Choosing a hosting service can be a daunting task your first
time out.
Let's take a closer look at some specific things you'll want
to consider when choosing a hosting service:
Free or commercial hosting?
There are two types of hosting available to choose from these
days: free and commercial. Either could work for your needs,
but there are pro's and con's to each. Free hosting is...
well, free. It doesn't cost anything to you, but usually there
is some kind of price to pay. It usually requires you to place
advertising from a third party on your pages and limits you
considerably in the ammount of storage space, file types,
etc. Commercial hosting services allow you to get around the
required advertising and limitations imposed on your typical
free hosting services, but you have to pay for them. They
usually don't cost all that much, but depends on what you
intend to do with your web site and how much traffic you will
draw. You will need to choose a service that will best meet
your needs. Here are some of the specifics you will need to
consider when choosing a hosting service:
Considerations when choosing a Free Web
Host:
Advertising
Most of the free web hosts impose advertising
from a paying third party on your web pages. This is how they
cover the costs of web space and associated services they
are providing for you. Sometimes this comes in the form of
a banner on your pages while other times an ad can pop up
everytime a page on your site loads. Other free hosts impose
an advertising frame on your site. There is really no definitive
rule on which of these advertising methods is preferrable
over another. Many web site visitors hate pop-up windows while
many webmasters abhor being forced to stuff banner codes onto
their pages, and an advertising frame can potentially cause
problems when you submit your website to search engines. Whichever
type of advertising you ultimately choose to deal with, you'll
obviously want to make sure that you are comfortable with
this advertising type and that it doesn't get in the way of
your site's objective.
Amount of web space
Does the service offer enough space for your needs? If you
expect that you will be expanding your site someday in the
future, you might want to take this into consideration now
when it comes to your hosting choices. Most sites typically
use less than 5MB of storage space... but not all. Your needs
will vary, depending on how many images your pages use, whether
you will be using audio files, video clips, flash animations,
etc.
FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) access
Many free hosting providers only allow you to create your
pages with their online builder. While this can be useful
for most beginners, but soon many of those beginners find
themselves wanting to make changes to their site that these
online builders will not allow. The only solution for these
types of changes is a web authoring program which requires
ftp access to upload these changes. It would be wise to make
sure you have the option to expand later when you become more
experienced and have outgrown the online page builder. FTP
access, or at the very least, the ability to upload your pages
by email or browser, will prove itself to be a must at one
point or another.
File type and size limitations
Watch out for this. Some free hosts out there impose a maximum
size on each of the files you upload. Other sites restrict
the file types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG
files. If your require the ability to upload more types of
files than just simple web images, then you will need to find
another solution.
Reliability and speed of access
This is crucial. A site that is down frequently will lose
a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on a search
engine, and he attempts to click on the link to it but finds
that your site is down, he'll simply go on down the list to
the next site on the list and patron them instead. Slow response
is equally as bad being "down" and is also very
frustrating for your site's visitors (and for you too, when
you upload your site). How do you know if a host is reliable
or fast? One way to tell If you aren't able to get feedback
from anyone is to try it out yourself over a period of time,
both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it
is free, so you can always experiment with it.
Bandwidth allowance
Most of the free web hosts today impose a limit on the amount
of traffic your website is allowed to use per day and per
month. This basically means that if the pages or images on
your site are loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of
times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your
web site or perhaps send you a bill. It is difficult to recommend
a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on
how you design your site, your target audience, and the number
of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general,
100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than
your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually
adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage,
however, will vary.
Considerations when choosing a Commercial
Web Host
Price
When considering a commercial hosting service, price is usually
one of the first things you will look at. Be careful when
doing this. The only two rules we would recommend you follow
when it comes to considering what you want to pay for your
hosting are 1) you usually get what you pay for, but 2) the
most expensive hosting is probably not actually the best hosting.
Don't go for the cheapest hosting in that you will probably
have a less than ideal experience with this service, but don't
necessarily assume that expensive hosting is top quality hosting
either. It would be much better to consider the variables
listed below over the ultimate cost of your hosting. Get what
you need. Don't just pay what you prefer to pay.
Reliability and speed of access
Just as I described in the Free Web Host section of this page,
this is crucial in choosing a Commercial Web Host as well.
Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should
guarantee its uptime
(the percentage of time it is functional). Look for a minimum
uptime of 99.5%. Anything lower than this is actually too
low... especially when you are paying for it.
Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)
Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic"
or "bandwidth") is the amount of date (measured
in bytes) transferred from your site to visitors when they
browse your site.
Most new sites use less than 3GB of bandwidth per month,
just to give you a ball park idea reference point. Your traffic
requirements will more than likely grow over time as your
site becomes more well-known and more link-popular.
Disk space
Most sites need less than 5MB of web space, so don't let the
500MB space be too big a factor in your consideration when
comparing with other web hosts. Hosting companies know this,
which is why they boldly and confidently offer it to you as
a means of enticing you to host there. As a rough gauge, a
simple site with about 150 pages usually uses less than 5MB
for its pages and associated files.
Technical support
Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note that
I will not accept a host which does not have staff working
on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how
often things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally,
just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does
not necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support.
Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights,
Sunday mornings, etc. Check out how long they take to respond.
Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically
competent. You wouldn't want to sign up for a host that is
run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not
fix problems.
FTP, PHP, Perl CGI-BIN access, SSI, .htaccess,
telnet, SSH crontabs
If you are paying for a site, you really should make sure
you have all of these. You may or may not use each and every
one of these features, but when you are paying for a hosting
service they should be available to you in case you do want
to use any of them in the future. Note that some commercial
hosts do not allow you to install PHP or CGI scripts without
their approval. This stinks because it means that you'll have
to wait for their approval before you can implement a feature
on your site. Telnet or SSH access is useful for certain things,
including testing CGI scripts, maintaining databases, etc.
SSL (secure server), MySQL, Shopping
Cart
If you are planning on doing any sort of business through
your website, you might want to look out to see if the host
provides these features. These features normally involve a
higher priced package or additional charges. The main thing
is to check to see if they are available at all before you
commit to the host. You will definitely need SSL if you plan
to collect credit card information on your site.
Email, Autoresponders, POP3, Mail Forwarding
If you have your own site, you would probably want to have
email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com,
etc. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it
allow you to have a catch-all email account that allows anyname@yourdomain.com
to wind up being routed to you? Can you set an email address
to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message
(called an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with
your email software? Can it be automatically forwarded to
your current email address?
Control Panel
This is called various names by different hosts, but essentially,
they all allow you to manage different aspects of your web
account yourself. Typically, and at the very minimum, it should
allow you to do things like add, delete, and manage your email
addresses, and change passwords for your account. I would
not go for a host where I have to go through their technical
support each time I want to change a password or add/delete
an email account. Such chores are common maintenance chores
that every webmaster performs time and time again, and it
would be a great hassle if you had to wait for their technical
support to make the changes for you.
There are a lot of hosting companies out there. So, how do
you choose? I would recommend choosing a reputable company
that offers good prices for the small website, but will allow
you to easily grow as needed. Well-known companies like GoDaddy.com
(who I use currently) offer better 24 hour phone customer
service (important especially for the novice), a diversity
of features, good bandwidth (fast site means more business),
and they are very dependable. Don’t go for a cheap no-name.
You get what you pay for. You can compare hosting companies
at hostcompare.com,
or do a Google Search on “compare hosting” and
you will get plenty of resources.
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