article by Russell Blanc

Basic Guide to Choosing a Domain Name and Web Hosting Package

By the time you finish reading this page, you will feel confident that you know how to choose a domain name and hosting web package.

The domain name for a website should be relevant to your business and easy to remember. With several thousand domain names are sold each day can be a challenge to find the domain name for your business or personal interests.

How can I find a great domain name

Step 1: Brainstorm some ideas. Make a list of keywords related to your business. Include a few words powerful, emotional, or at least words that can lead to curiosity. Put them together in two or three word combinations. Be creative. Think outside the box

Step 2: Go to a website that offers a search service to find available domain names. Analyzing a search of all possible keywords. Some sites offer alternative suggestions for a domain name as well. This can further improve your search results.

Step 3: When you find a domain name you are looking for, before you commit and buy it, ask a few people what they think. Get an opinion from someone who could be your customer. Seek input and assess the value

Step 4: .. Before registering a domain name, make sure not violate any trademark policy that there

Step 5: Now that you have chosen a domain name end, is the time of registration. If you are already registered, then it’s back to the drawing board and try to find an alternative domain name. You will probably be able to register the domain name for free if you sign up for a web hosting account as a package. Most web hosting companies allow a free domain name as an incentive for you to choose a web host.

Once you have a web address or a great domain name, the next step is to find a web hosting service to serve equally large place in the world of Internet. So let’s choose a web hosting company for you.

In depth web hosting reviews can be found at http:/ / www.top-8-Web-Hosting.com / a>

Consider these characteristics of choosing a web hosting package –

Disk Space – Decide how much disk space or storage required. Normally, for a small to medium sized website, 5 GB of host 5-25.000 letyou web pages

Web Hosting for bandwidth -. This factor is often overlooked until the bandwidth or data transfer limit is reached. If you go over your allocated bandwidth, usually at extra cost to increase. If you are hosting a website that requires a lot of downloads, with large files or a website with many images, audio and / or video, the demand for bandwidth is significantlyhigher a website yet the text.

Uptime – An uptime guarantee of a minimum of 99% is more or less becoming a standard nowadays. Try reading the comments on the role of uptime andsee what others say. That is the best indicator of a web host’sperformance

CGI Bin -. This is now an industry standard. If you do not have access to your own CGI Bin, you can not install scripts and programs. Sooner or later, your website probably use scripts. If your web site evolves, you may need a database to store information. Again, this is something that really should not avoid

FTP Access -. Unlimited and unrestricted FTP access to your website is essential. You will need an FTP program to transfer files. DreamWeaver, CuteFTP and WAS FTP Pro are solid FTPprograms

Control Panel – Access to web hosting control panel should be easy to use and navigate. Some control panels require hours of learning. The most reliable web hosts have a demo version of your control panel

Support Customer Service -. Your Web server must provide support 24 / 7 or at least be very attentive and responsive to their requests

About the Author

Russell Blanc is the owner of target = “_new” http://www.Top-8-Web-Hosting. com , a website that offers free independent reviews of web hosting providers and is a resource for choosing a web hosting company.

Web hosting providers and packages

What to look for when investigating a Web hosting and Web Hosting Package

In order for people to see (download) the content of your website on the internet you need a web hosting provider, also known as a web hosting company to host (store and display or store and run) each web site file that makes your website content . A web site file typically can be an HTML file, CSS file, the file PHP, JavaScript file, image file, audio and video files, etc.

Although an HTML file, for example, is known as a web page, such as a PHP file, collectively a group of web page files (ie, an HTML file, CSS file and an image file) are also known as a web page ….. usually by the general public.

What is a Web site?

Behind the scenes of a website is just a folder on the computer hosting provider (server), which bears the name of your domain name (ie websitecreationhelp . com). Inside that folder the domain name (also known as web space root folder) is a sub-folder called public_html. It is the content of this sub-folder public_html which the public will see through your Web browser (Internet Explorer), with permission, of course.

