How to pick a web site hosting company.
Internet Web Site Hosting Services:
You may be wondering how exactly do people from anywhere in the word see the web site that you create on your computer. Don’t worry, this doesn’t involve leaving your computer running 24 hours a day to let them in to see your files. Thankfully you only need to get a Internet web site hosting service to put the files on for everybody to get access to.
The hosting service provider has servers that are designed to show people your web site. These companies provide the server, electricity, Internet connection, security, air conditioning, and much more. There are 3 primary types of web site hosting services:
Shared Web Hosting – Many customers sharing one server to help keep the costs down,
This is usually perfect for most people because you get a lot of hosting space and extras for your web site but you keep the costs down to just a few dollars a month.
Virtual Private Servers – Few customers sharing a server and separated into “virtual” mini-servers.
These accounts have much more power and ability to do things but they do cost a good deal more. These typically cost in the range of $70 - $100 a month to start.
Dedicated Servers – Only one customer on the entire server, they have complete control.
These servers are able to handle huge amounts of web site traffic and emails but the cost is also very high, easily starting out around $600+ a month.
I’ve only ever used Shared Web Hosting for my personally owned accounts, in fact it’s what this site is running on, and they are fine for most things anybody would want to do from a personal hobby site to small businesses.
Know what type of account you need to get
If you really just want a simple web site to display some pages with information and pictures on it then almost any web site hosting plan will work for you.
Do you want to “blog” or have a “forum”? I am using a blog for this site to post and manage updates. A forum is a page where people will post a comment or question for other people to read and reply to. These things almost always require you to have a database, such as MySQL on your account.
If you want to sell items on your web site and have a shopping cart for people to buy things with a credit card I would suggest looking into getting an eCommerce hosting account. The web site hosting company sets up the software on your account and gets it running. You just need to add your products and information to the store.
Windows or Unix
There are two types of web servers you can get for your web site, a Windows server or a Unix server. I am a little biased and prefer Unix because of my familiarity with them but I believe there are some strong reasons why Unix is the better choice if you don’t have a real need for a Windows web server.
First off, it doesn’t matter what type of computer you are using yourself. You can use any of the Windows computers, an Apple Mac, or a Linux computer and still use any type of web hosting server.
A Windows web server is able to run a programming language called “ASP” and “ASP.NET” on your web site, if you do use these then you need to go with a Windows server.
I believe the advantages of a Unix server isn’t so much with the type of server that it is but with the much greater amount of free, quality programs you can get for your web site. It will also be easier to find information on how to do things or correct problems on a Unix server since they have been around longer and are used more then the Windows server.
Unless you need a Windows server for a specific reason I would strongly suggest going with a Unix server. Note: You will also see information about “Linux” servers. These are basically a variation of Unix, for what we are discussing you can think of them as the same thing.
My Web Site Hosting Suggestions
I would recommend that you look at getting a Unix (or Linux) server and make sure that it can run “cgi” scripts, “php”coding, and comes with a MySQL database.
Don’t worry if you don’t know all the details about these right now, you don’t really need to know who they work to be able to use them. Most website applications you may want to use, such as the blog software for this site called Wordpress, uses “php” and MySQL. It’s so user friendly you don’t need to know much more then that in order to use them.
Finally I wanted to give you a few of sites I found that all offer very good hosting packages and also have a good reputation as being a reliable and easy to use company.
- 1&1 - Web site Hosting - 1&1 has an excellent service record and great plans to choose from.
- Blue Host - Web site Hosting - Great looking plans and many extras per account.
- GoDaddy - Web site Hosting - The biggest name in domain name registrations also has hosting for you.
- Host Rocket - Web site Hosting - Loaded with great features on these plans, geeks will love it.
- iPower Web - Web site Hosting - Great reliable service and excellent plans.
You will be very happy getting hosting with any of these companies so go check them out and sign up. We will be covering getting connected using FTP to your webs server in the next few updates so make sure you are ready to follow along.
Coming up next will be an explanation of how someone on the Internet is able to find your web site or send you emails. We will be covering Domain Name Servers (DNS) and the basics of how they work for you.
Thanks,
Jim.