Choosing a Web Host: About Web Hosting and More
Sunday, August 17th, 2008The first step that you require to take after creating a website is to get it on the internet, and here you are faced with three alternatives. You could either host the site on your computer, or host it on a server. The third option is getting someone else to host it for you. The first two preferences are practical and suit those with fast connections or other business-oriented sites. Maintaining such a web server requires constant monitoring and attention and you need a very fast connection to keep running it.
So the easiest alternative would be to use a web-hosting company. They are designed to put up your site using their server while you could access it via FTP to upload your files on the site. Web-hosting is of three types- free, paid and dedicated. Dedicated hosting is the costliest option available and is suitable only for sites that entail such attention. Your website is hosted by the company on their own server with their connection.
So the other alternatives are of course, free or paid. And the most common question asked is that why should I pay for something that I can obtain for free?
Then comes the two other options - free web hosting and paid web hosting. It is very normal if a question comes into your mind as to why anyone would pay for a service which he can get for free. There are many advantages which accrue to a paid web hosting.
Paid web hosting provides you with more number of features, like faster internet connection, good customer support, absence of irritating advertisements from the webpage, and also, as you are paying for the services, your needs will be taken care of.
As far as the free web-hosting is concerned, they lack in the aspect of reliability notwithstanding having some brilliant features. Honestly speaking, their service is not up to the mark, although, there are some free hosts who do not put their banner on your website. You can consider these options if you have a small site or you are a beginner in this field. The web-hosts provide you with certain features and a list of such features is given below. This is not certainly an extensive list. Let me put it in this manner that in order to get your site hosted, you are expected to know about certain terms.
URL/ Address- you need a URL address only if you do not have a domain name already.
Space- As far as the aspect of space is concerned, it needs to be said that usually a space of 5MB is enough for a small site and this much space is perfect for over a hundred pages. Normally, what happens is that the graphics occupy a space of about 35KB. Having said this, one must know that it requires a space of 15-20MB in case of a graphics intensive site or one featuring downloads.
The Aspect of Bandwidth/ transfer- This refers to a monthly account. This monthly account is of the number of files transported from your site in a month. Well, if you are thinking about the best deal of bandwidth, it is to have the facility of unlimited bandwidth because as far as experience goes, 1GB is the minimum requirement even for an ordinary site.
CGI-BIN- This is of paramount significance as far as your dealing with interactive scripts like guest-books, counters is concerned. It provides you with the facility of remote hosting also bearing the banners from the site that live up to the task of presenting them.
SSI- It points towards a feature of special function. What it adds to your facility is that it lets you employ a plan of prompting your server to put something on your page. It can be either simple text or CGI generated code or anything like this.
My SQL/PHP/ASP Support- if you desire to maintain a database on your site you need database formats like these. ASP generates key sites often.
Technical Support: Free hosts do not provide such a good technical support as paid hosts do. As you might know, monitoring the websites is constantly required, and upon encountering any problem, you might need technical support from the host, so this bit is an important aspect of a web host.
E- mail- It is always wise to have a POP3 mail service as it lets you receive any message from your web-host before they send it to you. Actually, it is very common to have such mails provided you have a domain name.
FrontPage Extensions: These extensions are required only if you use the facility of Microsoft FrontPage for construction of your website. Also, the FrontPage components can be added to your website as well.
SSL/Secure Server- this is essential to ensure secure ordering facilities on your web-site.
Statistics/Log files: You can have them to gain information about the users of your site, and get information about what has been downloaded from your website, which page has been viewed the most, etc.
FTP Accounts- The users are able to download files from an area of your site with the aid of an anonymous FTP. As far as the FTP accounts are concerned, they let you upload files on your website.
Paid web hosting service: most web hosts charge a monthly payment for paid services, and they remove the advertisements present on your site, besides offering you good technical support as well. So if you can do some research work and get hold of a good paid web host, you can get rid of the unwanted advertisements. The costs range from $5 to $75 a month, though the dedicated servers cost about $150 a month.
However, if you are opting for paid web host services, then you must ask them about a list of all the websites which they host. By doing this, you can contact webmasters of those sites and get first-hand information about the web host. Also, enquire about the technical support, since this is a very important factor as far as paid web hosts go.
Always bear in mind to go through all their terms and conditions. It is often seen that some free hosts do ask you for the ownership of the copyright of your page. This is an obstruction to advertise on your own website. So, be aware of all the restrictions to advance properly.
