Copyright © 2005 Arun Pal SinghWith plethora of hosting companies offering services, choosing a good web host seems an intimidating task. The technical jargon is hard to decipher and that makes it difficult further. It is better to prepare beforehand and then search for offers rather than acting otherwise.
What is web hosting? If one compares
web to land hosing is
place where your office or website will be placed. Server is
computer which stores your website files and allows them to be viewed on clicking
link to your site.
With free hosting out of question for business and dedicated hosting being too expensive, shared hosting is
only and good option for home business. As
name suggests, in shared hosting your site is stored with many others unlike dedicated hosting which stores only your site.
Now let us discuss other features:
•Disc or Server space:
This is
space on hard disk of your server that will be allotted to your site. Without graphics a typical web page occupies 40 – 50 Kb. Now 1000 kb = 1 MB. Allowing space for graphics too and need for any future expansion anything between 50 -100 MB should be good enough if you are not running a flashy website. Many companies offer space up to 1 GB (1000 MB) but if you do not require, do not fall for
offer.
•Bandwidth: A very important aspect and often overlooked. This is
amount of actual data that can be transferred from
web server that holds your website. It is directly linked to
number of visitors to your site. If you have 10000 visitors per month with few downloads you will require anything between 5 -6 GB per month. More downloads means higher requirement. As your business grows you will need more. For starting 10 GB should be good enough. That leaves you with extra margin.
•E- Mail aliases:
This lets you formulate an e-mail address on your site address e.g. anything@ your sitename.com where anything can be support, live support, help, info, subscribe etc. Anything! This makes your business look professional. Look for you needs but anything around 10 is good enough. Many companies offer unlimited aliases too.