In this new millennium, website advertising, marketing, and sales have become a multi-billion dollar industry. Every day in the business section of the newspaper, we read of a new “dotcom” business that is taking the world by storm. Websites by the thousands pop up every day promoting every imaginable product. Search engines give us instant access to products and services never imagined 20 years ago. Everyone dreams of setting up a small website, advertising on Google, and becoming a millionaire.

But, in order to set up a website, you need a web host. With thousands of options available, how do you make the best choice? What criteria should one use in order to get the best web host for his needs? The choices might seem daunting, but you can make the right one with a little planning and forethought. Let’s explore this further.

Costs vs. Features

In setting up an e-commerce website, a web hosting service that is chosen can literally make or break a business. Most of us do not have truckloads of cash to throw at our web hosting service. It will be much less costly in the long run to evaluate many different web hosts, compare the features, and decide what is right for your business. If for instance, you are planning to set up many so-called mini sites in order to collect adsense revenue from Google, you might choose a low cost or free web host. This type of web host is ideally suited for the one to two page mini website that consists of interesting content and adsense ads.

If your needs for web hosting include accepting credit cards, running scripts to make your sales, or gathering and tracking customers information, then the free hosting websites will not be adequate for your needs. You might still need multiple domains or sub-domains, but in general, the free or low-cost Web hosting services will not offer the features that are required for a more sophisticated e-commerce website.

If you are going to be running a very large website such as an auction site, membership website, or a wholesale distributor website, then you are going to require a very robust and reliable Web host. You might even opt for a dedicated server that will host your website only. The dedicated Web server is much more expensive than a shared Web server, but the advantage would be that you will not suffer for the mistakes or blunders of others. This option, however, is much more costly than a shared Web server.

The Middle Ground, or “happy medium.”

Most new or first-time website owners will probably need the middle choice for their e-commerce websites. In the arena of the shared service Web hosts, there are many levels of service and price ranges available. As competition between Web host providers heats up, prices have become very manageable, and features such as unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, and pre-written, easy to install scripts, have become almost the standard, most good-quality Web hosts have easily integrated e-commerce functions, blogs, and scripts that can be integrated into the website through the sea panel. Many times, e-mail services and domain services will be provided as well.

A new phenomenon in web hosting services, has recently become more popular. Traditionally, web hosting services have been paid on a month-to-month basis. In some cases, a discount is provided in the Web hosting services are paid for annually. The new trend that has seen these days is that of one time payment Web hosts. The website owner would make one payment only and could use the Web services for life. All of the services provided by the month-to-month Web hosts would be available for this one time payment.

So in this world of costs vs. benefits, there are many different choices that can be made. Choose wisely, and your business will thrive. Think in terms of long term reliability, scalability for your future needs, and costs of doing business for years to come; then you will make the right choice.

Are you looking to build yourself a website? Trying to give yourself a presence on the internet? Then you would definitely be needing a web host to host your site on. First thing to think about though when looking for a web host is the sort of website you are thinking of creating. Is it going to be a just a personal site about yourself and your CV, Is it going to be a family site with lots of family pictures? Thinking of setting up a busy forum about your favourite hobby, or a game server to play your favourite games online with friends or are you even contemplating having multiple sites? All this questions would have to be answered before you embark on your search for a suitable host.

One thing you would notice straight away is most hosts have plans providing you with gigabytes of space and bandwidth. This could lead you to believe your site would take that much space which could then lead you into comparing hosts by comparing the amount of space made available to you going for the company that offers the largest space. (I have seen a company offering 100Gigabyte of space once). The truth is most websites don’t even use anywhere close to that amount of space. Majority of sites don’t even use up to 1Gb of space. The average website on the internet today uses less than 50MB of space (yes you read that correctly 50MB). Even an album based website for example a family website with family pictures would still use less than 500MB of space. But don’t take my word for it, If you can, build your website offline first of all using a site building software such as dreamweaver or nVU, exactly how you want it to be online with all the images and you would discover how very little space it uses up. It is therefore possible to have several websites on just 500MB of online space.

