Hi

I am just starting out with designing and am putting together some ideas for a personal web site where I can share all my freebies in the one place (I have a few on various sites already) and show case some of my other work. I grasp the basics of plain simple web design but I want to know if it is ultra hard to put togehter a site that offers files to dowload.

Is this something I could do myself? Could I use a free web host or will I need to pay for a site? Can anyone point me towards a tutorial or very simple instructions on how to do this?

Or am in way over my head already???

thanks for your help - you are all so incredibly inspirational!

Kate

__________________

My blog....

Chances are you will need to pay for hosting, unless perhaps you will only offer one freebie at a time and the files sizes are small. You have two things working against you. 1. Digiscrap files are large in size for printability, which translates into extra needs for bandwidth and also disc space. 2. "If you build it, they will come." Meaning that people love freebies and if your freebies are good and the word gets out, you can bet there'll be lots of downloading ie bandwidth use, which translates into "sho me da money!" HTH!

__________________
Dianne Rigdon

I agree with rigdonia. You will probably have to pay for webspace and certainly need to find a provider that offers a lot of included traffic. I can see on my site that freebies are very, very popular and that there is more and more traffic.
It is very easy to offer files to download on your site, even I can do it and that means something .
Feel free to ask any questions you might encounter. There is always someone here to help out.

__________________
Rikki



My Blog
My website

Thanks so much for your thoughts! It's soo great to have such wonderful expreinced people as a resource... I am so lucky!

I have had a look at a few web sites I admire (both of yours among them - they are both great!) so I have some homework to do in sussing out some web hosts and seeing how far the budget will stretch!

thanks again!

Kate

__________________

My blog....

ok another quick question...

Just how much space and bandwidth am I going to need??

I am thinking of just offering up to 6 medium sized kits a time (or the equivilent) and a few pages for displaying layouts and other bits and pieces, but that could be down sized to only a few to start with if it was going to be more affordable! Something alot like your site Rikki (which is wonderful, I've had a big look and plan to download when our new conection is in plus I've practiced my high school german!).

thanks

Kate

__________________

My blog....

Okay I have the same problem except I already hav webspace and want to host fairly small freebies less than 10mb. I have 750mb worth of space which is not much but this is just for members (the downloads) how on earth do I host it? I have no idea?

Tp avoid paying a lot for bandwidth, I would recommend storing the the files somewhere other than the site, like filecloud or megadownload, and then offering links to the files for people who want to download them. That way you can insure that the site never gets congested, or that a few people eat up your bandwidth for the month.