This is because even though your domain name points (connected to) your Web root folder of the space, the folder that bears the name of your domain name (ie websitecreationhelp . com), a web browser, and more specifically a web site address can only choose (see the contents of) ….. public_html subdirectory under normal circumstances. In other words, typing your domain name in Internet Explorer him by the content (ie the main web page) that is within the subdirectory public_html. You will not see the content of the web site root folder.

What is web hosting provider?

You know what web hosting provider to use when we analyzed the prices of its Web hosting packages and features that come with it (ie, PHP scripting and database MySQL). A web host has two main functions to be done.

The first job is to maintain their web space (folder), which have specific web hosting system files inside and the public_html sub-folder, so that the content of your website public_html is visible for everyone to see on the Internet 24/7…..with your permission, of course. This work also involves the care of their own computers (servers) and make sure your website content is safe and secure.

The second job is to keep your control panel (set of tools) that comes with the web hosting package, so you can create MySQL databases, email accounts and so on (depending on characteristics of web hosting package).

Shop Around – Do Free and Cheap ‘N’ Nasty

In the search for a web hosting provider to host (screen) of your website Internet, and most importantly when you look at the features within their web hosting packages, it pays to shop around. The old saying “If it’s too good to be true it probably is” should be at the forefront of his mind.

Discard sales talk about features such as “Unlimited Bandwidth”, “Unlimited Web Space”, “100′s of free templates” and “site builder” because they tend to be tricks – A company does not free unless they are taking from another location and / or someone else. For example. “FREE templates” that everyone is using (so that your website is not only that he / she made). “A website builder” that supposedly does everything for you (so you can get a useless / limited control panel.)

Many

FREE Web Site Hosting “packages will not let you create a MySQL database and PHP scripting, for example. Other hosting packages (display) the content of your website for “FREE” with the condition that their web pages containing your selected ads. Some limit the features of Control Panel bandwidth and so on. These tend to be hosting companies that advertise “FREE Website Builder” and “free templates.”

In other words. They give you software that creates and publishes a web site, catered for the beginner, but you realize you should be getting a better control panel, for example. There are lots of free and affordable, templates and online tools also can build a website in minutes. So do not pay for something like a site builder in the interest of a limited control panel.

Wed affordable – with basic

Good Web Hosting package should be affordable, but definitely not “free”, and definitely not ‘cheap’ N ‘ Nasty. ” Above all must contain the basic requirements. So consider spending £ 5 to £ 10 per month on a standard web hosting package. This should get the basics. Ask yourself the following questions:

must 10, 20, 40 or 80 email addresses +?.

I need a Forum (Questions and Answers Board), blog (journal articles), guestbook and / or multimedia (audio / video) gallery?. …. you may need a MySQL database and / or PHP scripts. One thing to remember here is that these features may take time to create and it is possible that the ongoing management time as well.

How much Web space do I ?….. for my Web pages (HTML files – text, images, audio and video) of books, forum, blog, guests and so on .

I’m hoping many Web visitors each month? The more visitors you get the highest bandwidth (Download units) will need.

Below I have explained the main features within a standard package of Web Hosting, to answer the above questions and give you a better idea of the features you should look to use. In the bottom of every description have taken note of the standard to look to pay £ 5 to £ 10 per month. These are based on web hosting providers of quality (See quality below).

Control Panel

Although all hosting plans have a web based control panel of some sort is the control panel is ignored . A good control panel is the key to a good web hosting package, and most importantly for an easier life in terms of managing your website. The tools in control panel, the better.

Some of the features right bandwidth, web space and quality (see below) all other features listed below should be accessible through a control panel. The control panel itself is installed and updated, your web host. Many use the popular CPanel (cpanel.net) control panel.

bandwidth (data transfer per month)

bandwidth (also known as monthly data transfer) is the amount of data that can be downloaded from your public_html subdirectory in a customer’s computer through Internet Explorer, for example, every month. It is measured in gigabytes – Web Hosting A standard package should allow at least 2 gigabytes of bandwidth per month. Bandwidth also can help to upload your files to your public_html subdirectory, which means bandwidth is actually loading and unloading of use.