So I here you ask, why do hosting companies offer as much as 5-100Gb of space in their plans? Well the truth is because they all want to appear competitive. They know your site wouldn’t use that much space and they know you most likely don’t know that, so they try and prey on the natural human trait known as GREED. Out of greed, people would always want to get the most of something they can even though they wouldn’t use all of it. I have even seen some companies offering Unlimited disk space which is just laughable. So do these companies have so much space to offer everyone? As you guessed it, the answer is no. What happens is they oversell! Because they know you most likely wouldn’t use anywhere near your allocated space, they oversell to make as much money from you as they can before you finally transfer to someone else.

And if a client comes along with an extremely heavy website and does use even 75% of the space allocated to him, he would most likely get kicked off by the host provider with the reason that he’s using too many server resources.

Another trick of the trade is the amount of sites you can have on your accounts also known as ‘add-on domains’ on your account. One could assume that if you cannot fill 5Gb with a single website, then maybe perhaps you could fill it with several websites. Well these ‘overselling’ companies have thought about this too and what they do is limit the amount of websites you can have per account. So on say a 5Gb account, you may only be allowed to have 2 websites or add-on domains.

Bandwidth is another thing to look out for. But like disk space, you usually don’t use close to what is being offered, and this is also grossly oversold. Bandwidth is basically the amount of data that is transferred from and to your hosting account everymonth. Technically you can work out the amount of bandwidth you are going to need by using this formula:

[Average size of your webpages + any graphics used] x [The number of visitors you expect each day x Number of pages each visitor would view] x [30 days] = Total Bandwidth for the month.

For example for a 30 page website averaging 8kb per page, and 50kb worth of images on each page. If you get 50 visitors a day viewing an average of 4 pages each, the total bandwidth for the month would be [8 KB + 50 KB] * [50 visitors * 4 pages] * [30 days in a month] = 348,000 KB. Therefore this site would use a bandwidth of approximately 348Mb per month which is well within limitations of any hosting company.

Therefore what should you look for when choosing a hosting company? The most important thing to look at is the server specs the company uses, and just as important the support they provide to their clients. By seeing how much effort a company has put into to develop their support department would tell you the sort of experience you would have with them. Is their support just an email address? If so then you probably wouln’t want to be with them. Does their support have a knowledge base? Ready made questions and answers, video tutorials to show you visually how to solve the most common problems? An email ticketing system so if you do email them, responses can be tracked? Live chat so a quick question can be answered instantly? A good host that is not just worried about their profits would invest the time and energy into making all these available for their current and potential clients.

So when next you are out shopping for a webhost, don’t just look at the amount of space and bandwidth you get, also look at the support available to you if a problem arises as it almost always does.

What exactly is web hosting? What features will you need from a web host? Questions like these often overwhelm would-be web publishers that are just starting out. But we are here to help. After reading this article you will not know everything there is to know about web hosting, but you will understand enough to get you started.

To start off with - what is web hosting? A web host is a company that manage computers that are part of the Internet, and web hosting is leasing disk space on those computers to store the files that make up your website. This means that there is a computer in a data center on which your files are stored, and the computer will present the web pages of your website to visitors. It should be clear to you that if you want to have a website, you will need web hosting.

What are the most important features to look for in a web host? Different web hosting companies offer different sets of features, and usually at various price points. Two of the most important things for you to look at is the amount of disk space you get and the amount of bandwidth they offer you. The more disk space you have the larger you can make your website. Some web hosts will even let you host more than one website on a single web hosting account, and in this case the amount of disk space will play a large role. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that is transferred to and from your website. You want to make sure you have enough bandwidth to display your website to all the visitors you expect to get. Sometime a web hosting company will offer unlimited bandwidth, but read the fine print carefully because there is usually a catch, often the terms of service restricts the kind of data you transfer. For example you may not be allowed to use audio or video on your website.

