and it is only €4 a month for ad-free? On and the link you posted about installing Wordpress on a LAMP server is terrifying lol

I would avoid WordPress as much as possible. Many years ago it was great but after as many years of write-only PHP code it has a lot of problems including performance issues. It is now huge and it now has really heavy hardware requirements.

If you are are looking to publish digital photographs, there are a lot of other options. One would be Gallery Gallery Revival. Another, DigiKam, has some export options and plug-ins which might be useful for maintaining a gallery. Darktable probable does as well.

Edit: gallery has moved since I last looked, a long time ago.

breadbin,

Astutium is just one example of a web host that hosts multiple websites. There are tons of web hosts.

I would recommend using one which is based in the UK or Ireland so that it is under the jurisdiction of either UK or Irish/EU law.

WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system and is behind most websites you come across.

CMS platforms:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/...orms-compared/

Note that with WordPress.org, you own your website, unlike WordPress.com where you don’t.

It may be WordPress.com that is €4 a month for ad-free?

Are you sure that is the actual hosted price?

The reason I mentioned “Wordpress on a LAMP server” was because I thought that you might be producing your own website.

Some people run a website from their home. A dynamic domain is usually free that can track the home's IP address when it changes.

Self-hosting is a very good option for those who 1) have an ISP which allows incoming connections and who 2) have an always-on but capable system like a router (PC Engines, Ubiquiti, Protectli, etc) able to run a general-purpose operating system like one of the mainstream Linux distros or even one of the BSDs.

Just keep the photo gallery very simple and preferably static and it will be both safe and low maintenance and economic with the system requirements. If PHP comes into the question then, then the gallery would be better hosted in a VM (or FreeBSD jail), or on a separate machine, or even on a separate network.

As you point out the IP address is usually the big hurdle for home hosting. For addresses which change a lot, you can use a dynamic DNS service and point your host CNAME at the A name provided by that service. Or you can, with the help of some polling script and and API to your registrar, write your own DNS updater. Or, if down time is not a big deal, just update the DNS manually when you notice that the external IP address has changed.

Not all ISPs provide external addresses and I have heard that some of them don't allow incoming new TCP or UDP connections. Others may require separate agreements for business operation. However, for those that have an ISP with the right agreement, self-hosting of hobby galleries from a home machine is quite easy.

I have several sites which use the Django ("Python" programming language ...) web-site framework, running on the PythonAnywhere hosting service. (Which, FYI, uses AWS® as its engine, but you don't directly see that.) Light-usage typical sites are trivially inexpensive, and small ones can even be completely free. Technical support is prompt and excellent and available 24 hours a day. Never any ads, even when your site is "completely free."

But: this is a general, and Python-specific, hosting service upon which you can run "anything Python." (You have to provide everything ... but that's easier than it looks.) I found it very helpful to work with a hosting service which was specific (and therefore, very knowledgeable and supportive and for-me-efficient) to "how I technically proposed to do it," but not "exactly what I proposed to do."

Continuing the thought ... I often use WagTail, which is a Django plug-in application, when I need "a general but all-inclusive CMS." You can customize it as much, or as little, as you need. (Of course, there are dozens such plug-ins ...)

One of the nice things about using a general-purpose web system framework like Django is that you can actually plug lots of things into it, and thereby "build up" whatever you need from publicly-available parts. For instance, I put together a business website which included (CMS-based) news, messaging, geographic event maps, a complete forum system and an on-line store, start-to-finish, in about a week. For each element of the functionality (including back-end stuff like authentication and authorization), I had several options to choose from. (None of which were "aware of," nor reliant upon, any of the others.) I basically didn't write any of the "hard stuff." Just enough to stitch the whole thing together and make it look nice. But, the final result was very specific to the client's requirements.

Also: Maybe just a polite reminder that "it doesn't have to be 'PHP and/or WordPress.'"

You can indeed create your HTML files locally, test them out and make sure they work, then copy them to your web host and take them live.

Back in the olden days, when I designed my first website, I created the files in AOLPress, then refined them using HTMLKit. AOLPress is defunct, but HTMLKit is still around, as far as I can tell.

Also, you might want to take a look at XAMMP. You can run it locally, design your website and test it out, then upload it to your web host. In the process of using XAMMP, you will also learn a lot about how websites work.

I must say, though, that I cannot agree with the criticism of WordPress. I have been using it since v. 1.5 and my blog has continued to run very nicely through all the upgrades.

Just my two cents.

frankbell,

I am with you on this.

WordPress is simply one of several options open to the OP, but since he found the prospect of installing WP on a LAMP server “terrifying”, I hardly think self-hosting is the ideal solution for him either.

My photography website is based on WordPress with a different theme and it works well for my very basic needs. I've the old https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/folder-gallery/ plugin installed and it's easy to create a couple of folders, ftp/scp up the image files and create a simple post to display all the pics as a nice looking gallery.

I self host on a LAMP stack in a VMWare VM, so doing it all myself.

If the thought of running a full stack server is daunting then go for hosted WordPress from someone like GoDaddy and gain some experience that way.

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TenTenths,

I suspect that your self-hosted WordPress website featuring photographs is just the sort of thing that the OP is looking for, provided that he can get to grips with installing WP on a LAMP server.

Presumably, something like the NextGEN Gallery would be a current replacement for the old Folder Gallery?

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

If he is interested, he can always contact you directly via the email on your Facebook page.

WordPress installation is no longer easy like it was back in the day, especially if one wants secure updates.