What does this mean? This means that if a customer downloads a music file of 4 MB, for example, the sub-folder public_html which will cost 4 MB of bandwidth. So if ten customers to download the music file of 4 MB, or a customer downloads music ten times 4 MB of files, either way it will cost about 40 MB of bandwidth in total. However. It is not so simple because all visited web pages and the cost of bandwidth.

If you have a music product from the Web page that contains 1 MB of text input and 1 MB of music portraits, for example, will cost 2 MB of bandwidth each time the music product Web page is viewed (downloaded in the web browser, a client of your webspace to your computer). Therefore, whenever a customer views (downloads) the musical product 2MB website and then download the music file of 4 MB will cost you 6 MB of bandwidth in total. Times greater than ten clients that would cost 60 MB of bandwidth in total.

5000 MB (5 GB) of web space, divided by 6 MB (a music product from the website and a music file) is equal to 833 potential customers. It is not so simple however. Why? Because not all potential customers 833 downloads a music product from the website and a music file, especially if they have to buy the music file.

Some might see (download) Music Product Web page more than once (ie, read more another day), while others can download the music file more than once ( download for your family and friends), especially if it is free to download. So you could end up with customers who see the music of product Web page only, not download (buy now!) Music files and vice versa. So why sell something online is not guaranteed – costs of bandwidth and money

.

5 to 20 gigabytes. 30 GB ….. peak before the price changes package to something even better.

add-on domain

An add-on domain is a normal domain name (ie software.com) pointing to (connects to a) a sub-folder within public_html primary domain name (website) folder. The sub-folder is usually the name of your add-on domain name (ie, software.com). So if your main domain name is computers.com and its complement in the software.com domain name is your web hosting provider will create a new sub-folder called software.com within the public_html folder and point computers.com link (redirect) software.com software.com the new sub-folder called.

This means that anyone software.com writing in the web browser, will go to a subfolder software.com call within the public_html folder of computers.com.

Benefits of an add-on domain names are that 1) has its own folder which means it can be classified as a website in its own right and 2) are stores to buy two web sites (two pure web sites). However. The overall disadvantage of hosting two domain names (one domain name and a full domain name) is that they share the same web space and bandwidth.

Mon has serious side effects, if you want to have video in one or both sites (domain names), because the web space and bandwidth can be shared unevenly, which means a customer could lose a download. For example. A free video download software.com could take up the bandwidth for a customer who buys computers.com.

An add-on domain only costs the normal price of an additional domain name (ie, 5 pounds per year).

1 to 3 add-on domain

Domain

parked domain is a normal domain name (ie software.com ) that the points / links (redirects) to your main domain name (ie computers.com) only – no folders do not have web space or bandwidth of their own because they share the same web space and bandwidth allocated your main domain name.

A parked domain name is typically set when you want a.com a.co.uk and such to go to the same web space. So if you have computers.com as your main domain name computers.co.uk as your domain name parked, visitors computers.co.uk type in the web browser will be sent to the website, it is using computers.com and therefore view the content of the website (same web page, video, etc).

parked domain will only cost the normal price of an additional domain name (ie, 5 pounds per year).

1 to 3 Domains

FTP Accounts

Having a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account means you can use a web browser ( Internet Explorer) or an FTP program (ie, FileZilla or AceFTP) to transfer your web pages, and so on, from your computer to your public_html subdirectory (website).

Depending on your web hosting package and control panel might be able to create new accounts Anonymous FTP Login or FTP account user name and password so you can configure an FTP account for its members , for example – This is good if you intend to allow members to upload content to your server FTP (the File Transfer your web site). Most packages offer good web hosting at least one FTP account for file transfer themselves and who often have a file manager or site builder program that emulates an FTP account.

Wed 4 FTP accounts and up these days is enough.

MySQL

MySQL databases are databases in its own right. You can set up through your control panel or by using phpMyAdmin (if the control panel supports it). For example. You may have a database for its customers, business contacts, blog, forum, etc (if you know what you’re doing.) MySQL has many levels – Easy-ish Management via phpMyAdmin for complex programming Nightmare-ish

.

