Determine Your Needs Before Choosing A Hosting Service

Written by Nancy Casseur


Determine your needs BEFORE choosing a hosting service

Choosing a hosting company for your web site can be very confusing givenrepparttar multitude of companies available onrepparttar 147571 Internet today. Do not choose a service by price alone. The very cheapest is not necessarilyrepparttar 147572 best. You can get a good hosting service for under $10.00, but first determine your requirements.

Before going into any more detail, let’s look at some definitions:

Hosting service - A hosting service or company is an Internet company that provides hundreds or even thousands of computers like yours with service by “renting” you space. With this service your web site is now onrepparttar 147573 Internet and can be viewed by millions of others. Sure you could be your own host, but it would be very expensive because you would need to buy a server, house it inrepparttar 147574 proper environment, maintain it 24 hours a day, and put up with allrepparttar 147575 other headaches that come with hosting. Wouldn’t you rather concentrate on selling your product? Server A server is a large computer, which can service many other computers. Sometimes a large software package on a host’s server (like a mail software package) is also referred to as a server. Have you seen scenes on TV which show rooms wall-to-wall with big computers busily working and flashing their lights? These are servers.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. If you started your web site from scratch, you will need to upload your web pages torepparttar 147576 host you selected. To do this you use a FTP software package. There are some excellent tutorials on FTP at http://www.pageresource.com/putweb/ftptut1.htm CGI CGI means Common Gateway Interface. While CGI primarily refers torepparttar 147577 way a server communicates with other software onrepparttar 147578 server, CGI scripts are a popular way programmers install counters, forms, and other interactive items on a web site. If you see cgi-bin,repparttar 147579 “bin” refers to binary from a time long ago when most programs were referred to as binary. Now cgi-bin refers torepparttar 147580 location inrepparttar 147581 server where cgi scripts are stored. Now, let’s go back torepparttar 147582 hosting service. When you surfrepparttar 147583 net and “go” to a particular site, you are not actually going to that site. The hosting company’s server (in this case your ISP) receives your request, searchesrepparttar 147584 web, finds your requested site, and downloads it to your computer. So you see, you don’t go to a site,repparttar 147585 site comes to you, courtesy of a server. How do you go about choosing a hosting service? It is pretty much up to you based onrepparttar 147586 size of your website,repparttar 147587 number of visitors you expect, and, of course,repparttar 147588 state of your wallet. If you are just starting out, a free or low cost service is all you will need, but as your business grows you might want to consider a service that gives you more storage and more transfer room. Storage isrepparttar 147589 amount of room your web site takes up onrepparttar 147590 hosting company’s server, “Transfer” refers to network transfer space. If you have a large web site and a lot of visitors you will need more storage or disc space and more network transfer space. The more people accessing your site;repparttar 147591 higherrepparttar 147592 volume of data being transferred. How to calculate your disk space:

Is your web site hosting cost effective?

Written by Paras Shah


Choosingrepparttar right web hosting company is an important aspect in cutting your web hosting costs down. The web hosting industry, boosting several thousand web hosts, is still young and growing at a remarkable pace; hence findingrepparttar 147091 right host is not only difficult, but very time consuming; fortunately though it is worthrepparttar 147092 time and effort. There are a few things to keep in mind when exploring; when deciding to form a partnership withrepparttar 147093 host. Below are just a few things to consider, which directly attribute to final cost.

Bandwidth — Figure out approximately how much bandwidth (data transfer) your web site requires. As above, ensure you get more bandwidth than your site uses. For example, if your website uses 8GB bandwidth per month, then choose a plan, which offers at least 8 or 10GB bandwidth per month. This again will prevent 'spikes' of over usage, leading to higher extra costs. As a reference, an average web site should pay no more than $3 per GB for bandwidth usage.

Disk Space — Knowing how much web space your web site needs and compensating for a bit extra, for growth. For example, if your web site needs 200 MB of disk space, look forrepparttar 147094 plan which offers at least 250 to 300 MB of web space; this will prevent a large unexpected bill atrepparttar 147095 end ofrepparttar 147096 month when high priced costs, charged by most web hosts for extra disk space usage, are added on to your bill. As a rule of thumb, an average web site should cost you no more than $1 per 10 MB

Add On — Askrepparttar 147097 web host if they have "Add-ons" facilities for purchasing projected extra disk space or bandwidth. But, be careful, if your web site needs only 2 GB extra bandwidth, you may have to buy an extra package in blocks of 5GB bandwidth; in this case, look forrepparttar 147098 host which will allow you to purchase extra disk space and bandwidth allowance as per your needs, this is crucial to cost savings

Caution: Ensure that you knowrepparttar 147099 over-usage allowance rules; you need to know what happens if your web site uses more disk space or bandwidth than you have been allocated. The web host who informs you of possible over-usage well in advance, allowing you to take measures to reduce or budget for extra usage, is 'worth their weight in gold'.

No. of Web Sites — If you have more than one web site, sign up an account with a web host who provides multiple domains hosted on one account; this will work out a lot cheaper than an account per website.

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