Other features to look for in a web hosting account include: is the web host Windows, Unix or Linux based, script compatibility, the number and type of databases, the type of control panel and number and type of email accounts. The operating system of the server will determine what software you can use on your website. The software programs you use on your website is often referred to as scripts. Not all web hosts are compatible to all scripting languages, like Perl, PHP and others. The scripts you want to use on your website often needs a database to manage the operation of the script, so you will need a compatible database. You will usually be able to create one or more email addresses using your own domain name.

Before choosing a web hosting company, decide what you want to accomplish with your website and choose a company that offers you the features and options you need.

Choosing a budget web hosting company can be overwhelming. In fact, choosing any web hosting company can be a challenge due, in large part, to the fact that there are so many of them. Do a search for “web hosting” with the quotes around the keywords on Google, and it’ll return over 5 million documents! That doesn’t mean there are 5 million web hosting providers but there very well could be at least 1 million! That’s a lot of web hosts. How can you choose one that meets your need?

What is Budget web hosting anyway?

Budget web hosting is generally defined as any hosting service that is below $10 per month. The budget comes from the low price. Now, most companies in the budget web hosting category only offer one year plans. Most budget web hosting companies however, will quote you the monthly fee you would pay if you divided the annual fee by 12 months. Keep that in mind when you are comparing one company with another. The other thing to look out for is the setup fee. Do they charge you a setup fee to get started?

Evaluate your general impression of the company.

The first place to start evaluating budget web hosting companies is their front page. Does their website give you a sense that they are professional? Is it easy to find all of the information you need? Take a look at their contact information. Do they list a physical address, an email address and a phone number to contact them? If they don’t provide any contact details, that has to throw up a red flag. If you run into problems setting up your website, and you have no proper contact information, how are you going to get service from that company?

Do they have a toll free support number?

Does the budget web hosting company provide a toll free number for you to contact them? If they are based in Atlanta, Georgia and you are in Seattle, Washington, you don’t want to be paying long distance to them if you need to get them on the phone about a concern you have. A toll free number also speaks to their willingness to deal openly and honestly with their customers.

What kind of guarantee do they offer?

Choose a budget web hosting company that offers a good guarantee. Most budget web hosting companies don’t openly publish their satisfaction guarantees. If you have to look in their terms and services agreement to find out where they stand with regard to giving you back your money if you are not satisfied, you should look elsewhere.

What is the uptime guarantee of the site in question?

Uptime guarantee refers to the amount of time the server is live and serving your web pages. An uptime guarantee of 99% means that the host guarantees that their servers will be up and operational 99% of the time. Over the course of one year, 99% uptime would represent a downtime (the one percent) of around 87 hours in a year or an average of 7 hours per month. An uptime of 99.9% would involve only 8 hours of downtime for the entire year.

What kind of after sale support can you expect?

While there are many other factors you could consider, the final one I will deal with is after sale support. What kind of resources do they make available for you. Find out if the budget web hosting company offers free scripts. Do they have any marketing tools they can make available to you? What kind of support for setting up your account can you expect from the budget web hosting company? All of these factors must be taken into consideration.

Just because a company offers a budget web hosting service, doesn’t mean you necessarily have to compromise on features, quality or service. All three will only be found, however, if you make sure to do your homework to find a budget web hosting company that is a good fit for you.

Access Microsoft’s advanced database creation and maintenance software. It is very popular among developers who maintain online databases with Windows NT.

Active Server Page (ASP) ASPs are HTML documents embedded with scripts (typically Microsoft’s VB Script or Jscript). These scripts are processed by the server prior to being transferred to the user.

ActiveX A set of properties that define how applications are to share information with each other. These properties are known as controls.

Aliased Nameservers An aliased nameserver is a nameserver that has been labeled as yours (the reseller’s) despite the fact it actually belongs to your Web hosting provider. This ensures that domains located on your server are listed as “ns.yourservername.com” instead of “ns.yourprovidersname.com”. Also see NAMESERVER below.

Apache One of the world’s most popular Web server programs, Apache was built by a group of open-source programmers and is often used because of its outstanding performance, strong security features and the fact that it is free.

Application Service Provider A third party that manages software applications for servers and networks.

