Hosting & domains

It is best not to host your own website on your own server; it can be very demanding on an organisation and may require alot of technical know-how and on-going support. In most cases, it is best to choose an external service – shop around and ask allies for recommendations.

Your ‘domain’ (e.g. yourorganisation.org) is vital internet real estate – register it yourself and consider buying your country identifier (for example, .za for South Africa or .th for Thailand), .org, .com and .net variations of each domain you own; this will stop your opponents or ‘squatters’ buying it. It's a good idea to buy your domain for as many years as you can afford.

It's absolutely vital to take good care of your domain – keep the domain registration and contact email addresses up to date and don't loose your user names and passwords for accessing these.

Getting a domain

Getting a domain name, like myorganisation.org, isn't as hard as you might think. Many web hosts will register your domain for you when you set up an account, but you can also register your own domain name before you even set up your site. Businesses like godaddy.com or networksolutions.com are two examples of places you can buy your domain. There are also anonymous hosting services that won't show who the owner of the domain is and a number of those allow you to pay with a Western Union transfer instead of a credit card.

If you get a domain from your web host read the fine print and make sure that you'll be able to take your domain name with you if you change web hosts. Having your own domain name ensures that you'll be able to move your site one day if you are dissatisfied with your web host.

Activist and NGO friendly web hosts

When looking for a host you should also consider who will implement updates and provide technical-level maintenance to your site. Will you need a web host to handle that for you? If that question has you scratching your head you probably want to start with a web host who can handle updates for you. If, however, you have technical staff available or a good relationship with a technology assistance provider or volunteer, you can ask them about their capacity to manage updates and maintain the content management system you are expecting to use.

Web hosts - also often called Internet Service Providers or ISPs - have access to your content and all the information about who visits your website. For this reason, if you are handling sensitive information or working with a high risk community, you should consider who is hosting your website. You need to be aware of the policies of the ISP who is hosting your web site because they are obliged to keep detailed information about your web site - who owns it, who uses it and what content is there - and present it to the authorities on request. If you are working on particularly sensitive issues you may want to consider hosting your website outside your home country. This is not a secure solution but does reduce the ease with which your government or local authorities will be able to demand to see this data.

Another issue you may want to consider is to find an ISP that guarantees easy access to your content for the user. For example, bandwidth and therefore the speed at which the website can be downloaded by users and how many users can look at it at the same time may be an issue. This is something to be especially careful of if you are intending to use multimedia content.

Below are a few organisations that provide free or low-cost hosting services to activists and organisers using Free and Open Source Software tools. This is just a small selection, there are many more we haven't listed here. We've divided them up by continent as it's often easier to stay in contact with your web host as they are commercially known that is close to your time zone and organise a contract with them. You can of course get hosting anywhere and don't need to be restricted by geography.

You may also want to ask allied organisations about web hosts they're using and what their experiences have been.

Africa

• kabissa.org – a US-based organisation focussed on Africa that provides hundreds of grassroots organisations with internet services and training, including email lists and websites.
• interconnection.org – US-based non-profit that gives African NGOs free or discounted space.
• thedevelopmentcafe.org - offers website development and management, training and consulting services to NGOs among others.
• hrinfo.net provides limited web hosting services to human rights activists and NGOs in the Arab world, especially in Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia.

Asia-Pacific

• jinbonet - provides computer communication services including internet service and training services for Korean NGOs.
• icthelpline.org - provides websites and email for several clients, from individuals to NGOs to big corporates. They provide subsidised services to small organisations (Malaysia).
• mahiti.org - provides simple and affordable ICT services based on Free/Open Source Software to civil society (India).
• c2o - is a not-for-profit web hosting and online publishing systems provider for progressive networking activities in the Australasia region.

Europe

• xs4all.nl – a Dutch-based ISP providing secure communications infrastructure for both business and activists.
• autistici.org – creates free means of secure communications on a large scale, including web hosting, email lists, blogs and more (Italy).
• gn.apc.org – is a progressive community working for peace, the environment, gender equality and social justice, through the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs).

Latin America

• rits.org.br - is a Brazilian non-profit organisation whose mission is to serve as a virtual network of information focused on strengthening civil society organisations and social movements.
• sarava.org – is a multidisciplinary Brazilian collective whose objective is to optimise activists’ use of technology.
• espora.org - is a Mexican cultural project dedicated to building infrastructure for the collective learning of free technologies and develop resources to host projects in an autonomous way.

_{This material is based on the eAdvocacy Training materials produced by Aspiration in partnership with Radical Designs which are used with their kind permission and have been added to and adapted for this guide. These materials are distributed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5.}