I'm a newby to webmastering and this forum. I have a bachelors in computer information systems, but do to lack of experience I have only been able to land a job in stupid telecommunications as a tech support rep. I'm finally having some free time and I want to moonlight as a webmaster and designer.


Here are a few pionts I need help with and any other tips and pionters will be greatly appreciated;

1) my asp doesn't support servers so I need a good host that supports flash and asp. I don't make enough to buy one of those big monthly plans, so I need a cheap one.

2) I'm clueless on how to bid on projects. If anyone can give me some tips and pionts that would be greatly appreciated.

3) How much should I charge for making a website?

4) Is there any specific payment method that companies generally use or is it best to start my own DBA company?

If you need to ask the last three questions, then you aren't ready. I'm sorry to say that, but these are business-related questions and will apply to your specific situation.

You need to figure out what you can do, what you can't, how much money you want to make, how much time you want to spend making it, etc. I believe the corporate types call it a "plan".

As far as your first question goes, hosts don't "support" Flash as such. It's a client-side browser technology, so nothing needs to be done at the server end to configure it.

ASP: I only recommend one host, Sectorlink. They're all I've ever used since I started 4 years ago. Their plans are well-priced for what you get, the support guys are top-notch and will actually solve problems, and they haven't been down for me in nearly 3 years.

1) my asp doesn't support servers so I need a good host that supports flash and asp. I don't make enough to buy one of those big monthly plans, so I need a cheap one.

Web.com is good (used to be burlee, then interland). You need to be hosted on their NT servers to run ASP (all run Flash).

2) I'm clueless on how to bid on projects. If anyone can give me some tips and pionts that would be greatly appreciated.

???

3) How much should I charge for making a website?

Charge for your time (hourly) and experience. Make it cheap at first in order to gain the experience. The amount is up to you, just make it fair.

4) Is there any specific payment method that companies generally use or is it best to start my own DBA company?

I would suggest free payment services to start, like PayPal.

very helpful so far! thanks.. keep em coming please I need all of the help that I can get...

Web.com is good (used to be burlee, then interland). You need to be hosted on their NT servers to run ASP (all run Flash).

I have to disagree with you. When Burlee was around back in the day, they weren't too bad for small sites. Interland was good back in Windows 2000 before they started buying up all the smaller hosting companies, including Burlee. When that happened, Burleeland turned to complete and utter crap. Major security holes (anyone here around long enough to remember the Hosting Controller incident with them?), rising prices, decreasing quality of tech support, increased wait times, server outages, you name it, it happened.

I didn't know they merged with web.com, although my girlfriend's father had some huge issues with web.com and a mysterious recurring "monthly administration fee for annual service" (this is their wording, not mine) that ended up resulting in me having to call them and cancel on his behalf. So that doesn't surprise me.

Oh, and did I mention that Interland absolutely sucks? I don't think I did. Maybe I should do it just to be sure.

INTERLAND ABSOLUTELY SUCKS.

I'll tell you how I really feel soon, I promise.