I am fairly new to this site and cake decorating. I just started decorating in October 2005 and am currently going through the first Wilton course.

However I have been baking for years. I actually have a buisness licence and sell baked goods out of my home. I think I would really like to start selling decorated cakes as well, I have absolutely fallen in love with the art! I think I am addicted.

I would really like to set up some sort of website where I can send people to look at pictures of the cakes I have made.

My question is, who do you guys use to host your websites? Are there any good free web hosts out there? And what suggestions do you have in going through the process of setting something like this up?

Though I have my own domain and a paid site, a lot of people here seem to use freewebs.com

thank you cakeman 66 I will take a look at freewebs.com

If you are looking to have your own domain name and not deal with the downside to the free hosting programs out there, Jackie and I run a webhosting company. We have basic plans starting at $4.95/month.

Just send Jackie a PM if you are interested in going that route.

the company website is JDC Hosting

**This is not an open invitation for hosting companies to advertise in this thread. This post is only okay because we own and operate cakecentral.

Since you and Jackie have a webhosting company, could you give us some good basic advice on what we should look for in a web hosting company and things we should avoid as well.
TIA!
Leslie

Things to look for:

A really good sign of any web hosting company is thier response time.
Send them an email or give them a call asking about thier pricing.

Look for a company that offers some kind of control panel, so that you can have full control over your entire web hosting account. This way you can easily add/remove email accounts and check your web stats. (web stats tell you how many unique visitors you get, if you have been spidered, etc. like a hit counter only 50000 times better because you get more data)


Things to avoid:
Any company that offer unlimited bandwidth, or unlimted hosting space. There is no such thing, and this is usually a sure sign that the company is overloading thier servers.

You probably don't need any kind of dedicated server or expensive hosting package. Mostly what you would need is a small web hosting package.

For example, JDC Hosting offers a Starter Plan with 300 MB of storage space for $4.95 / month. This would be ample space for someone that wants to have a brochure type website that had lots of photos of thier cakes.

I went with GoDaddy.com so far the experience has been positive.

I LOVE SiteGround. Their response time and support has been awesome. They offer sitebuilders and shopping carts for a very reasonable price. You can PM me for a referral.

BTW Jackie & Heath... you guys have done a terrific job with this site. I know how hard it is to get something like this off the ground and maintain it. YAY Team!

Jackie,
Thanks for the information! I really enjoy this site and all of the great members. You and Heath do an awesome job!
Leslie