Website hosting

I've heard good things about HostGator. I have a friend who works in the Houston location.

I've been looking for a thread like this for awhile. Great info here. I'd almost like to start over, though, with a couple more specific questions.

A little background. I was a professional photographer for about 12 years. That dried up on me and I got into the IT business. I'm a Unix/Oracle developer working with big, corporate apps. Got practically no web experience, though.

I took up photography again a little while back as a hobby. And you know what? I can still shoot. Shoot well enough that there's a bit of demand for my work, mainly from the people I photograph. I'm mostly looking to set up a website to stay OUT of the business end of photography. I want a place where I can tell people, "You want to see these shots, go here. If you like them, download them. If you want prints, click a button and buy some from a lab -- at cost." I want to take pictures. I got no interest in selling pictures any more. I also got no interest in writing code to maintain a website. Too much like work. I'm putting up this site to avoid work.

OK, so that's where I'm coming from.

I've been looking at SmugMug. They seem to have ALMOST everything I want. It looks very easy to use. They have point & click tools for galleries and thumbnails and shopping carts and the like. I've looked at several sites hosted by them and they look fine. Better than fine as a matter of fact.

I want my own domain name. I've done a search and found a couple that would be acceptable. SmugMug will let me use a custom DN with a premium plan, so that's not a problem.

There is one thing they don't offer that would be a deal breaker if I can't find a workaround, and that's why I'm writing this. I want email with my new domain name.

I wouldn't be opposed to having and paying for 2 accounts. Say a SmugMug account to host my galleries and an economy GoDaddy account to host my email. Is there a way to keep those from conflicting? Can I have browsers go to SmugMug even though I have an active, working GoDaddy account with the same domain name?

Is there a better way than having 2 accounts?

Also, there are other things I'd like to have that SmugMug doesn't offer, but that aren't deal breakers. I'd like to have FTP. Can't do that with SmugMug. And while I mentioned that I have no interest in writing code, it would be nice to have that ability. Get in the back, write a little CGI, put up a database, etc.

Are there easy-to-use tools that I can put on a bare-bones site that would give me SmugMug-like ease and functionality (point & click galleries, thumbnails, shopping carts, etc.?) How hard is that to put together? How do you arrange installing software with a host? Is that a big deal? Might a hosting site have software like that available?

Is there any place I could go to research this a little more? Names of software, maybe?

Tia.

Not sure about SmugMug (I don't use them) but it is definitely possible to have the web record point to your hosting server and the MX record (email) point to a different provider.

In fact, this is exactly what I do. I point my web record at my hosting server and my MX records at google's "Apps for your domain" - which is the best free email around, bar none.

Thanks Todd. This just might work. I think it's just become plan A.

I have been using Hostgo.com for half a dozen websites for a few years now. Previously I used a local company at 4x the cost because they boasted about their customer support being superior to online hosting company's. I ended up switching to hostgo based on a friends recommendation and I must say their support team has been awesome. I've never had to wait more than an hour for a reply when I put in a ticket. They even answered promptly on x-mas day when I put in a ticket for a database issue on their end.

ok, I'm back to this again. I see sites that host rather cheaply per month. do these only host the site you build? what program do you use to build your own sites?

Just go here:
http://www.bludomain.c​om/

Done.

Hostgator for me as well.

I use Dreamhost and they've been great to deal with. Unlimted storage space and bandwidth, unlimited domains, and great customer service too. You have to build the content and website your self, but they do offer "one-click installs" of the most popular software like Wordpress, ecart, phpbb etc.

I started with zenfolio for the sole purpose of saving myself the issues of hosting, building the website, setting up print ordering, etc.

I do have a domain name and associated email thru godaddy that I forward to my zenfolio.

But everything is hosted on zenfolio's servers.