MySQL is also closely associated with the PHP script (programming) language. Many forums, blogs, guestbooks and mailing lists, for example, using a PHP script and at least one MySQL database. Therefore, when choosing a web hosting package must bear in mind that a blog, forum and mailing list requires three MySQL databases. If you are short on databases that can avoid this problem by using a MySQL database to create three separate tables (technical databases).

MySQL and PHP is a good team. PHP scripts usually established and / or initialize the MySQL database for you. So do not be intimidated by MySQL.

10 MySQL databases and up these days is enough.

web site

web space is the actual storage space allocated for all your website – storage space for your email, FTP storage space forum, blog, mailing lists, MySQL databases, Guestbook, Media Gallery, Interior (Web Host) files, Web pages (HTML files – graphics, text, music and video), etc.

.

If your website is selling a product offline, such as shoes, you should look at the web site in the region of 50 to 100 megabytes. That should be enough space to store a photo catalog of reasonable size on the base. And for a site selling a product online, such as music, you should look at 100 to 500 megabytes of web space depending on the number of music files and combined file size, of course.

50 to 500 MB of web space

POP3 email accounts

POP3 is the protocol (format) is used to describe incoming / Receiving email accounts that can be incorporated in an e-mail client (program) and Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. In other words. You can read your website e-mails from within the program using the POP3 protocol.

The number next to a description POP3 accounts is the maximum number of email addresses (email accounts) can be configured to your website. IMAP is another protocol.

minimum number of POP3 e-mail accounts is not necessary in today’s climate must be at least four – Details of sales …, contact …, @ … and support @ … Not to mention the email address you need for employees, family, etc.

20 POP3 email accounts or more these days is adequate.

mailing lists

Mailing List allows you to create a list of email addresses for their members, clients, etc. Once created, you can then compose an e-mail and send it to everyone on the mailing list once and if your web hosting provider and ISP (Internet Service Provider) permits. So if you need to send a “Special Offers” e-mail to 40 email addresses, for instance, it would create a mailing list for the 40 email addresses first.

So why not use an email client such as Windows Live Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird to work for example? Well could, in theory, but the mailing list software is much more dedicated to their mailing list needs.

Due to the personal info of spam / junk mail people these days some web hosting providers and / or ISPs do not allow a certain amount of e-mails to be sent at once. So check with them first what their limits e-mail are due to two may have different limits. Sending 40 emails should not be a problem, especially if you use authentication in your e-mail address. In other words, should have 40 e-mails that are sent because they know you.

one to four mailing lists should be adequate for standard business / website

.

Shopping Cart

Have a nice basket purchase on your website allows you to accept or receive a debit / credit information through the mail notification card web /. By good I mean that may have been installed / constructed using the Control Panel, but has since had its PHP Script (s) programmed / adjusted by the programmer to mix more with your website and / or language. In other words. With a proper shopping cart (like Agora) you have control of the coding credit cards and things, but require programming skills.

The opposite of a suitable shopping cart is to build your own shopping cart website in HTML / CSS, for example, then paste a merchant payment buttons to them – BUY NOW VIEW CART and so on. A merchant fee is a company such as PayPal), which gives the facility to conduct online transactions of the Bank (ie, withdrawals and deposits) and create HTML buttons that, when clicked, take care of the purchase or payment for you. So in some aspects of the shopping cart right is not always the best approach.

A good control panel will have a library of scripts inside that you can install PHP scripts / programs such as a guestbook, forum, blog, shopping cart and so on. As an alternative. You may be able to find a particular date, Script PHP / Internet program and install it yourself.

1 to 3 shopping carts

Standard Features

These features should be the norm and part of your control panel. If not listed in the web hosting package ask the web hosting provider if they are supported / included. If not, find another web hosting provider.

folder password protection – Allows you to create separate folders on your web space, with a title, username and password that is good if you want to have a private area of your website for members or one family for example.

