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How to Select a Web Site HostMike Snyder So, you know how to create HTML files web pages and want to start a website. You have a domain name but dont know where to store the files web host. You find countless web hosting companies offering a wide range of products but you cant make heads or tails of all the features to decide which plan is right for you. Does this sound like you If so, this article was written for you. Hopefully after reading it, you will have a better understanding of all the terms associated with web hosting and find a hosting company that is right for your business. File Storage Space Usually hosting companies sell different packages centered around storage space. Storage space is specified in kilobytes KB, megabytes MB, or gigabytes GB; a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. How much storage space do you need Well, that depends on what you are planning to do with your website. If you have only a few pages of text and little to no graphics or images, a 25 MB should be more than you will ever need. Most hosting packages start at 25 MB of storage space. When comparing web hosting companies for file storage space, be sure to check their terms and conditions to make sure they do not charge another setup fee for upgrading to a packge with more space. One way to determine the size of your files in Microsoft Windows, right click the Start button and click Explore. Scroll down and select the files or folders you plan on using for your website. Right click on the selected files or folders and click Properties and you will see the size. Bandwidth Bandwidth is the measure of how much data flows through your site. It is usually expressed in GB transfered per month. If you are expecting a lot of hits millions of page views to your site you will need to get the most bandwidth you can afford. For new web sites it may take a while to get up to a significant bandwith. If you find you are approaching the bandwith limit, you can always upgrade to a plan with higher bandwidth. Some plans allow you to increase your monthly bandwidth for an additional monthly charge. Most hosting plans include a significant number of POP e-mail accounts and unlimited e-mail forwarding. POP accounts can be accessed with your current e-mail program and some hosts may include a webmail interface for your POP accounts. If you have several people that work for your web site/business and want them to have their own e-mail address, you will need to select a hosting plan with enough POP accounts. E-mail forwarding is when e-mail that is addressed to your website gets redirected to another e-mail address that you specify. An example of e-mail forwarding: for one of my websites mail addressed to mike-@-mrgoodbeer.com, sales-@-mrgoodbeer.com, and webmaster-@-mrgoodbeer.com all get redirected to my Gmail address. With e-mail forwarding you can easily track where your e-mails are coming from. Be careful though...the more e-mail addresses you have, the more SPAM you will receive. Shared vs Dedicated When comparing hosting plans, you may notice plans for shared hosting and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting simply means that your web site will be hosted with other websites on the same server or machine. Shared hosting is good for the average web site where speed is not a priority. A dedicated server is just that, a server that is dedicated to your website. The advantages of a dedicated server are speed and control. The disadvantage is cost, you will usually have to pay a much larger monthly fee for having a dedicated hosting plan. If you know nothing about Unix, Linux, or network administration make sure to get a managed dedicated server. The hosting company will take care of all the security and software patches/updates that arise over time. Make sure to review the hosting companys terms and FAQ concerning their dedicated servers to determine if their service is right for you. Support For the companies that do not have 24 hour support, you will have to determine if their phone support hours meet your specific needs. Make sure to note the location of the company and offset the support times for your time zone. If you plan on working on your web site during all hours of the day, make sure to choose a company with 24/7 phone support; otherwise, you will have to wait for them to open before you can get help to solve your problem. CGI Common Gateway Interface CGI is a program, also know as scripts, that can be run on a website to make the site more dynamic. CGI programs can be written in PERL, C, Unix shell, and countless other languages. It is best to select a hosting plan that allows CGI because you will undoubtedly run across an application or game that you want to modify or include on your site. There are many resources on the web that list free CGI scirpts and countless companies offering CGI scripts for you to buy. MySQL MySQL is used for creating and maintaining web based databases. If you anticipating having some data on your site that your users might want to sort you will probably need to find a web host that supports MySQL. Some hosting companies specify how many databases you can have on your site and charge an additional monthly fee if you want more. You will have to determine how many databases you will need and select the appropriate web hosting plan. FrontPage FrontPage is a website creation and management what-you-see-is-what-you-get WYSIWYG tool developed by Microsoft. The files generated by FrontPage may have extentions asscoiated with them. If you are using FrontPage to develop your site, you will need to make sure that the hosting plan you choose supports FrontPage extentions or your web pages may not display properly, if at all. Server Operating System OS For most basic websites you will not have worry about which OS your web hosting company is using. Most hosting plans are running on either Unix or Linux. For some unique web site features, you may need a Windows based server. Setup Fee Some hosting companies charge a setup fee when your account is created. This is usually a one time fee and may be waived, in some cases, when you pre-pay for your service. Check the hosting companys terms carefully to determine the details of their setup fee. SPAM Filter Most hosting plans include some type of SPAM filter for your e-mail accounts. This feature can come in very handy if you are using POP email accounts. Shopping Cart Some hosting companies provide shopping cart features as part of their hosting plan. You do not have to worry about this featue if your web site is not selling products. Also, there are many different third party shopping cart applications and CGI scripts available on the web that you may choose to implement on your web site such as the ones found at PayPal.
