Aug 10
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The Internet contains a very large number of websites. This number is continuously growing. For a website to be visible on the web, it needs to be hosted on a web server. You can therefore imagine how big the website hosting market must be. The myriad of hosting companies out there can be quite daunting if you are new to the website scene. We will therefore try to give you some basic information to help you make the right decision.
As a jumping off point, you should never pay for something that you do not need. If yours is a private site with a number of holiday pictures, you will most probably be satisfied with what you can get from a free hosting account. Perhaps your ISP offers you a couple of megabytes free space. If not, you don’t have to go far on the Internet before running into a free hosting company.
A free hosting account has a couple of drawbacks though. In the first place it’s unlikely that you will be able to use a top level domain name, such as yourowndomain.com. The most common situation is that you will have to use a subdomain provided by the hosting company. For a personal website this is normally not a huge problem. What could be more problematic for many people is that the hosting company usually displays banner ads at the top of each page.
If free hosting is for some or other reason not for you, your only other option is a paid account. You will of course be able to host a domain name that goes well with your website’s content, such as myownwidgetcompany.com for example. You usually also get a decent amount of data transfer and disk space – more than what most free accounts provide. On top of that there will be no restriction on the use of programming scripts and languages such as javascript, Java, PHP and Perl/cgi.
When it comes to the amount of disk space and bandwidth that you buy, beware of what is called overselling in the industry. Some hosting companies provide ‘unlimited’ web hosting and data transfer for a few dollars per month. Then they have a clause somewhere in their terms and conditions which states that if you use more than a certain amount, your account gets suspended.
It might be a better idea to determine how much data transfer/bandwidth and space you need and to buy only that. Except for websites containing a lot of videos or pictures, the average website size is actually quite small. 1Gb is more than enough space for such a site. Just to give you an idea of what you can do with 1Gb of disk space: it’s enough to upload in excess of 10 000 average web pages with a small photo or two each.
Should you plan to sell widgets on your site, you are probably going to need a shopping card facility. That should be included with your hosting account. When it comes to payment, you have various options. If you are simply going to link to an outside payment company who will then process the credit card payment on your behalf, you have no problem. To accept credit card information on your own website will mean you need a secure server, a security certificate and a dedicated IP number.
Not all website hosting companies are equally reliable. If yours is a business website, downtime can cost you money. Try therefore to find a web hosts that guarantees more than 99.7% uptime. They should also have staff available for technical support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Get the exclusive inside scoop on how to find the right web hosting plan to suit your needs and budget now in our comprehensive Gossimer overview.
