Web Hosting for STEM Schools and Coding Clubs

Short answer: code clubs and STEM groups have a hosting question nothing else in education has, which is whether the young people get to publish their own work. That turns a three-page site into a multi-site setup, and it is the most educationally useful thing you can do with a hosting account.

Looking for plans rather than guidance? Our education hosting plans start at £39 a year, and our multi-site plans let students publish their own projects.

Give students somewhere to publish

Embedding a Scratch project is easy and worth doing. Giving each young person their own subdomain or folder is a bigger step and a considerably better one, because they learn how the web actually works alongside the coding: what a domain is, what a server does, why a page is slow, what happens when a file is missing.

Practically that means a plan supporting multiple sites or subdomains rather than one, with enough PHP and database headroom for whatever they build. Static HTML costs almost nothing to host; a WordPress install per student does not.

A sensible middle ground is a shared site with a folder per student for static projects, plus one or two WordPress installs for anyone who needs a database. Our guide to static website hosting covers why static is the right default here, and our guide to hosting personal projects covers the individual case.

Set boundaries before students have access

Worth deciding early rather than after something goes wrong:

• Static only, or dynamic too? Static files cannot be exploited in the way a badly written PHP script can
• Who can upload, and does a volunteer review it first
• What happens when someone leaves the club or moves school
• Whether projects are public or unlisted, which matters if students name themselves in them

Keep student areas separate from the club’s own site, so a broken project cannot take down your term dates and sign-up page. A multi-site setup does that by design.

Build the club site so it survives a change of organiser

Clubs change organiser more often than any other group in education, and the site usually dies with whoever set it up.

Register the domain in the club or school’s name with a shared contact address rather than a volunteer’s personal email, pay from club or school funds, and make sure at least two people can log in. Set auto-renew. Our complete guide to UK domain names covers registration and renewals.

Keep the site simple enough that the next organiser can update term dates without training, and rely on daily backups so a mistaken edit is a five-minute restore.

Sign-up forms carry information about children

Your registration form collects a child’s name, age, a parent’s contact details and sometimes additional needs. Keep it minimal, use free SSL, and do not let submissions accumulate indefinitely in your WordPress database, which most form plugins do by default. Route them to a monitored address and retain nothing on the site.

Forms also fail silently. Send form mail through authenticated SMTP rather than PHP mail, add SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, and test before each term starts. Our guide to contact forms not sending emails covers the causes.

If you are a school with specialist STEM provision

Your hosting requirement is an ordinary school one: caching, storage, free SSL, daily backups, and the statutory publishing and accessibility duties covered in our guide for primary schools.

The one addition is the same as above: if you want students publishing project work, that is a multi-site question rather than a bigger single plan.

What plan you actually need

Club site only: the entry-level plan. Three or four pages and a form. Around £39 a year, and the thing to check is that the renewal price does not jump, because nobody wants that conversation with a treasurer.

Club site plus student projects: a multi-site plan, sized to how many students and whether they need databases.

Our guide to cheap web hosting in the UK covers what should be included as standard.

Frequently asked questions

Can students have their own websites on our hosting?

Yes, with a multi-site plan or subdomains. Static projects cost almost nothing to host; a WordPress install each needs more resource.

Should student projects be on the same site as the club’s?

No. Keep them separate so a broken project cannot affect your term dates and sign-up page.

What hosting does a code club need?

The entry-level plan for the club site itself. The requirement only grows if students publish their own work.

How do we stop the site dying when the organiser changes?

Register the domain to the club or school with a shared contact address, pay from club funds, and make sure two people can log in.

Explore more

Our guide to hosting for students and personal projects covers the individual case, and our guide to web hosting for schools covers requirements common to all school types.

Our multi-site plans are the place to start if you want students publishing their own projects.