Stamp Column Archives

The Glassine Surfer Column Archive

This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

June 2003

Putting your stamp club on the Web can be daunting, but if you read and plan now, it won't be as hard as you think. This month’s column is an outline of the steps required to get the site going, starting with registering a domain name, planning the site on paper, gathering the necessary tools, with a few words about basic design and caution about the care and maintenance of your website.

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Sign up and go.

As things stand, domain name registration and web hosting are usually done in tandem, and it's probably best not to try doing otherwise. That said, registration prices are usually about the same no matter where you go, but the actually monthly charges for hosting can vary widely. Plus, server storage, number of e-mail accounts, bandwidth, cgi, and other tech matters can vary greatly. The only thing to do is to start surfing for deals.

Here are four businesses with fairly good track records and hosting plans suitable for a basic stamp club site for you to start looking at. Take notes as you go and check out other offers you’re sure to meet along the way.

Pair
http://www.pair.com

Half Price Hosting
http://www.halfpricehosting.com

Avid Hosting
http://www.avidhosting.com

My Hosting
http://www.myhosting.com

If you know a Webmaster, ask her about what service she uses, and you’re liable to learn a whole lot about what makes a hosting plan work.

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FTP it.

FTP is the program used to copy files from your PC to your host's Internet server. File Transfer Programs are ubiquitous. Here are three that I've used at one time or another, and the last is the one that I prefer now.

WS_FTP
http://www.ipswitch.com/

Cute FTP
http://www.cuteftp.com/

Smart FTP
http://www.smartftp.com/

These are the programmer's sites, and if you want to see what others think about the programs, put the program name and the word "review" into Google and see what pops.

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Host CP.

An important part of the host and user interface is the control panel, where the user can activate e-mail accounts, check billing, and control other aspects of the account and site. As the control panel will be your pipeline to managing your account and as some control panels are better than others, check out all those pre-signup screen shots and demos to see which works better for you.

If you're building a club site, you may want to have the ability to password protect certain directories for club officers, etc. Technically, it's best done through the control panel, so see what's offered.

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Html is Greek to me.

The Web starts with the hypertext markup language, HTML. While simple, it has lots of quirks and tricks, and html coding can be a daunting task to anyone starting out with zero experience in html. It's like learning an ancient Sumerian dialect, which is why there is web authoring software.

They are programs that turn out Web-ready pages to ftp to your host. (Notice the slippery use of the noun as a verb.) Generally, authoring programs all work the same. The user chooses fonts and colors, as well as Webby things like frames. Then the user enters page text, but there can be a big difference among authoring software when it comes to the bells and whistles.

The best whistle is a program's ability to save and insert page templates, which is a style and layout that’s created once and applied when needed. The second best whistle is the program's interface. If you're confused about what you see on the screen, you won't do good work.

There must be hundreds of these programs available, and if you're looking for a basic model, I don't think you need to pay for anything. It should be freeware.

The World Wide Web Consortium has a good hub of links to these programs, as well as being a good place to learn more about html and the Web.

World Wide Web Consortium Tools
http://www.w3.org/Tools/Overview.html