Years ago I was so sick of having to change email addresses whenever I changed my internet supplier, which was quite frequent, as they went bust, changed their name or became restrictive that I took action. Registered an internet address in my name, used a competitive company to host it. Now I keep the same email addresses where ever I go. I use Qiq, as I find them helpful and competitively priced.
It's the domain registration package: their simplest and cheapest. You just need to register the domain and then, once registered, set up email forwarding to your Plusnet account and web forwarding to your current Plusnet webspace. Emails addressed to the new domain will arrive at Plusnet alongside those to the existing domain, and requests for web pages at the new domain will display the existing domain's pages (or others if you so wish).
Click on the link I gave you above, click on the blue 'Domains' rectangle (second from the left and just below the large banner that keeps changing at the top of the screen) then enter the domain name you are looking for (choose .co.uk etc from the drop-down menu) and click on 'Check'. Assuming it's available, click on 'Continue' and just follow the system through.
HTH
I bit the bullet when I need to host a custime built website (gridwatch) and bought a small virtual machine with good bandwidth in someones clud. Since I own the machine totally as well as half a dozen domain names I have moved all my hosting & email onto it bit by bit. It will in the end save me mony.
My next step is to shut down all the hosting accounts I have elsewhere and transfer those.
If anyone else wants to know how to do this, ask.
IIRC its costing £200 a year and will replace 3 x 30 quid a year accounts plus a couple of other hosted sites.
Not great in disk space or RAM but plenty enough for me. Bandwidth and CPU power is to die for.
I don't think the OP has much requirement for lots of bandwidth and CPU power with only a couple of visitors a day.
It may even be worth looking at hosting the site on the end of their ADSL line. I think you can get NAS boxes that can do that so no need to keep a relatively power hungry PC on 24/7. Depends if the ISP is a real one that provides a static IP address and doesn't block any ports or a silly consumer one that gives a dynamic IP address and blocks ports. Another factor is how reliable the ADSL is. Cost then is just the domain name(s) from a place that will allow you proper control of the DNS entries.
I wouldn't recommend that to the OP. Unless you really like managing servers DIY is a lot of work for little reward.
that's what I did with an intel Atom server - very low power. Stuff linux /apache on that an create your sites..
You can with care use dynamic DNS which NEARLY always works - simply map your domains to xyx.dyndns,org after registering with them, and set up a cron job to tell dyndns what IP you are on.
But that all gets a bit complicated really if you don't know Linux.
and crucifies the uplink if the sites get popular.
once set UP it runs like clockwork. Setting it up is noon trivial for the average plug and play windows sort of guy tho.
Happy to do a set of instructions if anyone wants to try,. though.
Or twist my arm, buy the box and I'll set it up..
Done more than a few in my time :-)
>
Which is one reason not to recommend it to the OP. Another being that when the clockwork stops it can also be a lot of trouble at the most inconvenient moment. I have managed servers on a university network, for my present business I could run everything on a server from home, but I've decided sys-admining is not my core business, so better to make as much of it as I can someone else's problem.
There's no point. He's got free hosting with his free Plusnet account. They provide the webspace for free and 1and1 supply the forwarding for the cost of buying the domain name...
their
My server just sits there and works. Get the occasional email from it saying there are updates available but other than that it doesn't need any fettling. Set up is fairly painless, download and burn the ISO, boot the machine destined to be the server from that and follow the instructions. It *will* take over the entire machine and all drives by default. I'd say you'd have a working email/web server up and running in less than a couple of hours, start to finish. The hard bit is probably finding the answers to some of the initial setup questions like thinking of a name for the server and knowing the IP address/netmask etc to use.
SME Server, previously e-smith.
Looks like you've had lots of good replies so-far and while it's hard to be impartial, I'd like to offer my own services if you've not already gotten yourself sorted out... (only as a UK-DIY special ;-)
Anyway for the sum of £30+vat a year, I can register & maintain a domain for you (registered in your name), provide you with enough disk space and bandwidth for your needs, a handfull of email accounts (POP or IMAP - although I'm really pushing IMAP these days as it works a lot better with multiple devices and webmail and emails, folders, etc. are stored on the server which is backed up) I can also do things like setup a mysql database, or install a basic wordpress, etc.
This isn't my normal stuff, but I maintain a couple of dozen of servers in a hosting facility more to facilitate the needs of my clients who I do (on-site) support for, etc. so it's all manged for them with no real end-user fancy control panels and so on.
If interested, let me know - my email is valid.
It's a highly competitive market though - which is why I don't really do this in the main - you really have to work in bulk with everything fully automated to really make it work at that level which is why I offer everything "managed" (well, mostly).
Gordon
I can't see why a dynamic address should be a problem if there are only a few visitors a day. Netgear routers for ADSL will even update DynDNS for you should the address change.
Naughty, dyndns has rules against making changes unless the address changes. Simple CRON jobs will almost certainly break those rules.
Netgear routers advertise this as a feature: I can assure you that sometimes they fail to do so. I think I had 7 failures in the year of administering a system like that until I added a linux script to do it every five minutes regardless of whether the IP address had changed, or not.
That must be why dyndns recommends that you use it dennis. Because it breaks their rules.
What a stupid turd you are, when all is said and done.
Since its recommended by dyndns, and the example shows a timed poll and update, I assumed that dyndns.org was in fact perfectly happy with it.
With the netgear it only polls once, when it receives a DHCP change: if that fails that curtains for your public presence until there is another DHCP change.
Or until you reboot the router.
But I admit I have actually tried all these things and run a site based on them, so I am talking from experience while you are talking out of your arse.
Which for you, is the standard default practice, so nothing new there then.
The simple ones you write...perhaps.
But he didn't even say "simple".
You really don't have a clue. inadyn doesn't update dyndns every 5 minutes. Come back when/if you can work out what it actually does!
You are lucky as you have it all wrong but it still works. Just goes to show that even idiots can use some software.
"and set up a cron job to tell dyndns what IP you are on"
How much simpler can you get? You actually need to see if your IP has changed and update DynDNS if it has.
And a cron job will do that and not break the rules.
TNP did actually say run a cron job to update the IP every five minute. It only works because he runs a cron job to run a C program that checks if the address has changed and updates if it has. Something he doesn't appear to understand. Telling people to run a cron job to update the address every 5 mins will just get them banned if they don't understand the rules.
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