Website Hosting (Finding somewhere to host your website.)

There are lots and lots of hosting company’s but how to choose one that is right for you. Things to consider.

1.    Do I already have hosting?

Many broadband suppliers give their customers some free web space. NTL give its customers 55mb of web space. If you are with a company that has given you some space I would advise you use this to experiment with building your site. Its free…

There are however limitations with this hosting, such as you cant have a database or use your own domain name without paying for it.

Where in the world host your website – websites can be hosted in any country. If you pick a host that is in a different country from you visitors your visitors will experience a short delay in your site displaying (only a second or two). You may also have problems in contacting your host if you have any problems as daytime for you may be night time for the host. For this reason I feel its best to pick a host that is in your country.

2.    What kind of hosting do I need for my site.

My best advice when choosing website hosting would be to get recommendations from people you know who run websites. You don't necessarily get a better service the more you pay.

Things to consider.

1. How much file storage space do you need for you site.

2. How much bandwidth will you be using. (If you site is new this will probably not be a problem unless you are allowing people to download large files from your site.)

3. Are you going to use a database. (if you want a forum or have plans to have an information database, you will need web hosting that includes a database. There are different types of database but the most common is an sql database. With some web hosts databases cost extra. You will need a database for a php website

1. Number of email accounts (only an issue if you need lots off accounts)

2. Number of sub domains

3. Number of databases (you will require multiple databases if you are planning to have for example a php website and a separate forum module)

Things to ignore:

1. Server Uptime (every website hosting company will state they have great uptime)

2. Free Software (unless its actually something you need)

3.    Can I Get Free Hosting

Problems with free hosting.

• You don’t get to use your own domain name. Usually the name of your host will appear in the address bar. You may have to option to pay for this to be removed but then its not free is it.

•  Partly due to the above search engines will not rate your site very well. This makes it hard if not impossible to get onto search engines and even harder to get towards the top for your key searches. Also you have little control over your address which means you may spend lots of time getting people to link to you to find the company has changed your address slightly or have stopped trading. If you owned to domain you could take it somewhere else and your back links will still be valid.

•  You often can’t use more advanced features like databases which also means you can’t have a forum, a chat room. php website, or a database reliant shopping basket to name a few.

• Support is often poor or non existent.

•  They may use popup software to advertise through your site to pay for the hosting. This is very annoying for your visitors. They may also display an advert at the top of your site which you have no control over.

•  Limited disk and transfer rates. You may be able to raise this but at an additional cost to you. In the case of ntl in the uk you free hosting space is 55mb. You can pay extra for more space but the prices are not very competitive.

Additional related problems:

• It will be difficult to get back links to your site. Webmasters are unlikely to link to a free site which is covered in ads and has little if any unique content or traffic. The link you give to them will have little if any value to them because Search Engines rank them so poorly.

• The effectiveness of any ads you put on the site may be reduced by the number of adds placed on your pages by your host.

but what do you expect its free