Perl / CGI – In addition to PHP and MySQL databases from other programs are written in the Perl programming language that goes hand in hand with CGI. Basically, shopping carts and so on using Perl and CGI.

SSL support – SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is basically the security lock shown in the address bar of a web browser to the edit box. When you are paying for something online the URL (web address) of changes http://whatever payment page at https: / / whatever and then a padlock appears at the end of the bar Address edit box (then the URL). So if you want a website, secure payments to your shopping cart, for example, have to ask your hosting provider to host your website on a server SSL (Secure Computer), as is common practice to make newcomers in a non-SSL hosted server.

MIME Type – To view images and play audio / video from your site that you need to make sure you have the MIME types (file formats) tool in your control panel. Although most common MIME types have been created for you this tool allows you to remove the old MIME types and add new MIME types as you see fit.

Site Statistics – The control panel should come with some type of website that allows statistical tools to analyze user data (number of visits, the Web browser used, which is link to your website, keywords to find your website and so on). AWStats is one of the best statistical tools.

Hot Link Protection – Allows people to stop linking to the files (ie images) and the theft of your bandwidth. For example. If someone links to your image (ie Computer.jpg) to display on your website has what is called stealing bandwidth. Why? Because people visit your site and see your image (Computer.jpg), which had to be downloaded from their website using their bandwidth, not theirs. So they are stealing your bandwidth and your image really.

quality

Quality web hosting provider, you must have the following.

24 / 7 Support – A good web hosting provider, will provide telephone and / or email support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A sign of quality here is the response time. A response within 20 to 40 minutes is good

.

Daily backup – This means your web host will backup your website once a day, rather than weekly, for example. This in turn means that if your server crashes / freezes that can restore the web site the previous day. In saying this, you should always have a copy of the files on your website on your own computer, a CD, in a flash drive and so on. If a developer of web site asked for the original code (templates, web pages, images, etc.)

own servers Opera – If a web host operates its own servers will be in a better position to fix any, networks, problems (crashes / freezes)

.

99% uptime – This means your website should be live on Internet 99% of the time, with the risk of only 1% that does not live on the Internet. Or put another way, the server of your web hosting provider is just crash / freeze on 1% of the time. This ideal means your website should never be available. And if so, would only be available for a total of 3-4 days a year and only available for 1-3 hours in each of those days.

template – Find a web hosting provider that has a good knowledge, experience and knowledge of networking and programming. It is not good if they have a well established network, but without a deep knowledge, experience or knowledge of CGI, MySQL or PHP programming, for example. In other words, you do not need a “Call Center” type of web hosting provider that you contact them and go through procedures rule book before saying that “We can not help ….. No can emulate / fix your problem. ”

Must be an engineer at all, or at least a book in hand, for example, that can emulate the general problems and / or general troubleshooting within a reasonable time to support their claims 99% uptime. Or put another way. They should not lash out with excuses when things go wrong and when they can not settle their, general problem. As the owner of the website without experience you can delete a folder or a day that breaks any part of your blog, for example. Having a good web hosting provider that can guide you to fixing this blog is a sign of quality.

General Notes

Some tools control panel can be replaced by the download / installation, upgrade, versions of them or by downloading / installing tools like them. For example. If your control panel comes with the blog called WordPress 2.0.5 (old version) that could eliminate from your website (what the redundant control panel side) and then download / install WordPress 2.9.2 (latest version now .) The same happens with other tools.

could replace the phplist mailing list to 10/02/1910, for example. Despite its web hosting provider may appear that you give a lot of control panel tools, many of them could be out of date by as much as a couple of years. It depends on how well the web hosting provider is in the update control panel tools.

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The options available with a web hosting package are very wide ranging, and can be a bit confusing to understand – especially since the options are presenting in a large number of ways, and condensed in various ways, while shopping for a package online.   Hopefully I can give you a breakdown of the categories these features fall into and help you to focus on the features that are important to you.

I break the features down into 10 categories, and will discuss the categories one by one to give you a firm grasp of the options and make an informed purchasing decision.

