Hosting : Which one should i choose?
If you decides to make you own website with your own domain name instead of doing it with free service such as wordpress, blogspot or some other, you will definitely need a webhoster. Some free hosting offers a subdomain of your choice (just like wordpress/blogspot) or host your own domain with them. You have 3 main options:
- Host the site on your computer
- Host the site on a dedicated server
- Host the site on a shared server
The first one are normally for big businesses. Maintaining a web server is difficult and needs constant monitoring. You will require a fast connection as at times, the amount of users connecting to your server at times will greatly affect your performance.
It is rather easier by using a web hosting company. They will put your site on their server using their connection. You will have access via FTP to upload your files and will be able to change your website at any time. This is the way most people get their websites online. There are three main types of hosting: free, shared and dedicated.
Dedicated hosting is when your website is hosted by the company you subscribed to on their server with their connection. It is expensive and is only really a good idea for big websites or if you have a lot of websites or if you want a full control of your server. The other options are free and paid hosting.
Which one : Free Or Paid?
A lot of people think, “Why should I pay for web hosting if I can get it free?” This is a very good question. Paying for you web hosting has several advantages over free hosting:
Better features in your hosting package
Technical support is usually faster and better and try their best to help you
Better connections to the internet and reliable server uptime
No banner advertising on your page
As always there are exceptions to this. There are some free web hosts which don’t place a banner on your page (service and features might not be so good) and some free web hosts have excellent features and reliability (but slow technical support). But then even some paid hosts will give you bad service too.
Like most things, you get what you pay for. You will never get as good hosting from a free web host as from a paid one. If you are building a site for a small commercial site, paid hosting is the best option. And if it’s just for fun, free webhosting is the choice.
What Features?
Web hosts will offer you hundreds of different features. I will try to explain some of them so that you know what you need:
URL/Address:- This is only important if you don’t have your own domain name. Do you want http://www.example.com/yourname or http://yourname.example.com (a subdomain). Or http://yourname.com
Disk Space:- Websites mostly used up only a little space. For example, 5MB will be sufficient for small sites (it will take over 100 pages). If you are making a graphics intensive site or planning to have downloads you might need 50 or 100MB or more. Some paid hosting offers 6000gb or unlimited space.
Bandwidth/Transfer:- This is quoted monthly. It is the total amount of files which can be transferred in a month from your site. You should get at least (1GB/month) unless you have a very small site. Unlimited bandwidth is quite common here.
CGI-BIN:- If you want to run interactive scripts (counters, form-to-mail, guestbooks etc.) you will need a CGI-BIN. You can get these scripts remotely hosted (like the ones from CGI For Me) but they will carry advertising for the site which provides them.
SSI:- This is a special function which allows you to tell the server to include something on your page. It could be some text or some CGI generated code. It is not an option you should need for a small or medium site.
MySQL/PHP/ASP Support:- These are database formats. If you are planning to include a database on your site you will need this. Major sites are often generated dynamically using ASP.
Technical Support:- What happens if you have a problem? How quickly can you get help? You should get at least e-mail technical support. Phone and fax support is good and should be offered by a paid host.
E-mail:- Most hosts will redirect e-mail for you (especially if you have a domain name). Watch out for ones offering POP3 mail. This will allow you to actually connect to their server to get your messages which is better than redirection.
FrontPage Extensions:- If you use Microsoft FrontPage to make your site and want to make use of the FrontPage Components (like search) you will need these.
SSL/Secure Server:- You will need this if you want to have secure ordering on your website.
Statistics/Log Files:- These will give you information about your users. What files are downloaded? What pages are accessed? The server logs will tell you.
FTP Accounts:- These allow you to access you website to upload files. If you have anonymous FTP, users can log into an area of your site to download files.
As you can see some sites will need all these features and some will need very few.
How Much It costs?
Free web hosting is free as long as you display their banners (although there are some exceptions) or maybe free of advertisments but less features. But most will let you upgrade your hosting to ad-free hosting and more features for a small monthly fee. This will let you find a good web host and then get rid of the banners on it. Some also offer better technical support etc. with your upgraded plan.
Paid hosting will usually cost between $5 and $30 per month. Dedicated servers will usually cost you over $150 per month.
What Should I Ask?
There are a few questions you should ask a web host, especially if you are going to pay them. You should always ask for a list of some of the sites hosted by them (if they don’t have a list on their site). Visit some of these sites and e-mail the owners asking what they think of the hosting service. Or you can try searching online for reviews on their services (forum, blogs). If you are not sure if something on your site will be supported or allowed by the host then ask them. They are there to help you.
The speed they answer your questions is important as well. If they can’t reply quickly to a potential customer, what will their technical support be like?
Read The Terms and Conditions
Always read the terms and conditions. There may be special restrictions on what you can or cannot have on your site such as non-adult websites. If your on shared server, they will require you not to use up more than 20% of the system resources as it will affect the performance overall for other website sharing your server. So no game sites, videos site or heavy cron jobs (automated task).
If you are really interested with finding a good hoster, you can try to check Hostgator, Webhostingpad for paid services or 000webhost. Try to check the differences between them all, and determine what features that you will need. So happy hunting.
I wanted to get rid of the blogspot in my website address so I paid blogger the $10 a year to get my name. However it is still only a blogger! No upload space! GRR
kimmy u could always get a free webhosting using your domain name. with that u can play around setting up WordPress on it and host your files. A few free and reliable webhosting are 110mb ,x10hosting and 000webhost. The only drawback from free webhosting companies are the customer support and some server configuration might not be top notch. Well that’s the differences that i see from the paid ones anyway. But to host a couple of WordPress blogs, it is still more than enough i suppose.
Nice info, Im now happy with the free service at Blogger, maybe I will find another hosting service when I need more features