So you want to show off your work to the world, the internet is a great way of doing that. There are many considerations in making your home on the web, not least your work being copied for free and used elsewhere http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/flickr-as-an-interior-decorator-tool/ . To display your work you either need to use an service such as http://www.flickr.com/ or start your own website. To start your own you usually (although not always) will need a domain name. Your own www..com with whatever you want assuming its not already taken, between the dots. I use www.enom.com for my domains, although http://www.powerpipe.com/ is a reseller of theirs who will be better suited to someone wanting just one domain.  Many hosting companies will offer to sell you a domain, even give you one for free.  I would advise against this, years of involvement in hosting industry has taught me not to keep all my eggs in one basket. Should the company go bust (which happens often to smaller companies in this market) you can have a hard time getting control of your domain back. Not to mention if you have a dispute with a host, a more disreptuable host could have a contract worded so that you have to pay a ‘release fee’. Ok so enough pessimism, on to finding a home for your domain name.

Basically servers are just computers (some fancier than others) hopefully sat in a datacenter connected to the internet. You upload your website to it just like you put files in on your own harddrive. The server has special software on it that interprets these files and comunicates these to anybody typingin your address. There are different levels you can go in at, at the most basic level you can simply rent a small portion of a server for one domain. This is cheap but you have little control and can be affected by other people on the server. This shouldn’t be a factor with a reputable host, however with a cheap host servers can get overloaded. The next level up is to rent a VPS which is effectively your own server. In reality it is a partition of a very large, powerful server, but you have control yourself of pretty much everything. This isn’t for beginners but is great if you want more space and control. Personally I used www.servint.com for my server, they have provided the most amazing service for a great price for over 5 years. I love their ethics. Too many companies have ‘specials’ and if you are an existing customer you are usually prohibited from benefitting. They work on the basis that you get a special deal for signing up and then it expires and you start paying the real price. Over the 5 years I have been with Servint my price has never changed and approximately each 12- 18 months the amount of storage \ bandwidth \ memory etc on the server has been upgraded. Their support is beyond comparisson. If you are in the market for your own server pick them. I get nothing for reccomending them, but I trust them with my work and my families businesses.  So who to go to for a basic hosting package if you don’t want a server. Given that I haven’t used any myself in recent years I would hesitate to reccomend a specific company so instead I will set some criteria.

• Price – be wary of too cheap. By far the largest cost to a hosting provider is wages. Those wages pay for your support. Depending on your level of knowledge you might need that support a lot. 99 cents a month hosting does not buy you much support time. I would budget $10 a month to start with.
• Unlimited – There are no unlimited sized hard drives, and adding more drives costs the host more. The same goes for bandwidth. Somebody has to pay for it, so look for fixed amounts. Unlimited email accounts is fine as they are limited by the space you are allocated. Unlimited Bandwidth or Storage is not ok. Stay away from these hosts.
• Support – You want 24 x 7 support via phone \ livechat \ email and helpdesk. Smaller companies struggle to provide decent coverage. It may not be a factor if you have a hobby site. If your  business site goes down at 3 am you want it fixed ASAP. Servint answer the phone virtually immediately 24 x 7, that is what I would expect elsewhere.

Ok so where do you find companies, how do you check them out. One such place would be www.webhostingtalk.com , a forum about webhosting. They have a find a host service, an offers section and the ability to search for posts about a host you have found. Even the best hosts can get the occasional bad review, but if you see several then they are a factor to consider.

So you have your domain name, you have somewhere to put it, now what. You need to make your site, you have a few options:

• Webhostingtalk \ Google \ Craigslist and others can all put you in touch with someone who can design your website for you. Don’t expect this to be cheap, a designer just starting our may design and build a site for a few hundred dollars, but a professional will charge in the thousands for a commercial site.
• Design and build it yourself. If you have no knowledge and no time this may not be the best route, if you already know how to do it or have the time to learn it can save you a fortune. http://www.net2.com/nvu/ is some excellent free software for helping your build your own site.
• Half way house – Templates can provide a half way house solution, somebody else designs the framework and look for the site and you customise and expand it to suit your needs. Templates are often sold repeatedly so the price can be lower but your design will not be unique. Google for website templates if this sounds interesting.
• Blogs \ Content Management Software – This is another possibility. The majority of this site runs off WordPress. You install the software and from then on it is like using a complicated version of a word processor. You can download themes and it can save you from designing your own site. For a blog its perfect, for an advanced commerical photography site you may find limitations.
• www.Smugmug.com there are an every increasing number of services like this one. I haven’t used them yet but I intend to at one point. They will take care of the majority of things for you.

Hopefully you now have all the parts you need to build your site up and get it online. Remember to keep backups!

So who is reliable and trustworthy. Who to send family shots to at a sensible price and who to send clients work to? Even the best labs can have an off day and there are probably horror stories for most labs out there. I will post a US version at a later date (although for consumer prints CVS has proven great for me).

For UK consumer prints I use www.foto.com, after sending them thousands of shots over many years they have never failed to provide me with faithful renditions. The prices are low, very low, mainly due to having a large central printing house for all of Europe (it would seem, my prints arrive from mainland Europe). The downside is a few extra days delay and slightly higher postage costs but at 4-5p 6-8 cents per 4×6 I can handle a few p extra postage. Before placing an order I would use their calculator to ensure you know the total as the postage can bump up orders, especially for larger prints. Having said that they are one of the cheapest places for larger prints I have found, especially considering they have a pretty advanced backend and good tools for uploading \ selecting cropping etc.  They have a wide range of other products, I have only ever ordered one photo mug which arrived chipped, my only dissappointment with them and most likely due to the postal system.

Professional prints are a little more complicated, there are a few companies to use. For small to midsize prints (and film processing) http://www.peak-imaging.co.uk/ does a great job. I have used them for prints and film processing (E6 mainly, C41 and B&W when I am lazy) and the results have been to a very high standard. They pride themselveson quality, price is obviously therefore higher but if you want a zero risk buy they are the place to go.

Larger prints would go between two places, B&W prints to http://www.digital-monochrome.co.uk/page4668.html and colour printing and film scanning to http://www.blueskyimages.co.uk/.

One last site, I haven’t tried but intend to soon is http://www.snapmad.com/about.php.