We are a small nonprofit music school and recently purchased Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition to organize our business. Our current website host and e-mail provider does not support servers running Windows Server programs and we have out-grown their service. Does tech soup reccomend web-hosting companies for nonprofits to run Windows Server 2003? Please help!
Joined on 08-20-2001
San Francisco, CA and the web
Hi Heather--
TechSoup doesn't recommend a specific web hosting provider for Windows Server 2003. However, we do offer this
article that provides guidelines into what to look for in a web provider & how to select one.
Best,
Megan
Heather,
Just wanted to clarify... Are you looking to move your server hardware off-site or keep it in-house? For a small non-profit hosting email/website off-site is usually a wise decision in terms of the financial, security and administrative issues. Are you looking to more your server to a collocation facility? You actually have quite a few choices here and I would be happy to help if you provide more details.
Thanks,
Joseph Guarino
www.evolutionaryit.com
Heather,
I think what I understand is that you've been hosting your school's website on a webserver at the school. You're at a point where you want a new website and need to decide what to do.
Since your school doesn't already know what it needs, that suggests to me that you don't have to host the website on your own server, so I strongly urge you to go with an off-site host. The hassles of maintaining your own webserver are significant, and you can probably get hosting for cheap - under $20 a month. It's work it.
If you're looking to get a new website, your first step should be finding a designer. They'll know a lot of the questions to ask and a lot of the answers you need. I strongly urge you against using someone's brother/son/cousin for the design. That's a recipe for an unfinished website, or a site you can't update. Look for a designer who builds on a CMS (content management system). Popular ones include Drupal, Joomla and WordPress. A CMS is a system that makes it easy for a non-designer to update the website.
The specifics of your website needs - databases, donations, functionality, etc are going to drive a lot of your decisions. But I really think on-site hosting is not worth the trouble.