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES Setting Up Your First Web Hosting Account The Basics 4 Customer Service Mistakes Companies Should Avoid Making 1 Being placed on hold endlessly. Dont you just love it when you call a company and they place you on hold, leaving you to listen to their latest on-hold, recorded sales pitch, over and over again. Would you think it normal business practice for a retail store clerk to ask you to "wait a minute" while they disappeared into the back of the store for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes or longer People do things over the phone that they would never do in person. Its bad business either way to leave a customer hanging without at least coming back to let the customer know how much longer theyll be holding. What makes a good Web Hosting Provider! When building your website and getting it hosted online, you want your site to be up and running on the World Wide Web 24/7 without any hitches so that it is making you money all the time and all you have to worry about then is getting visitors to your site, doing seo, getting repeat visitors, maximizing your sites revenue, etc. You don’t want to have to worry about your web hosting and it’s stability. Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 5: Internal Linking Welcome to part five in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of content optimization. In part five we will cover your website’s internal linking structure and the role that it plays in ranking highly, and in ranking for multiple phrases. We All Wish That Our Children have Good Virtues, but... Are We Setting A Good Example Ourselves We all wish that our children should not smoke or drink, should not speak lies, should not steal, should not have a violent nature, etc... but are we setting a good example ourselves Changing To New Host No More Worries! Johns online business is expanding. His customers are increasing day by day. However, he feels very frustrated at the moment as he finds his website is down about every 4th day. Whenever he calls up the support team of his web host, he gets the same old answer that his problem will be rectified soon. If the problems do persist it will surely hamper his business. He has been with his present hosting provider for the last year but now he feels he has to find a new web host as soon as possible because his present hosting package is also not able to meet up with his growing demands. This is not a one-off occurrence that has happened only to John, it happens with many people like him. Changing the web host might become a cumbersome task if John and other people like him dont know the correct procedure of doing it. So, lets have a look at the following easy and simple steps: Conceptualize, Build and Publish a Web site Conceptualize, Build and Publish a Web site - Whats required to get started Getting The Big Picture Series: Part 4-"Enter The Web" Does the thought of managing your own website seem too complicated Whats holding you back Web Hosting: To Switch or to Stay That’s a question that can only be answered by you. Depending on your current status and relationship you have with your provider, along with your evolving business objectives and needs, can determine what course of action to pursue. What are your issues and concerns Ask yourself some basic questions and see where you stand after you’ve answered them. -Are you no longer satisfied with your current provider -Did they deliver on the level of services that you signed up for -Has technical support and customer service been to your satisfaction -Or has your business grown considerably, and the hosting company cannot provide you with the level of capability and technical support you require How to Get Your Talent Online and Earning Income Finding fresh ideas for an internet business is a difficult task. Everyone is good at something but they dont know how to cash in on their knowledge. You may think what you know is of no value but youre wrong! You would be surprised to find out how many people are earning a comfortable income on seemingly trivial subjects. Thinking About Changing to a New Web Hosting Company 5 Steps to Plan Ahead for the Move Perhaps your web hosting company has a technical support group that never answers their email, or their control panel is difficult to use. Maybe your website has been having more downtime than uptime. Whatever the reason you are thinking of switching hosts, make sure you have your ducks in a row before making the move. Avoiding the Spam Trap: Get Your Message Delivered! Your message is not being delivered Net Novice No More A relative novice when it came to the Internet, not too long ago I didn’t have a clue where to start when trying to create a website or why I had the need for one. Luckily though, with time and practice, it became apparent. Web page buiding for beginners 1 Making a web page is a simple job that can be done in minutes by anyone with no previous experience, so I will refrain from going in that direction as much as possible. The first thing an inexperienced webmaster should learn is search engine optimization, before ever making a page. The reason for this is simply because if they learn it after the page is made, it will cause them too much extra work that could have been avoided. Get Paid to Read Email Tips & Tricks - 9 Simple Steps As we know get paid to read email is one way to develop income stream and perhaps to start your own business on the net with a little hard work. If youre really serious in this arena, it can return you good bucks. Sex sites are not the only ones that can pull in $5000 a week using the power of instant access! I mean not sex sites can make money. Here 9 steps article about Get Paid to Read Email tips & tricks from me who not a “guru”, but Ill show you ideas and efficiency way that will rock your Get Paid to Read Email world. How Multiple Server Hosting impacts your websites uptime This article describes the technology behind multiple server hosting and how you may utilize it to maximize your sites security and uptime The Day My Computer Died I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to technology, especially computers and the Information Age. I used to think it was crazy how people would put their total faith into a machine, some even more so than in their faith in humanity. Human beings are flawed, imperfect creatures. I say this in a positive way because if humanity were completely positive and perfect we would have nothing to learn, and life would lose its vitality and mystery. Computers come from the same universal reality as humanity, so I believe that we should look at technology in a similar context. Computers are not infallible pieces of nature’s perfection. Effective Search Engine Use The Internet is a wonderful place full of resources that can be really helpful for us. How to Fight Back BEFORE Youre Falsely Accused of Spam A friend of mine received a chilling email message from his ISP the other day.Someone had reported him as sending SPAM and the ISP warned that an additional SPAM complaint would result in losing his hosting service - period.No ifs, ands or buts! Web Hosting: 4 Factors in Choosing a Hosting Company When choosing a web hosting company there are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. One of the biggest factors should be: |
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