Website Host

Posted by admin on 25 March, 2009

This post was filed in About Hosting and has 5 comments

How to Choose a Website Host for Your Business

Executive summary about website host by Michael Press

Website hosts are essential for any website. Let’s start with what hosts offer:

Web Space – Most website hosts offer between 1GB and 4GB of space. If your website is going to contain video and programs, then you will need a lot of web space.

Bandwidth – Look for hosts that offer Bandwidth in giga-bytes(GB). The higher the Bandwidth offered, the better.

E-mail – Your web host should offer what’s called POP3 E-mail. Most web hosts offer between 10-100 POP3 e-mail addresses, each with its own username and password. This way, you could give all your friends, relatives, or employees their own personalized e-mail address.

E-mail Autoresponders – They allow an e-mail address to automatically send a message to anyone that e-mails a certain e-mail address. Look for hosts that offer at least 10 autoresponders if you plan on using forms and a shopping cart. Some websites even offer Unlimited Autoresponders.

E-mail Forwarders – E-mail forwarders forward an e-mail to your e-mail address. Look for website hosts that offer 10 to Unlimited E-mail Forwarders.

Subdomains – Subdomains allow you to have many different websites under one domain name. A subdomain’s address would be http://subdomain.yourdomainname.com, but “subdomain” can be replaced with whatever you want. Each subdomain has its own FTP username and password, or can be accessed through your main username and password.

CGI-BIN/Perl, PHP, and MySQL – CGI-BIN, Perl, and PHP allow you to setup message boards, form mail, web-based e-mail, banner rotaters, and much more on your website. MySQL is an extremely reliable and fast database system that can be used to better manage the content on your website, or you can use it to store any type of information you want, including pictures. Look for web hosts that offer these for free.

Control Panel - At the control panel, you should be able to create POP3 E-mail address, Autoresponders, FTP Accounts, Subdomains, and manage MySQL databases.

Besides offering all of the tools above, a website host should offer you a free domain name with your hosting package. If you have already registered your domain name with a different company like Godaddy.com or Register.com, your website host should offer a free domain name transfer. As for Price, you shouldn’t pay anymore than $20.00 a month for a website host. There are a lot of website hosts that provide you with more than you need for less than $10.00 per month.

Choosing a Website Host for New Webmasters

Executive summary about website host by John McDonald

Here are the most important factors that should be considered:

Storage space: This is just like your computer hard drive space.
Monthly Transfer or Bandwidth: This is the amount of data that the server will transfer to website users for you.
Unlimited Domains: Make sure your web host allows multiple or unlimited domains so that all of your ideas can become new sites without having to purchase upgrades or additional hosting plans.
Software & Database Compatibility, e.g. have up to date versions of PHP and MySQL software.
Automatic software installation
What to look for in User Review: The primary thing you want to learn about from the users’ experiences is how reliable the web host is.

Check out our article about Hosting ASP.