What is a Web Host
The web host is the guts of any website because this is where you create and publish your pages, build order forms,
add functionality and maintain your site.
A web host is a company that has computers that are hooked up to the internet 24/7. These computers are called servers and they are assigned IP numbers in order that they may be found by other computers hooked up to the internet. It is on these servers that all your web files are stored, be they HTML files (web pages), graphic files, CSS files, Javascripts or whatever.
4. File type and size limitations
Watch out for these. Some free hosts impose a maximum size on each
of the files you upload (including one with a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG
files. If your needs are different, eg, if you want to distribute your own programs on your pages, you will have to look elsewhere.
5. Bandwidth allotment
Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your website can
use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number
of times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you a bill). It is difficult to recommend
a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors
you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home
page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage, however, will vary.
Choosing
a Commercial Web Host
1. Data Transfer (Traffic/Bandwidth)
Data transfer (sometimes loosely referred to as "traffic" or "bandwidth") is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site.
To give you a rough idea
of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new sites that are not software archives or the like use less than 3 GB of
bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your site becomes more well-known (and well-linked), so you
will need to also check their policy for overages: is there a published charge per GB over the allowed bandwidth? Is the charge made
according to actual usage or are you expected to pre-pay for a potential overage? It is better not to go for hosts that expect you
to prepay for overages, since it is very hard to forsee when your site will exceed its bandwidth and by how much.
2. Disk space
For the same reason as bandwidth, watch out also for those (Unlimited Disk Space) schemes. Most sites need less than 10 MB of web space, so even if you are provided with a host that tempts
you with 200 MB or 500 MB (or "unlimited space"), be aware that you are unlikely to use that space, so don't let the 500 MB space
be too big a factor in your consideration when comparing with other web hosts. The hosting company is also aware of that, which is
why they feel free to offer you that as a means of enticing you to host there. As a rough gauge, thefreecountry.com, which had about
150 pages when this article was first written, used less than 5 MB for its pages and associated files.
3. Technical support
Does its technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (often abbreviated 24/7), all year around? Note
that I will not accept a host which does not have staff working on weekends or public holidays. You will be surprised at how often
things go wrong at the most inconvenient of times. Incidentally, just because a host advertises that it has 24/7 support does not
necessarily mean that it really has that kind of support. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings,
etc. Check out how long they take to respond. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn't
want to sign up for a host that is run by a bunch of salesmen who only know how to sell and not fix problems.
4. FTP, PHP, Perl, SSI, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL, crontabs
If you are paying for a site, you really should make sure you have all of
these.
Note that some commercial hosts do not allow you to install PHP or Perl scripts without their approval. This is not desirable
since it means that you have to wait for them before you can implement a feature on your site. "htaccess" is needed if you are to
do things like customize your error pages (pages that display when, say, a user requests for a non-existent page on your site) or
to protect your site in various ways (such as to prevent bandwidth theft and hotlinking etc).
Telnet or SSH access is useful for certain
things, including testing certain scripts (programs), maintaining databases, etc. MySQL is needed if you want to run a blog or a kontent
management system. Cron is a type of program scheduler that lets you run programs at certain times of the day (eg, once a day). Check
to see if these facilities are provided.
5. SSL (secure server), Shopping Cart
If you are planning on doing any sort of business through your
website, you might want to look out to see if the host provides these facilities. These facilities normally involve a higher priced
package or additional charges. The main thing is to check to see if they are available at all before you commit to the host. You will
definitely need SSL if you want to collect credit card payments on your site.
6. Email, Autoresponders, POP3,
Mail Forwarding
If you have your own site, you would probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like sales@yourdomain.com,
etc. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it allow you to have a catch-all email account that causes any email address
at your domain to be routed to you? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message (called
an autoresponder)? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software ? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address?
7. Server
Is the type of operating system and server important? Whether you think so or not on the theoretical
level, there are a few practical reasons for looking out for the type of server.
In general, if you want to use things like write/useASP programs, you have no choice but to look for a Windows server.
Otherwise my preference is to sign up for accounts using the often
cheaper, more stable and feature-laden Unix systems running the Apache server. In fact, if dynamically generated pages that can access
databases (etc) is what you want, you can always use the more portable (and popular) PHP instead of tying yourself down to ASP. Another
reason to prefer Unix-based web hosts (which include web hosts using systems like Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc) using the
Apache web server is that these servers allow you to configure a lot of facilities that you typically need on your site (error pages,
protecting your images, blocking email harvesters, blocking IP addresses, etc) without having to ask your web host to implement them.
1. Advertising
Most free web hosts impose advertising on your website. This is done to cover the costs of providing your site the free web space and associated services. Some hosts require you to place a banner on your pages, others display a window that pops up everytime a page on your site loads, while still others impose an advertising frame on your site. There is really no hard and fast rule which is to be preferred: some people hate a pop-up window, other webmasters dislike having to stuff banner codes onto their pages, and many people cannot stand an advertising frame (which may cause problems when you submit your website to search engines). Whichever method is used, check that you're comfortable with the method.
2. Amount of web space
Does it have enough space for your needs? If you think you will expand your site in
time, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most sites use less than 5MB of web space. Your needs will vary, depending on
how many pictures your pages use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.
3. FTP access
(In case you're wondering: FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is a method used to transfer a file from one computer to another across the Internet. It is often used by webmasters to publish their web pages on the Internet - they use FTP to transfer their web pages from their computer to their web server. The transfer of files is usually accomplished by a program called an FTP client)
Some free hosting providers only allow you to design your page with their online builder. While this is useful for beginners, do you have the option to expand later when you become experienced and their online page builder does not have the facility you need? FTP access, or at the very least, the ability to upload your pages by email or browser, is needed.