10 Categories of Web Hosting Package Features

1.   Operating System

The operating system is the underlying software that runs on the host.   It manages the physical hardware of the server and attempts to optimize the use of RAM, disk space, network, and CPU for the requests coming into the machine.   The underlying OS does not have to be the same as your desktop or even the OS you use to develop your website.   In fact, due to most of the management functions being driven thru a web GUI, you might never know or care what the server operating system is.

The predominant operating systems you will find while shopping for a web hosting service are Windows and UNIX.   With Windows you will see versions available such as Server 2003 or Server 2008, and with UNIX you will see many brands of Linux, usually CentOS, Debian, or Redhat.   Choosing between UNIX and Windows is an important decision, and involves a lot of variables, but in the end it simply means deciding if you want to build your website with open source technology or with Microsoft technology.   A more complete write-up of the choice is available on www. HostGraphs. com in the How-To section on this subject.

Research the application you want to use or run as your website and check to see if it has any Microsoft technology requirements (MSSQL database, MSAccess database, ASP, ASP. Net).   If you find no pressing reason to use Windows, then UNIX will most likely be a better choice for you.   UNIX runs the open source scripting languages slightly faster and is also slightly cheaper than Windows.

There are a few specific sub-features of the operating system that may be of importance to you.

Do you need a virtual private server?  This gives you a dedicated virtual operating system all to yourself instead of you sharing the OS with others.   You still share a machine with others, but there are stricter walls in place to guarantee you bandwidth, CPU, and memory even if a website on the same machine is getting heavily hit.   It also gives you great configuration choices with everything since it is your own OS.   These packages are more expensive than the shared options, but are worth if as your site grows.  The VPS packages mainly vary is the amount of RAM dedicated to you, so I would recommend going with the smallest package and monitoring the RAM usage over time and upgrading into a bigger package as needed.

Do you need a dedicated SSL certificate?  Most sites offer a shared SSL certificate, which is fine for some smaller sites, but if you are running a medium or large ecommerce site you will need a dedicated certificate.   Some buyers justifiably will not send in their personal and credit card information without a guaranteed valid SSL private certificate.   Also some shopping cart applications require the dedicated certificate as well.   Be careful when shopping for this – some hosting services say they give a SSL certificate with all their hosting plans but do not explicitly tell you that it is a shared certificate.   If the plan does not include a dedicated IP, then it is a shared certificate.

To directly remotely administer your site, you may need to either shell into with UNIX or Remote Desktop in with Windows.   The UNIX shell option is sometimes referred to as SSH Shell, Secure Shell, or telnet.   These options are only useful to you if you intend to do low level maintenance and tweaking, mainly in the VPS packages.   With a good hosting package with a high powered control panel, you will not need either of these.

You may see mention for the ability to schedule cron jobs – this is the UNIX version of scheduled tasks.   This ability is only needed if you wish to run scheduled tasks at set times, such as a nightly backup.   Most of the good control panels provide an interface for the cron job entry, but they also provide interfaces for performing maintenance tasks such as backups.   You will probably never need this feature.

2.   Web Server

The web hosting companies usually offer Microsoft IIS or UNIX Apache web servers.   Both have their plusses and minuses, and it will only make a difference to you if the website you are developing or the application you are running requires one or the other.   Apache, being open source itself, has slightly better hooks in it to run many of the open source content management systems and blog engines based on PHP, PERL, and Python, so go with Apache if that is all you need.   The Windows IIS also has quite good open source content management systems and blog engines based on ASP and ASP. Net, but I would suggest not going with a PHP/PERL/Python web application on Windows IIS – see the above discussion of the operating system as to why.

The SSL certificate is hosted by the web server, and the web server has to do extra processing of SSL HTTPS requests – it has to encrypt/decrypt and verify data passing between the client and the server.   For this reason, some would argue that you should shy away from web hosting packages that offer free SSL shared certificates to everyone.   You might end up sharing a server with 100s of other websites that overtax the server.   A well run website will only go into HTTPS SSL mode for the actual entering of credit card data, not for the entire website – but you do not know if the other websites on your server are well run.

