How To Create A Website | Website Hosting
You have just finished creating your web pages and got a domain name. The next step will be to host all your web pages and images on a web server.
Now you will have a couple of website hosting options:
- Host your website on your own server
- Rent web hosting space on a website hosting company server
- Get free web hosting
Factors to consider when choosing a web host
There are no such thing as a perfect web hosting company.
When choosing a web hosting company you will have to consider the pricing, reliability and support.
Some disadvantages of choosing free website hosting:
- Disk space might be very limited
- Bandwidth might be very limited
- Annoying advertising, banners and popups will be on your web pages
- Support might not be that good
From personal experience I would rather pay for my website hosting, because there are many advantages with paid web hosting. Web hosting is so cheap nowdays that you would be able to afford it.
Factors to consider when choosing a hosting company
1. What is the hosting company's uptime?
Websites uptime is very important, because a website that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors (customers) and potential sales.
Some hosting companies guarantee 90% + uptime. I have not come accross a web hosting company that guarantee 100% uptime.
It is important to remember that your cometitor is just one click away. If a person gets to your site through a search engine and find your site is down then he or she will simply choose another site in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
2. The amount of web disk space that you're website is going to need.
A lot of small sites use less than 10MB web space. The amount of required web disk space depends on images, video clips, amount of web pages etc.
Before you buy website hosting you will have to make sure that you have enough web disk space for your website and possible future expansion.
There are lots of web hosting companies that promise 500MB or even unlimited web space, but your site may just need 5MB of disk space.
3. The amount of bandwidth that you require per month for your site
The amount of data transfer or bandwidth is the amount of bytes being transfered from your site to visitors web browser.
If you have a small site then you don't need lots of bandwidth for the month. A site like Youtube.com requires lots of bandwidth, because the site have thousands of video clips. Millions of visitors view video clips and even upload clips on Youtube.
Before choosing a web host package it is important to check the amount of bandwidth, that your site will get. Lots of web hosting companies advertises unlimited bandwidth, but I will not take a chance with unlimited bandwidth. Remember the web host has got to pay for the bandwidth.
It is important to plan for growth in website traffic and resources.
4. Does the hosting company support MySQL, PHP, SSL, FrontPage server extensions, Perl, CGI Bin ... etc?
If you are planning to develop a database driven site then you will need MySql, PHP, Frontpage server extensions etc. installed on the web hosting server.
It is important to check if your web host support dabases and scripts. A lot of web hosting companies have free scripts eg. counters, form to mail, polls, mailing lists, search etc. installed on their servers that you can use without you needing to use Perl or PHP scripts.
5. How many domains can be hosted on one account?
Some web hosts allow more than one domain name on a web hosting account. Make also sure that your web host can support subdomains.
It is also important also to check the cost of this service and if it is included in web hosting plan or extra.
6. Domain name e-mail accounts which include auto responders, mail forwarders, POP3, IMAP etc.
If you have your own domain name like eg. seono1.co.za then you will need e-mail addresses at your own domain eg. "support@seono1.co.za", etc.
Majority of web hosting companies provide services like auto responders, mail forwarders, spam blocking, pop3, imap etc.
7. Will your site be hosted on a dedicated or shared server?
If your site requires low bandwidth and has little traffic then it makes sense to go for shared hosting. If you use shared hosting then you split the cost of the server with other webmasters and thus reduce your website hosting costs.
If your site has lots of website traffic and rquires more bandwidth then dedicated hosting is the way to go. Only your website will be hosted on the web server. The costs of dedicated web hosting is much more expensive than shared hosting.
8. Does your hosting company have Windows or Linux servers?
Servers play a role in website hosting, because they are designed to run certain type of applications. eg. apache linux servers can run PHP and MYSQL and Microsoft Windows servers can run ASP and dot net etc.
Choose the server type based on technology needed to run website. Microsoft products will work better on windows server and open source applications will run better on linux server.
9. How is the support structure of the hosting company
It is important to have good technical support with web hosting company.
Some questions to ask:
- Do the web host provide 24 hour a day support?
- Is there local or international support?
- Is there 7 days a week support?
- Will there public holidays support?
10. Advertising
When you use free web hosting then you will have to contend with advertising. The purpose for the advertising is to cover the hosting costs and to pay the bills.
Some web hosts will require you to have a banner on your web pages, others will have popup windows and some uses frames.
11. FTP Access
Most web hosting companies have ftp tools that you can use to upload your web pages, images etc.
I personally use cPanel to manage my whole website.
You can also use third party ftp frograms like cuteFTP and free FTP like Filezilla
12. Filetype and size support
Some web hosts have maximum file and image size restrictions. Other hosts have filetype restrictions.
It is good to watch out for this before chosing a web host.
13. SSL (secure server)
If you are planning to have a e-commerse site then you will need to have a secure server. SSL is important for credit card information that you might have to handle.
SSL is also good for shopping websites.
14. Control panel
Web hosts might have different types of control panels, that will basically allow the management of a website.
With a control panel you will be able to manage your databases, e-mails, disk space, files, webstats etc.
A very popular web hosting control panel is called cPanel and it is very easy to use.
15. Price
It is a good idea to compare the prices of different hosts and also compare the packages.
You can also search for reviews of other exisiting and current clients of the web hosting company.
16. Web Hosting Payment Plans - Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly / Annual
I personally pay for some of my websites quterly, but I also have some sites that I pay monthly.
If you want to test the reliability and quality of web host, then you can start with a monthly hosting plan and later increase it if you are happy with the service.
17. Resellers?
Some web hosts might be resellers (affiliates) for other web hosting companies. So these resellers don't own or lease the servers, but is affiliated to another web host. Basically promoting a web host.
The problem that you can find with resellers is support, because some resellers don't know much of web hosting and servers.
18. International web hosting
I host all my sites locally, but it can also be hosted overseas.
If you are planning to host your website overseas then you must get a web host in the comapny that you want to host your site.
Where can I get website hosting?
Get website hosting here - 15,000 Mb Hosting For $4.95/mo. $4.95 Web Hosting, Free Domain Registration! Free Setup And Online Website Builder Included.
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