Hosting...What Is It?
What is web hosting? Do I need it? Well if you are a person looking to have a website then yes you do need hosting. (If you are looking for information on Domain Names, then check it out here.) Hosting is a "hardrive" sort of speak stored some place safe, that holds everything you would like to display online, including pictures, sound, video, content and much more. My main focus is to show you the benifits of cheap vs. quality, because when picking your package it is very important. The two basic types of hosting are Microsoft Server based and Linux Server based. The diference between the two are not amazingly emense, but if you are on the large corperation level a nice phone call with the hosting company of choice might be of benefit to you. One key feature of a linux server is the ability to use PHP. But before I get technical I will go over what to look for in a good host. When finding the perfect host there are many key things to look for. The first thing that comes to mind is how much will this cost me? well dont be scared because hosting these days is not that expensive, and depending what you want, you could get it for free!
Almost every hosting company now a days have levels of packages to select from. Ususally the first and cheapest package is for someone wanting to host a small to medium website, possibly for a portfolio, or store etc. The second package is usually for a larger busienss, or a site to handle more traffic. And third the platinum or business package is for the giants. The first main things you want to look for is as follows. How much web space comes with it? How much bandwith do I get? Do any doamin names come with it? How many emails can I use? and finally what type of server side scripting would be best for me.
Tip: It is very important to know if your host is a Microsoft Hosting package or a Linux Hosting package. Linux supports PHP. Microsoft does not.
Everything you store on your server takes up space, it could be as small as a couple bytes, or as large as megabytes or gigabytes. You package should tell you how much space you can use. You need to be carefull becaue alot of frree hosting has very small amounts of hosting, like 50megabytes, and that wont be enough in most cases. A good starting size is around a gigabyte. (1,000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte). This will be plenty for anyone with a small site to host their website and have plenty of space for expansion in the future. If you can settle with the 50mb for a very small site, there may be some free hosts in your futute, but will lack back end control. I will get into that in more detail in a bit. Bandwith is another key thing to look at. Are you going to be hosting any videos? images? then read on! lets say we have 1 video on our main page, that video is 10 megabytes. Every time I go to your website, it takes 10 megabytes from your bandwith. So if you had 1 gigabyte of bandwith, you now have 980 megabytes left. But dont worry, it gets renewed every month. Please consider how much bandwith comes with your package before you puchase. If you are just puting up textual content, and images here and there you can live with smaller bandwith. But unless you will have many visitors at a time, and delivering a large video load, you dont need ot worry as much. Each hosting package includes email adresses you can distribute to who you please (if you purchase a domain name) which I will get to in a bit. If a package comes with a domain name, then you can have Something@yourDomainOfChoice.com and they limit it depending on what package you chose. If you are trying to build a community site, with an email for each registered member this might be something to look for. Keep in mind that hosting companies understand and expect growth, so if you need more bandwidth, email's, space, they can supply you more, but for an extra cost. The last few things you need to look for is, what server side scripting can it handle. If you would like to use PHP make sure to get a Linux Package. If you would like to use a scripting language based on Microsoft technology, then a Microsoft Hosting package is for you.
Now once you have selected what package you would like, it most likely would come with many extra tools for web developers. including tools to monitor traffic. (site statistics) CGI tools, free images, chat tools, message boards, guest books, counters etc. There most likely will be a "read more" link on their site to display each package separately.
There are many quality hosting packages you can choose from, some have very detailed benefits and others are missing key components, so after reading this page, my hopes are that you have come out with some useful information and guidance on how to find the perfect host.
