Thursday, 14 July 2011

Tips on Web Hosting

By Gregory Trune


A website can be created with a variety of purposes but the basic idea is to share information, news, views and thoughts. Small businesses know the importance of web hosting services and that value can be measured in profits - to the tune of billions of dollars. Web hosting enables you to get your small business known to the world. With a properly hosted website you can popularize your company and brand across the globe, especially to the target audiences who cannot be informed otherwise. To experience the benefits of creating websites, one needs to be careful while selecting a web host for an ecommerce website. Finding the best web hosting is often difficult and demands a lot of study and research work. When you look for information on web hosts, over the internet, several results come up. But the question is who these hosts are? Are they reliable? Can they provide you all sorts of benefits that are required? It is very essential to get answers to these questions before venturing for any web hosting service.

The following steps will guide you in getting your web hosting needs fulfilled:

The primary step is to identify the requirement of web hosting:

After you are absolutely sure that you need a website in the internet, identify the main purpose for which you want to get it hosted. Make your mind up on which sort of website you want. The choices can range from business or hobby sites to dating sites. The choice is all yours. If you wish to use the website for business then security is a demanding factor. Secure Sockets Layer encryption and shopping carts are the primary components of an e-commerce site. On the other hand if you wish to host a customer e-commerce site then it is vital that you choose the right web hosting environment that supports the different software systems. PHP or Perl/CGI scripting are often used when developing blog sites and they also need access to MySQL or SQL databases. However, these aspects are too technical and ignorant people mostly depend on the web hosts. There are some web hosts that exploit a customer's ignorance and unreasonably charge for such things. The best way out is thus to gather some knowledge before venturing for any web hosting service.

Storage space

Usually it is your content and type of your website that determines the required storage space. A small website with lesser features and content needs less space. While a large website that includes numerous pages, videos, images and graphics will require more storage space. Basically, an e-commerce website includes huge information and a great deal of data. Thereby, these sites require more space than other sites. You can find some web hosts that offer separate databases to their clients, where others do not. However, separate databases often create trouble as the storage spaces provided are not always the same as your web host claimed earlier.

Settle on bandwidth:

Bandwidth of a website is essential. The number of hits that your website would experience could determine the bandwidth limit that your website requires. This can be stated in a simple way, if your website is a popular one and is used by the visitors frequently, your site would require or rather consume heavy bandwidth than a site on which visitors hardly click. Suppose you have a website that is simple without too many features and average webpage is of 8KB. If it is assumed that your web pages experience 10 hits per day, then your bandwidth per month would be 810x30.

Keeping in mind that bandwidth is a vital factor of web hosting, try to get an idea of the size your website would require before choosing a web hosting company. You can let the web host decide this but you must be able to provide the full specifications of your website. You must keep in mind that blogs and online forums require more bandwidth than that of a simple company website. The reason is obvious. Visitors to blogs or online forums do not just read. They also participate.

Essential feature of web hosting:

While deciding on a particular web host you need to consider the web hosting features that you require. You can either use simple HTML or PHP/ ASP and Flash for developing your website. You need to clarify with your web hosts that they are able to provide you required services regardless of your technical bases. You also need to keep in mind that it is the programming languages that determine the appearance of your website. Moreover as it is your website, you must some a special access to it. It is with the help of FTP or Telnet that these special accesses are provided to you. Thereby, you need to clarify and confirm with the web hosting company about the kind of access you require for your website.

Various web hosting:

There are several types of web hosting services offered by the web hosts. Each of these services is based on the budget and purposes of the web hosts. Web hosting includes shared, dedicated, managed, server co-location, reseller and free web hosting services. Depending on the website requirements of your budget you can make your selection. For large websites and companies with big budget, dedicate web hosting is always preferred whereas, for small business, with less or low budget, free web hosting is preferred. All these type of web hosting have their own pros and cons and hence you can go about any of these provided the web host is authentic.

Essential tips to move forward with a website:

* Calculating the value of data that your website would create is very important. This is usually a rough calculation, which is likely to change with time and expansion of your website.

* If you are subscribing to a speared database then it is essential to check out how much extra the web host is charging you for the database.

* It is recommended that you keep some keep some bandwidth and disc space in store for your website if you expect it to grow in the near future.

* Bandwidth and storage are always limited to a certain amount. Therefore, be careful about the web host companies that offer unlimited bandwidth and storage.

* Be sure of the Operating System that is used in your site. Windows web hosts provide access to a wide range of technologies that are usually not available with Linux or UNIX web hosts.

* Never compromise with quality because of price. If your financial resources allow you try to keep your budget flexible enough in order to get the best services.

* Change your web host only when it is an emergency or else there is not need of such change.

* Find out what kind of domain name services the web hosts offer. Relevance of the domain name with that of the website and its objective is very essential according to the search engine rules.

* Find if the web host can offer you ample information on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This would determine the ranking of your website in the popular search engines like that of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

* There are numerous web hosting directories that can give you detailed information about such web hosting companies that provide a great deal of services. Find out each and every type of services provided by these companies. Even consider the project that have completed and read client reviews before opting for them.




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