Diary of a Startup: Create a startup for £14

Date: 2012-01-07
This post is the first in a series discussing my new startup, proudly named recensus.com (latin for review). So after spending about 24 hours trying to find a .com domain name I was happy with here were my steps.

1. Domain Registration
Registered the domain name with 123-reg.co.uk. I choose them because they are reasonably priced and you get control over the DNS records which they don’t charge you extra for and they haven’t gone down in. (Cost: £12)

2. Setup Cloudflare
Cloudflare.com is an amazing service that give you a DNS server which blocks spam, protects against security attacks, caches content using a CDN and a lot of other features. Well worth the free price tag, takes about 10 minutes to setup, I only wish they gave you the nameservers at the beginning of the setup and they had Google App’s DNS settings as a one click button. (Cost: free)

3. Setup Google Apps
Just in case you don’t know Google App’s give you Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Docs all under your own domain (free for up to 10 users). Again well worth the free price tag (although you have to look hire for the free version), just don’t forget to setup the subdomains. (Cost: free)

4. Setup Webspace and Upload Holding Page
I’ve got my own server (well Welford Media Ltd has) and I’ve just created a new domain and uploaded my holding page. If you haven’t got hosting you could go to Hostpapa.co.uk and click install wordpress, then download a coming soon template (see http://www.net-kit.com/12-free-attractive-themes-templates-for-coming-soon-pages/ or http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/coming-soon-templates-tutorials/). (Cost: £2 per month)

5. Signup to MailChimp
Mailchimp enables you to send out tracked email newsletters to subscribers and they have a free account which give you 2000 subscribers! After signing up put the signup form on your website. (Cost: free)

That’s the easy bit done, now i’ve just got build the app, do the sales and marketing, convert leads and make money. Also if possible get funding, find mentors and hire staff.

Sendmail on Ubuntu

Install Sendmail on Ubuntu

I also need my php applications to be able to send our email using the mail function. Therefore I need to install sendmail and enable it in my php.ini file.
Install Sendmail

apt-get install sendmail

Check its working

ps -aux | grep sendmail

Change php.ini

replace
;sendmail_path =
with
sendmail_path =  /usr/sbin/sendmail

Config Sendmail

sudo sendmailconfig

Change your host files

homename
/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost myhostname