Website Hosting Guide
A Guide to Simple and Affordable Website Hosting
Choosing a web Hosting provider is one of the first tasks you will need to do to build your website.
There are many different hosting packages and plans available from many providers, which can make choosing one extremely confusing for the small business owners and anyone looking to host a hobby/personal site.
The purpose of this guide is to help you make sense of the different hosting plans and what is important and what isn't.
The most important part of choosing your host is to first decide what type of site your are going to build, and using what tools.
The three main site options are:
- HTML/php web page template
- WordPress or other CMS (content management systems)
- Ecommerce
Personal and small business websites will in most cases use shared web hosting on a Linux platform.
This will support all the common CMS (content management system) and HTMP/PHP template page sites.
Website Hosting Providers
There are many hosting providers on the Internet and choosing amongst them can be difficult, but you may save yourself some time and avoid potential problems by taking a look at the ones below:
- BlueHost - USA based Professional website hosting . Incredible feature rich
package including Wordpress, Joomla, Cpanel admin and
Fantastico scripts. Supports multiple domains.
Includes free domain name.
Click here to find
more about BlueHost hosting.
- 1&1-UK- various package levels supports multiple domains. Free UK domain names depending of package. Click here for more information on 1&1 Hosting
I have used both providers for many years to host several websites and they provide all the functionality I need.
Ecommerce/Shop Hosting
If you are looking for an hosting provider to host an ecommerce site i.e. an online shop then you will find most providers (Bluehost and 1&1 do) are able to support this. However it may not be the best choice for you.
Before you choose it is a good idea to acquaint yourself with the various ecommerce hosting options, and understand the advantages and disadvantages of each.
See the ecommerce section for details.
Hosting Costs
Shared hosting is relatively inexpensive starting at about $7 per month, making it affordable even for personal websites and incredibly cheap for business sites.
Hosting your site/pages is generally cheaper in North America than the UK/Europe, however just because it is cheaper it doesn't mean that it is the right choice for you.
Your Hosting Location
You don't need to live in North America to take advantage of the many low cost hosting providers that are available there to host your web pages/site.It doesn't matter where on the planet you live (I'm sure there are a few exceptions), as long as you have a credit card and can pay the hosting costs you can host your website anywhere you want.
So where should you be hosting your site? Why not host it in the cheapest location?
A quick look on the web will show you that, in general, a UK hosting provider is more expensive and offers less features than a North American one.
So if you live in the UK why not take advantage of the cheaper USA hosting and domain costs and choose a US host?
Well I believe you should, but only if your business is truly World Wide. If it has a local element then it should be hosted on a local (national) hosting provider.
The reason is that all of the search engines seem to give preference to locally hosted sites in the search results.
If you do a search using Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.uk for a given key phrase you will generally see two very different search results.
You will find that the UK search results favour UK hosted sites and vice-versa.
So if your Jones the plumber based in Telford Uk, and you decide to go for a .com domain name, and USA based host you have basically just scored an home goal.
Your hosting costs will probably be less, but so will your search engine position, and hence, your traffic.
Website Hosting and Domain Names
Although not strictly speaking necessary I would recommend that you use the hosting provider for the web hosting and for the domain name, especially as most provide a free domain name with the hosting package.
Unless you intend purchasing hundreds of domain names then the cost differences between providers is so small that it doesn't make sense to shop around.
You can find out how they are related in Website Hosting and Domain names
Multiple Website Hosting
If you think that you will eventually have more than one site, then you should look at hosting them on a single account.
Both
Blue Host and
1&1-UK
support this and is discussed in more detail in
Hosting Multiple Domain Name/Website.
An Overview of Hosting Options
When you look at hosting service providers and plans you will come across some of the following options.
Hosting on Linux or Microsoft Servers
Most hosting providers offer both Linux and Windows server hosting options. Unless you intend to use a software package or tools that require Windows then you should choose Linux hosting.
Linux hosting provides support for PHP pages and MYSQL databases, which is required if you want to use any of the popular blogging/content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and a host of other excellent open source packages.
FrontPage Server Extensions
FrontPage is a popular web building software package and it has support for web components that can be added to a web page to provide fancy features, but requires that the web server supports FrontPage server extensions.
I don't recommend you use FrontPage web components, and if you follow that advice your server doesn't need to support FrontPage server extensions.
However they are supported on both Linux and Microsoft servers.
PHP and ASP Scripting
Web Pages can use scripting languages (PHP and ASP) for additional functionality.
PHP is my preferred choice and there are thousands of free open source applications that require it. It is only supported on LInux/Unix servers.
ASP (active server pages) is the Microsoft equivalent of PHP and requires windows servers.
Cpanel
Cpanel is a very popular management interface for managing your hosting package. I would give preference to a host that supports this interface as it is very easy to use.
Databases MYSQL and SQL
If you are using a CMS like WordPress then you need a MYSQL database. Many hosting providers will support 100s but you rarely use more than 1 or 2.
Website Hosting Guidelines
In general, hosting providers provide several service package levels. Because of the huge array of offers it is impossible to compare them all, and to make any firm recommendations.
Therefore what I will do is to list the basics that you require and some do's and don'ts.
- In general I prefer Linux hosting over Microsoft hosting unless you are intending to use a web application that requires Microsoft hosting.
- In general I would always advise you to go for the basic option and upgrade if you need to later, unless you are sure you need a service offered in a more expensive package.
- Always choose a provider that lets you upgrade your package.
- Always choose a provider that lets you cancel your package and get a refund if your not happy. That is, look for a good guarantee.
- Try use the same company to host your website and register your domain name! Therefore when comparing prices you need to take both into consideration.
- Don't go for the provider just because they offer everything- you probably ( almost definitely) don't need it all anyway.
- You don't necessarily need Microsoft FrontPage sever extension support even if you are using Microsoft FrontPage.
- If you do need Microsoft FrontPage sever extension support then it can be provided on both Linux and Microsoft.
- You don't have to be in the same country as the hosting provider but if they are supplying free software it will probably be on CD, and it may mean that you aren't eligible- do check.
- Host your site/pages in the same country as your target market. That is if you are UK based but you want to target the American market then host the site on a server in USA or Canada.
Bluehost and 1and 1
If you use these providers you will find articles relating to these providers below.
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