Once you have found and registered a domain name you are ready to move on and choose your web hosting company. A web host should be competitively priced, provide you with all the tools necessary to host your web pages and include at least 10 email addresses so you can track sales, info, support, etc.
You will want a package that meets your current needs of today and any future needs as you expand. Make sure you have sufficient Bandwidth and Disk Space and the facility to have multiple domains or sub domains. Multiple domains and sub domains can be very useful features for creating other websites within the same account without the need to purchase more web hosting. Thus saving you money and time.
Which web hosting company do I use?
Will it do everything I want it to?
Is it reliable?
Will there be support there when I need it most?
Are their prices competitive?
There are so many good and not so good Web Hosing companies out there its just mind-boggling. I spent many hours, days and weeks researching this subject and finding a web host turned out to be much harder than first anticipated. I got frustrated and downhearted with something I assumed would be plain sailing. Then purely by chance whilst at a friends wedding I got into a conversation with a guy sitting at the same table as me.
Believe it or not he was a website designer and recommended an excellent web hosting company to me. He told me he used them all the time and had no problems with recommending them to others. Isn't it strange how things like this just happen sometimes? I had never met this guy before and have never seen him since, yet he helped to solve one of my biggest niggling problems at that time.
I finally got a Web Hosting company I could put my trust in. It had a 99.9% up time guarantee, 24/7 support and a 30-day money back guarantee which gave me the chance to give it a free test run. It came with great, easy to follow movie tutorials, an online forum and an extensive knowledgebase that answered most questions.
I found the tutorials invaluable when setting up my first website. There are tutorials to help with most things and if you encounter a problem that is not in the tutorials there is still the customer forum, knowledgebase or telephone you can use. In fact they now have a ‘live support system' in place where you can chat online to a real person.
They have four main plans starting with Hatchling as their basic package, then Baby, Swamp and Semi Dedicated.
I decided to go with the 'Baby plan' because I could host unlimited sites and emails all on the one account. It came with everything I needed and will serve me well for many years to come. I am a big fan of tutorials, it makes the learning curve so much easier in whatever you are trying to achieve and certainly helped with setting everything up in the correct way.
If you are in need of a web hosting company then make sure you choose well. Think about your requirements right now and any you may need as your business grows. It makes good business sense to do your research and seek out a top-performing host that is going to serve you well for many years to come. I was lucky, because the recommendation I received turned out to be top notch and provided me with everything I required from a website hosting company.
Cpanel Free Web Hosting
There are many types of web hosting that you can choose from these days so why choose a dedicated web host solution. Having your own server means that you are the only one that is allowed to host websites on that server. You get all of the computers processing power and storage space. Plus you get to run your own programs or services on that machine.
Not having to share a server with a dozen or maybe hundreds of other webmasters means that there is much less of a chance for things to go wrong. If you thing of a hundred people trying to do something on a computer as opposed to one person you can imagine what I mean. It only takes on person to install a script incorrectly or get a sudden traffic surge and not only their site goes down but every other site on that server.
With shared hosting you are very limited to what you can do. With your own dedicated server you get SSH or shell access which means you can control everything that goes on with that server.
A dedicated server is a specialist machine that is designed to do one job and one job only and that is to serve your website up to visitors. It has been optimized so that all of its functions are geared towards web hosting.
There are of course more than just one type of dedicated server. Most hosting companies offer several different hosting packages for servers. Your first decision is whether you want to use a Windows based dedicated server or one that is running Linux. This choice will depend on several factors some of which include the type of site you are running. If you have a PHP and MySQL database that needs hosting then your going to need a Linux server. If you have windows based back ends or have certain integration requirement for Microsoft software then you will need a Windows based server.
The next set of considerations are that of the specifications of your server. Do you need a server that is going to be as fast and as powerful as possible or can you get by with a lower cost server that is less powerful. You should consider the storage and bandwidth requirements. The larger the site and the more information you are going to need to store then the bigger the disk space you are going to need. There is no point in under planning and running out of storage space six months down the line.
Both John Reece & Caroline South are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.