3.   Bandwidth

This is a measure of the amount of data transmitted in/out of you website, usually on a monthly basis.   Keep in mind that a typical website only transmits a very small amount of the content to each user, and even though a package only offers a few gigs of transfer a month, you will most likely not overshoot your allotment.   If you do, then your website is really popular with thousands of visitors, and you should be generating a nice revenue stream.   Most of the web hosting companies will spell out what the penalty is for overshooting your allotment – it is usually a dollar to two per gig, which makes it cheaper to upgrade to the next highest package of course.   If your website is heavy on images or multimedia, you may need a bigger allotment of monthly bandwidth immediately.   Fortunately they all offer a monthly meter to watch your bandwidth usage so that you can plan accordingly as your site grows in popularity.

Some hosting companies offer an unlimited bandwidth package – be wary of this.   There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth, so what they are selling is unmetered bandwidth.   Many of them with unmetered offerings will inform you after you purchase an account of what their acceptable use policy is concerning bandwidth and disk space, disallowing you from performing nightly 500gig backups of your personal computer and such activities.   In fact, many of these policies also stipulate that you must upgrade to bigger packages if your website begins to infringe on the bandwidth of others on a shared hosted machine.   Once again, this is not a bad policy; if you get notified of infringement due to the activity of your website, then it is so popular that your revenue stream covers the additional expense of a bigger package.

4.   Disk Space

This is the allotment of bytes on the hard drive given to you for your website.   A large website with 100s of pages can easily fit into a gigabyte of space, so you actually do not need that much for a typical website.   If you website has a catalog of thousands of items for sale, stored in a database with several images apiece, then you will need a significant upgrade in disk space.   Usually as your site grows in popularity and content, you will be upgrading for bandwidth first, and get more disk space along with the upgraded package.

Some of the hosting companies will include your database space and your email space in this disk space allotment, so plan according to how they segregate the space.

As it was with bandwidth, many web hosting providers offer unlimited disk space, and there is no such thing as unlimited disk space.   What they are selling is unmetered disk space, with an acceptable use policy.   It is difficult to breach their acceptable use policy with a normal website, only by doing something outside the norm, such as hosting and anonymous ftp site of spurious files.

5.   Domains

This is the number of web addresses that can point into your web hosting account.   Almost all of the providers offer sub domains, where your main site is YourSite. com and you have sub domains of www. YourSite. com and files. YourSite. com.   Many will allow you to point externally hosted DNS entries pointed into your account s folder, but some do not.   This may be referred to as Add-on domains, and most will offer in one of their packages multiple add-on domains.   This allows you to purchase additional domains and point it into separate folders within your hosted account.   This way you can run multiple websites, which appear completely unrelated, to be physically located and managed together.

Many of the web hosting providers offer a single or even multiple free domains with their accounts.   Some even offer lifetime free domains, saving you the 10 dollars a year for the domain.   Be sure and shop for that option if you want to save a few dollars a year.

6.   Email

Almost all of the web hosting providers offer email accounts, which gives you an email address of YourName@YourSite. com.   Most of them also offer web based email, POP and IMAP access, and spam filtering.   Where they will differ is the number of emails accounts they provide, the disk space total or per mailbox, and advanced features such as mail list management.   It is up to you as to how important email is to you and your website – there are plenty of free email providers on the internet so this has never been an important set of features for me.

Many of the web hosting providers offer unlimited emails, but again there is no such thing.   As your email accounts grow, the bandwidth and disk space used will also grow, and neither of those is unlimited.   So you eventually break their acceptable use policies and are forced to upgrade into a bigger package – again, not a bad thing if it is your website that is growing and creating revenue for you.

7.   FTP

FTP is the file transfer protocol used to send and receive files back and forth to your website.   This feature may or may not be important to you, depending on if you wish to server files up to anonymous people through this protocol.   Most websites today deliver files through HTTP through your website, which allows you to manage access and users through your website instead of through the FTP accounts.

