Lesson #6: Web Site Hosting

Once you build your website you'll need to find space to host it, but weeding through the options can be painful.

Before you commit your website to just any web hosting company, you can save yourself a lot of headaches if you choose a web host that meets the needs of your business such as ample disk space, ease of use, tools and scripts, good customer service and of course... is "reliable". 

Ultimately, you want a web host that will work with you.  Your web host should be available 7/24, whether you need help at 2:00 in the afternoon or 2:00 in the morning.  

Web Site Hosting Options and Considerations

• Free or Paid Web Hosting?
If you are putting up a personal website or just practicing, a free hosting site will do. However keep in mind that free web hosting will place ads on your site of which you have no control.

Free hosting also has little to no customer support, restrictions on using scripts, smaller bandwidth and very limited disk space. The servers can also be slow and will slow down the users on your site.

When I used free hosting back several years ago I found out that emails that are used with free hosting often get flagged as spam.  With spam issues today, you don't want that.

With paid hosting the hassles of site ads, poor support, down time and slow servers are virtually gone. Of course, paid sites can offer poor service as well but typically a paid service performs better than free.

Beware of hosting sites that offer unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth. Read the fine print or you could be slapped with extra fees should you go over your 'hidden' limit.

Somewhere in the web host's contract or terms of service is a tiny clause that says something like, "Your account will be terminated if your bandwidth goes over a certain amount."  Sometimes this amount is specified, but usually it's hard to find. Not everyone can have unlimited space and bandwidth, they'd go out of business if they did. Be sure to read the fine print.

• Web hosting disk space considerations
Statistically, the average website is about 5mb in size, that can be a site with a little over 100 pages.  Your web site will typically consist of text, graphics, sound, or video files that occupy disk space on a server. If you already have this data on your computer, check the combined size of those files to help you select a hosting package with enough disk space. You can always buy additional disk space.

Most web hosting companies offer anywhere from about 50-100mb on average, my hosting company, Thirdsphere Hosting offers an impressive 500mb, which is huge, I'll never run out of space. I boast about their service because they've been exceptional for my business, however; whatever hosting company you go with make sure you can upgrade and understand the costs that are involved.
 
• FTP access (file transfer protocol)
Free hosts, and the cheaper hosts, only allow you to design your website using their online builder. However should you wish to use an online page builder such as Xsitepro, frontpage, Dreamweaver, etc, you'll need FTP access so that you can create your web page and transfer it to your host, therefore if you want the website builder that comes with your host, FTP access is mandatory.

• Bandwidth or Data Transfer
Your bandwidth size is the amount of traffic your website uses per day or per month. This means that if the pages on your site get beyond a certain amount of visitors your website could be disabled.  An adequate amount of bandwidth also provides a safety net against increasing number of comment spams consuming bandwidth as well as hungry search engine crawlers consuming bandwidth, database, and other site resources when they come to your site.  So be sure your bandwidth is adequate or that you can upgrade.

The minimum bandwidth for an average business site starting out should be about 2-3 Gigabytes but again be sure you can upgrade when the time comes.

• Emails an Autoresponders
If you have your own site you will most likely want email addresses associated with it, i.e. webmaster@yoursite.com. Find out how many emails addresses you are allowed.

An Email autoresponder is a feature that allows you to automatically reply to an email with a specific address with a preset message. A good feature to look for. Not all web hosting companies offer it, however if an autoresponder is something you need, you'll have to pay for it separately.

• Reliability
A good web hosting company will guarantee at least 99% up time. Make sure that really happens by talking to people that use the host.  A guarantee such as 99% up time doesn't mean much if they can't make good on the claim. They might refund your money but you still suffer a loss in site visitors, not to mention the logistics and the hassle of switching web hosts.

• Customer service
Is there customer service 24/7 and are they helpful? Be sure they offer an email address or other method for contacting their technical support staff. Any company that claims they have good tech support but offers no way to get personalized help isn't worth your time (or money).

• Site Statistics
Site statistics are "very important". You will want to see how many visitors you have, where they are coming from, how they found your site and what keywords they are using to find you.  All useful information in helping you develop your site and drive traffic.

• What software does the web host provide?
Examples include message boards, FrontPage Extensions (more about that in the building your website section), shopping cart, web design service or templates, sub domains, mailing lists, databases, password protected pages, etc.
 
• Subdomains
Perhaps you may want to start another website, what will it cost to add a new site or a subdomain?

•  Snap In Scripts
Be sure to find a host that has up to date scripts that makes installing other programs easier. For example, if you want to install a blog or a forum these scripts make a huge difference in the ease of installation, they are a big time saver as well.  

•  Look for the Fantastico Cpanel feature. This makes using your web host so much easier.  Not only for day to day use but for installing applications and transerring data.  

Affordable Web Hosting - Compare affordable web hosting between two of the webs best web hosting services and see how they compare for disk space,  features and pricing.

Continue To Lesson #7 - Website Design