If you have created a website, then you will need to find a place to host it. Your website cannot just wander about the Internet; it needs a place where it can rest for the night. Web Hosting is simply the act of finding a home, or more properly, a server onto which you can house your website. Like homes, web hosting is available in many different shapes and sizes. And like homes, web hosting sites range in price. Depending on the needs of your web site, you can expect to pay anywhere between a low price of fifteen dollars a month, up to several thousand dollars per month for web hosting services!
There are spacious homes for web sites that are large and handle complex transactions. For example, a large company likely needs one or more enormous, dedicated servers where its data can get the attention and protection it needs so to ensure that the web site is up and available around the clock. There are smaller servers that can be used to host web sites that consist mainly of text and a few graphics. And there are the mid-sized servers, sort of like an apartment complex, where several web sites can be hosted on the same server. With shared servers, the costs of security measures and technical/customer support resources are shared by multiple web site owners.
Finding the type of web hosting that is right for your website is the first important step anyone venturing out onto the Internet must take. Like anything else in life, it is not that difficult of a concept, if you know what to look for. But even after you've located what you think is the perfect web host, you have got to dig further to ensure that you have located a reputable hosting service. After all, it is the Internet and businesses come and go.
Most importantly, remember that in life, nothing is free. This applies to web hosting companies which boast that they are free. While you may not be charged a fee to get your web site hosted, the hosting company likely has other ways of making you pay for this service. For example, many "free" web hosting sites provide this service for free if in return, you allow them to place their banner advertisements on your web site. Such an arrangement might actually cost you money if potential customers who are visiting your web site see the hosting company's banner ad and then click on it. That prospective customer will end up being redirected to the "free" web hosting company's web site and who knows if they'll ever return to your web site.
Another way that "free" web hosting sites can get money out of your pocket is by allowing you to host your web site for free and in return you agree to give them a percentage of the sales that are generated off your web site. If you have a hot product or service, you will be paying much more to them in profit than you would have paid for normal, monthly web hosting services.
Some "free" web hosting sites use the oldest trick in the book to get money out of your pocket. While trying to convince you to sign up for their free service, they are also, subtly or overtly, trying to get you to purchase additional services from them. They will try to offer you things like back end merchant account processing or they will try to get you to sign up for a message board. They will keep offering you add-ons until you finally agree to one or more of them, or perhaps they'll even talk you into purchasing an entire bundle of add-ons, whether you or your web site needs them or not.
Be careful when considering "free" web hosting services for your web site. You may be a start-up company with not much cash to spend, but if the company has lousy customer service or technical support and if the company's servers are down more than they are up, then you really are not getting a good deal. You can easily test out the company's customer and technical service before becoming too involved with them. Contact the web hosting company with a question and see how long it takes the company to respond to your question. Also, review the quality of the response. If it is an auto-responder informing you that they received your question and will reply shortly, then you can bet that there's rarely a human being at the other end of the email. And that won't be good when their server goes down and potential customers cannot access your web site.
Another bad option is the person who thinks they can handle web hosting themselves, right from the comfort of their own desktop. If your website is uncomplicated, consisting of text and a few graphics, the idea of hosting your website on your own computer may sound appealing. And it is. You might wonder, what could be so difficult? It is very difficult, but a more important issue is the security of your personal data.
Hosting your own website is more difficult than any how-to manual makes it sound. Web hosting is definitely not a task that should be undertaken by the computer novice. In addition to being difficult, hosting your own web site on your own computer will cost you more than you anticipated. In order to effectively protect the integrity and security of your computer system, and likely all of your personal data files, from those annoying and determined hackers, you will need to purchase a firewall. Firewall software is not cheap. However it is far less expensive than having every single thing on your personal computer accessible to those individuals who have less than good intentions in mind.
If the idea of hosting your website on your own computer sounds like something you would like to handle, avoid the temptation. If you are concerned about the costs of finding a company to host your web site, you might wish to search for and investigate shared web hosting services.
