Our Guide To Web Hosting Hints and Tips
This article on web hosting hints and tips and is aimed at beginners who are trying to get to grips with the web hosting world.
Hopefully these tips on web hosting terminology will help you to find your way through the many variations offered by hosting providers.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting is the act of displaying web pages that you have created, on the internet.
A web hosting account enables you to store your pages on the provider’s server ready for them to publish onto the internet. Your hosting provider will have a direct link into the internet itself and it is this access and of course the storage space on their computer that you would be paying for.
Hosting and publishing web sites requires the use of very powerful computers and because of this most people find it much more cost effective to open a web hosting account.
What Else Do I Need To Think About?
As well as providing hosting services here are a few web hosting hints on other related services offered by suppliers:
Almost mandatory now the provision of email is included in virtually all hosting accounts. Using this you can move away from email services provided by your internet service provider and use a unique email address that uses your own domain name.
This looks much more professional, especially for small businesses. Usually you are given a maximum number of email accounts you can set up, this is likely to be much more than you will ever need.
Storage Space and Bandwith
Web hosts often offer ridiculous limits way beyond what you are ever likely to use and they know it, it is a marketing ploy.
Therefore, do not be tempted to buy larger than you need. If you think about it a website is made up of web pages which are merely kilobytes in size, graphics which also need to be kilobytes in size to display quickly and anything else you might attach like videos.
Unless you are building a large web site you are unlikely to ever need more than 1 gigabyte of storage space, let alone the 300gb + that most web hosts offer.
It is a similar story with bandwidth except that this depends mainly on the amount of visitors you think your site is likely to attract. You need not concern yourself too much with this figure unless you expect visitor numbers well into the thousands.
Support
The final item to highlight is the level of support that a host offers.
Look for 24/7 support but in addition look for a host like Hostgator that openly provides support in a number of ways. Look for live chat, email and telephone support for good coverage.
Other features and tips on web hosting
If you are looking to put a blog onto your site then look for your host providing something called Fantastico. This is a facility that allows you to set up a blog in under 5 minutes and makes the whole process very easy.
Web site software – some hosts offer a complete package that includes editing software for you to make your own site without paying for software.
The last of our web hosting hints refers to the uptime of your site. This is a measure of how often your site is available to the internet and is usually quoted a percentage.
Look for 99% or above but do not think that 100% where offered is realistic. All web servers need some maintenance and it is just impossible to keep your site up 100% of the time.