Bandwidth The amount of data that can be transmitted at a given moment to a server. The higher your bandwidth, the larger amount of traffic your site can handle at one time.

CGI Short for Common Gateway Interface, a small script that processes data taken from the user (such as from a form application).

Cgi-bin The directory on a Web server where CGI scripts are stored.

Co-located hosting This hosting option gives webmasters complete control over their server. You are responsible for providing the physical hardware and network administration; the hosting company will provide you with the rack space and Internet connection.

Cookie A text file sent to a user’s Web browser from a Web server. Cookies are typically exchanged back and forth between the two in order to prepare custom content for users, and to exchange data like registration information.

Dedicated hosting A hosting feature that allows a Web site to have its own server. This is more flexible than shared hosting (see below), as webmasters typically have full control over the back end of the server, including choice of OS. Administration, however, is still handled by the hosting company.

Diesel Generator A diesel-powered generator used by hosting companies as a back-up source to generate electricity in the event of a power outage.

Domain names Domain names are the word sequences users enter in their URL bar to visit your site. They are attached to a DNS, short for Domain Naming System, which is used to translate numeric addresses (known as IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses) into words. Each site you visit on the net has a numeric IP address behind its name.

Firewall A piece of security software designed to protect Web servers. They are typically used to protect sites from hacker attacks/unauthorized access.

Flash A popular piece of animation software developed by Macromedia. Flash is widely used on the Web because it requires little bandwidth, therefore making it friendly to users with low or high-speed connections.

FrontPage A popular site design and management tool developed by Microsoft.

FTP Short for File Transfer Protocol, a method of allowing remote users and Web servers to exchange files.

HTML Short for HyperText Markup Language, the language by which Web servers and client browsers communicate. All server-side functions (such as database processing), although they may be performed in another language, must eventually be output back to the user in HTML.

HTTP Stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the protocol by which HTML files move across the Internet. HTTP requires a client browser and an HTTP server (typically a Web server).

IIS Short for Internet Information Server, Microsoft’s server software for Windows NT/2000.

Intranet A vast internal network structured in a fashion similar to the Internet. Intranets are usually established by large corporate organizations to improve communication. The main difference between the Internet and an intranet is that access to intranets are restricted to authorized members only.

IP Short for Internet Protocol, which designates the format of “data packets” that are used to exchange information over the Internet.

IRC Short for Internet Relay Chat, a popular text-base multi-user chat network.

ISDN Short for Integrated Services Digital Network, a high-speed solution to moving data over phone lines. It can transfer data at approximately 128,000 bits per second over a standard land line.

Load Balancing Distributing data across a network of servers in order to ensure that a single Web server does not get overloaded with work, thereby affecting performance.

Managed hosting A dedicated server that is accompanied by a full suite of technical support, maintenance and monitoring services. This differs from dedicated Web hosting, where customers are provided with their own servers but are still responsible for virtually all administrative and maintenance duties.

MIME Short for Multipurpose Internet Email Extensions, a protocol that allows users to transfer non-text messages like audio, video and images through e-mail.

Mirror sites A mirror site is an exact copy of another FTP or Web site. These are used to offset/spread traffic load on busy Web sites.

MS Index Server An add-on for Microsoft Internet Information server (see above) that indexes documents on Web or Intranet servers running IIS. The information is then presented to users in a searchable format.

Name server A server responsible for translating domain names and IP addresses.

Newsgroup A USENET discussion group (see below).

NOC Short for Network Operations Center, a hosting company’s “home base,” so to speak. The NOC is usually where most administration, technical support and physical server storage takes place. For more information, please refer to our article, Inside the NOC, here.

OC Short for Optical Carrier, representing the speed of fiber-optic networks. OC speeds can range anywhere between 1 and 48. Most hosting companies have OC3 connections, which allows for the transfer of data at a rate of up to 155.52 Mbps.

Packet switching The method by which most data is exchanged throughout the Internet. Most data is broken down in to smaller “packets” prior to transfer, and then reassembled at the destination.

