Web Hosting

Once you've designed and created your website you need to find a web host who will host your site on their server, therefore allowing internet users to access your site. This can be a daunting prospect because there are thousands of web hosts on the internet, all offering different features in terms of the type of software they use, eg Linux/Unix, the actual disk space allocated to your website, the bandwidth allowance, technical support etc.

Let's discuss some of these factors that you should take into consideration when choosing a web host, starting with the server software. Any web host that uses Linux or Unix, which most do, should be fine. This is not an area I know a great deal about, but most webmasters I know favour Linux.

Another factor to consider is the actual disk space that you are allowed. Most websites use relatively little disk space so this is not really too big an issue. Web pages generally are about 40KB (1MB=1000KB, 1GB=1000MB), so you can do a quick calculation based on how many web pages you are planning to have in the future. If you are planning to run a large ecommerce site, or one with a lot of graphics or images, for example, then you should seriously take this into consideration.

Similarly you should look at the monthly bandwidth allowance that you are allowed. In simple terms this is derived from the disk space of the pages viewed multiplied by the number of visitors. This is an important factor to consider, particularly if you expect your site to grow, and eventually get a lot of traffic. The last thing you want is for you to exceed your allowance before the end of the month, and therefore have your site down, or have to pay for extra bandwidth.

You should also look at the technical support offered by the web host. For example, look at the different ways you can contact them, whether they offer 24 hour support, etc. You can get a good idea of how good their support is by reading other people's comments on web hosting forums.

There are a few other factors that may be relevant to your individual requirements. For example, how many email accounts you require, what website visitor tracking software is included, what add-on scripts are included such as forums, shopping carts, etc, whether you can host video on your site, and so on.

Ultimately the decision of which web host you choose is down to you, but is one that should not be taken lightly. Don't just go with the cheapest host you can find, and be careful about committing yourself to a long-term plan, because they may turn out to be a poor web host, for example your site could be down for long periods at a time, or they could have poor technical support.

I don't have a lot of experience of different web hosts because I have only ever used one host for all my sites. I spent hours researching which web host I should choose after I had built my very first site, and read endless posts on web hosting forums. Thankfully I ended up choosing a web host that has been excellent, and have used them ever since. The name of this company is BlueHost.

If you don't want to spend hours researching web hosts then I can highly recommend BlueHost. They're one of the most popular web hosting providers on the net and for good reason. For just a low price of just $7.95 a month you get an incredible 10,000MB of disk space and 250GB of bandwidth per month. This is far more than any other web host, and even with a very large site with a lot of traffic, you will be hard pushed to get anywhere near close to exceeding this limit. Because of this you are allowed to host upto 6 domains all on the same account.

Add to that the fact that their server's downtime is next to nothing (some hosts' servers can be down for hours at a time). They also have a reputation for providing excellent support, which includes online FAQs, guides, freephone telephone number and email support. I've always had an almost immediate response within one hour when emailing them a question.

The list of additional features is endless. They provide upto 2500 email accounts, excellent website stats, free domain name, many useful scripts and database options, and so much more. To see the full list of features please visit Bluehost. I can highly recommend them.

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