Good stuff to have if you need it

Telnet access - Being able to access your site from Telnet (command line) is useful to me, but most webmasters will never need this function. This is especially true if functions such as CRONTAB (scheduling tasks) can be done through control panel.

Custom CGI scripts - If you are paying for a host, then you should make sure you can install your own CGI scripts. This is not important, of course, if you don't plan on including any of your own scripts.

PERL Support - If you use PERL routines, then this is essential. Again, this is not absolutely necessary if you are not using PERL.

SSI Support - Server Side Includes are a very nice way to make it easy to make changes to your web pages. Again, you either need it or you don't.

PHP Support - PHP is a great server-side scripting language (far superior to ASP). If you can get it on a host (and most paid hosts support PHP) then you are doing well.

MySQL Support - MySQL is database tool. This allows you to get input from visitors, store it on your web site and allow your visitors to retrieve it later.

Unlimited autoresponders - I think most web hosts offer unlimited autoresponders with feeling that they will not be used much. They always seem surprised to find that I've used them at all. Autoresponders are a great way to automate your web site, so it's a good idea to get them. If your host doesn't offer them and you wind up needing them, then you will need to purchase them from somewhere else.

Direct access to server logs - You can get along without accessing server logs, but it sure makes it easier to tell how you site is doing.

Upload from control panel in addition to FTP access - I almost always use FTP access to upload (and download) files from my site. However, there odd occasions when I've used control panel upload. Not essential, but nice to be able to use once in a while.

SSL Support - This is needed if you want to run secure web pages from your site.

Subdomains - A subdomain is a domain in format of subdomain.domain. For example, wallpapers.internet-tips.net is a subdomain. These are very useful for separating functional areas of your site. A good web host will allow you to have as many of these on your site as you want.

FrontPage Support - Well, if you use FrontPage then you will obviously need to be able to upload pages. Personally, I would just as soon use FTP, as it's usually faster and better, even when using FrontPage for site development.

Not incredibly useful to most people

Web hosts like to say these things are important, but in reality they are mostly bells and whistles.

Search engine submission - All web hosts will boast in their promotional materials that they will submit your site for you to search engines. You should be doing this anyway, so it's not incredibly useful that a host will do it for you.

BGMAILBOX and everyone.net support - These can be nice services, but they really are not necessary for most people. I think main reason why I would want these in a host is simply to know they are available.

PERL modules - A few hosts will install PERL modules for you. This is a way to extend functionality of PERL, and it's not very useful to most webmasters. However, if you do find a host which will let you do this, then you can be sure you can do almost anything.

Another change that I've wanted to make also involved subdomains, but with a twist. I wanted to create a subdomain of search.renaissancefaire.org which called up a search engine on everyone.net. My old ISPs would not make this change - not one of them. Yet it was a simple one line entry in nameserver. Now I can make these changes myself.

But a problem soon introduced itself. You see, name server is actually entered into domain definition at domain registrar. This more or less informs internet where to find your site, email server, subdomains and so on.

Registrars require at least two name servers. My site only had one. I could have defined two by asking my dedicated hosting company for another IP address, but this had a problem. The reason for requiring two name servers is redundancy. If both IP addresses are on same machine, then that redundancy does not exist.

I needed another name server somewhere else on internet. A little searching and I found one.

http://soa.granitecanyon.com/

This is a free service which allows people with exactly same problem that I was facing to create their own name server entries. You simply enter domain name, your email address and raw DNS server table for domain. These DNS server tables are a little tricky to set up, but service provides excellent documentation and will not allow an invalid entry to be set up.

So what do you do? You create your entries at this service, then modify your domain at registrar to use them (wait a couple of days after defining them, however).

I believe you can use this service even if you host your site on a normal shared host (and possibly even a free host). You would need to set up your site normally and get ISP to set up their name servers as appropriate. Once that was done, you could go to granitecanyon.com and define your own name server entries, then proceed to registrar a couple of days later to use those entries. Theoretically this should work fine.

What is bottom line? If you are using a dedicated host or you want to gain some measure of control over your name servers, you can now do so. This will enable you to do what you need without paying high costs or begging your ISP for a favor.

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