Parking All domain names have to be stored on a server in order to be purchased. Most domain registration services will therefore temporarily place a newly purchased name on their servers until a hosting plan is purchased or the owner points the DNS to a different site. This is known as parking.

POP Short for Post Office Protocol. An e-mail protocol that mail software such as Eudora use to communicate with mail servers.

Propagation The process where name servers throughout the Internet add new domains and remove expired ones from their records. This can be a lengthy process, which is why connecting to a new domain name can often take three or four days.

RAID Short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, a method of data protection/backup. Data is stored over a number of servers so that information will still be accessible if a piece of hardware/software crashes.

Reseller A reseller operates components of a Web hosting operation using services, infrastructure and equipment provided by another Web hosting service. Some resellers operate full-fledged businesses using the hardware, software, network and logistical support of another Web hosting firm, while others simply operate as sales agents for other Web hosting companies, offering discounts and providing low-level technical support.

Scalability The ability of a piece of software or hardware to expand/grow as necessary.

Shared hosting The most basic of Web hosting types. With shared hosting, numerous Web sites are shared on one server. While an economic solution, they typically cannot handle large amounts of storage or traffic.

Shopping cart A program designed to handle the e-commerce section of a Web site. Shopping cart software lets users browse for and purchase products online.

SMTP Short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a protocol used by mail servers to exchange messages with each other.

SQL Short for Standard Query Language. A standard protocol used to request information from databases. Servers which can handle SQL are known as SQL servers.

SSL Short for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape to handle and protect confidential/sensitive information required for e-commerce transactions (like credit card numbers). SSL address usually begin with ‘https’.

Subdomain Typically known as a “domain within a domain”, subdomains are individual Web addresses built upon a pre-existing domain name (such as clientname.yourhostingcompany.com). As a reseller, you will have the option of assigning subdomains to clients if they do not choose to have a domain name.

T1 Connection A phone or data connection that can support the transfer of up to 1.544Mbits of data per second. T1 connections are popular among businesses and ISPs. Most T1s are connected to T3, which can handle up to 43Mbits per second and are actual Internet backbone connections.

Tape back-up A popular and inexpensive way to back up Web sites. Contents of a site are periodically stored that looks similar to a cassette. Some cassettes can store several gigabytes.

Telnet A command-line interface that allows remote users and Web servers to communicate.

TCP Short for Transmission Control Protocol, an important network protocol. TCP allows two hosts to connect and exchange data, and ensures that “data packets” are delivered exactly as sent.

TLD Shot for Top Level Domain, the suffix for major domain names like .com, .net and .org.

UNIX A text-based, multitasking Operating System suitable for Web and network administration. Unix has spawned numerous popular spinoffs, including Linux and FreeBSD. Most Unix-based Operating Systems are open source, meaning the source code to the Operating System has been made freely available to the public for modification. Most Web hosting companies and resellers offer Unix-based hosting in some capacity or other.

USENET A network of thousands of discussion groups (known as newsgroups; see above) on the Internet.

UUENCODE Short for Unix to Unix Encoding, a method of converting images to ASCII (see above) text in order to be transferred over the Internet.

Virtual host A shared hosting solution, the most basic of hosting types. Numerous Web sites are shared on one server.

Virtualization A process/software designed to reduce server management costs through automation, while providing more control over service levels.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) A virtual private server provides the features of a dedicated server on a machine that is shared by other Web hosting customers. Customers therefore get hosting services that are similar to that of dedicated Web hosting without sacrificing privacy or performance.

WHOIS A central database which tracks all domain name/IP registrations.

Windows NT/2000 These are graphic-based, multitasking Operating Systems developed over the past few years by Microsoft. Both can act as standalone OS for personal computers/workstations, or can serve as an OS for a Web site/network. Most Web hosting companies and resellers offer Windows-based hosting in some capacity or other.

XML Short for Extensible Markup Language. XML is a language allowing developers to create their own markup tags. All XML tags are defined by the programmer, and can be interpreted differently in different applications. For example, the “” tag in HTML means Italics, but could mean anything in XML, depending on the function the developer assigns to it.