8.   Database

A database is server package that structures data into an easy to store and retrieve manner.   The database is one of the items used to create dynamic websites such as content management systems and blog engines.   You will want to take advantage of the database also if you intend to create any sort of ecommerce website to store your user’s information, catalogs of items for sale, and orders placed.   Separation of applications into distinct database instances is important.

MSSQL is available on most of the Windows hosting packages, but is usually slightly more expensive due to its commercial licensing restrictions, and usually has lower instances and disk space available.   But some website applications are built to take advantage of its feature set, so you may require this as your database.   You could still take advantage of MySQL with as many applications as you could, there is not any reason a single website could not use multiple different databases.

MSAccess is the openly available database for Windows that is more of a file level database and not a dedicated server running it.   It provides adequate storage for lighter database usage, but would not be sufficient for any larger data storage needs.

Researching the needs of the applications you intend to run on your website, and planning the database requirements needed for each, will drive you to a conclusion of which hosting package to use based on these database needs.

9.   Control Panel

The control panel will be the location you will manage all of the details of your web hosting account.   All of the providers give you a web based control panel that is easy to use and provide sufficient help to understanding all of its features so that you can avoid calling them for help.

The web hosting providers will vary in the type of control panel they provide, however.   The two main control panels are cPanel and Plesk, which are found on about 80% of the providers.   The remaining 20% give you a custom built control panel.   cPanel and Plesk are so popular because they provide feature rich management utilities right out of the box and both can be branded to appear like the host provider’s pages, but they are expensive to license.   Both work on UNIX and Windows hosted accounts and allow for complete management of the underlying operating system configuration, web server configuration, web site configuration, email ,ftp, DNS, etc.

If you are new to web hosting then it really does not matter with control panel you choose, but if you are familiar with cPanel or Plesk you may prefer to go with a hosting provider which provides you with the control panel you are comfortable with.

If you are interested in getting into being a hosting reseller, then you will want to ensure you get licenses provided to you for your reseller account through the web hosting provider so that you can brand it and give it to your sub-hosted customers (and not have them call you with configuration needs).

Many on the internet recommend removing cPanel and Plesk from your virtual private server since both can be major bandwidth, CPU, and disk space hogs.   One of the great benefits of a virtual private server is being able to login as root or administrator and manage the operating system and web server directly, removing the need to obfuscate into a web GUI those tasks.   Of course you would need to be a lot more technically keen on doing those tasks yourself, or you could pay a few dollars more a month and get a managed VPS package.

10.   Applications / Programming

No matter the type of website you plan to build, you will most likely use a few pre built packages as the foundation of your site.   The pre built packages are built with some sort of programming or scripting language.   They may be using PHP, PERL, Python, Java, Ruby, ASP, ASP. Net, or Coldfusion.   Most of these languages run on any operating system, except for ASP and ASP. Net, both of which are Microsoft technologies requiring windows (and application probably requires IIS and MSSQL database as well).   PHP, PERL, Python, and Java are cross platform, but UNIX runs them slightly faster than Windows and is usually a slightly cheaper package.   Ruby is a UNIX only language, and it may be referred to as Ruby on Rails.   Not all web hosting providers give access to all of these languages with all of their packages – make sure you shop it carefully to ensure the host and the package you purchase has the language you need.

The applications you decide run will tell you what their requirements are.   In fact, the web hosting provider will give you the tools you need to install the applications from the control panel, which makes it a breeze to get up and running with the base installation of whatever application you choose.   These days all of the web hosting providers allow you to get up and running with the base installation of the most common blog engines and content management systems within minutes after purchasing.

If you are interested in a blog, read up on WordPress and BlogEngine. Net.   If you are interested in a content management system, read up on Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and mojoPortal.   For a message forum, read up on PHPBB and YetAnotherForum applications.   There are many more pre built applications to help you get up and running including shopping carts, mail list management, web authoring tools, and catalog databases.

Conclusion

I hope that this article provides you with enough understanding to make a wise decision when selecting a web hosting package.   Happy shopping!