Small companies or home-based businesses with web sites that have more complex features such as a shopping cart, credit card processing, sensitive customer or vendor data and other such features will need a web hosting site that is reliable, and that offers a considerable degree of protection. If your company does not have the resources required for a dedicated server for your web site, then you might benefit from finding a web hosting company that has the capability to host multiple web sites. The price of shared web hosting services will be more affordable because the costs will be shared by multiple people or businesses. You can rest assured that your web site and all its data will be safe from hackers and you can feel confident that your web site downtime will be minimal.
Owners and operators of shared web hosting sites should have the money, staff and resources necessary to ensure that their servers are up and on line as often as they possibly can be. Of course, these servers will go down temporarily for maintenance reasons and occasionally because of bad weather, but for the majority of time, the servers should be up which means that for the majority of time, your web site will be available and accessible to your prospective customers.
If you join up with a shared web hosting company and you are not happy with the service or performance you or your web site is receiving, start searching around for another web hosting company that offers similar services. Just be sure you carefully read all contracts before you sign them so that you know exactly what the company's cancellation policy is. For the most part, web hosting companies of this size should be reputable, but like all companies, web hosting companies come and go, or their services diminish over time.
Finally, there are companies and corporations out there in the world that need dedicated servers to host their web sites. A dedicated server is a server that is dedicated to hosting only one web site. Dedicated servers typically have enormous storage capacity and round-the-clock customer and technical support. Dedicated servers implement the latest and best security software and other measures of protecting web site data. Prices for dedicated web hosting services can be as high as five thousand dollars per month! As stated previously, dedicated web hosting servers are not typically used by small businesses. However, a business that starts out small and makes it big might one day have a need to host their web sites on dedicated web hosting servers. If your business does not yet need a dedicated server, then make it one of the goals of the business!
Now that the different types of web hosting services have been discussed, it is time to discuss features that you may wish to configure into your web site now or later on in the future as your business needs change. Like web hosting, web sites vary in size and complexity. Web sites that consist of mainly text and a few graphics probably do not need many additional features for the time being. However, those web sites that will incorporate a purchasing module will need additional functionality, possibly even including the ability to capture and process credit card information. Web sites such as this are typically referred to as e-commerce sites. Discussion of e-commerce sites will follow.
First, let's discuss one basic misunderstanding among web designers in search of web hosting services. Your ISP, or Internet Service Provider, is the company that provides you with your Internet service. AOL, YAHOO, RoadRunner, HotMail, and Knology are some of the players in the ISP Market. There is no requirement in effect which states that you must use your ISP as your web hosting company. This is an assumption which many people make, and you know what is said about assumptions. Just understand that you can choose any web hosting company that meets your needs irrespective of which company you use as your ISP.
Now that that confusion has been cleared, there is one very important thing you must ask your web hosting company, regardless of which one you select to host your web site. The question has to do with the subject of compatibility and is crucial to your web hosting selection process. The way your web site has been designed may not be compatible with the server extensions that are being used by the web hosting company. So, server extension compatibility is the question to ask. If, for example, your web site has been designed by you or by a third party using Microsoft Active Server Pages (MS-ASP), but the web hosting company does not support FrontPage technology, your web site will not run on the company's servers. The two server extensions will be incompatible. You'll have to either redesign your web site, (likely not a cost-effective idea) or search for another web hosting company.
Besides the issues of ISP and server extension compatibility, the remaining things you need to know prior to selecting a web hosting company has to do with the features you'll need and want. For example, if you're looking for a web hosting company for your e-commerce site, you'll want to find a web hosting company that provides Secure Electronic Transfer (SET) or Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption capabilities. Your web site will need these encryption capabilities in addition to, not in place of, a firewall.
The ability to encrypt data is critical, especially when your web site will capture a customer's personal data such as name, mailing address, phone and fax numbers and more. People are wary of submitting information pertaining to their credit cards over then internet and this is understandable. If your web site will capture credit card information, you need to ensure that the credit card information will not be submitted via email. Credit card numbers should be removed from your database after every use. It is very dangerous to submit such information along with a customer's name and mailing address. Think of the fraudulent implications of someone hacking into this amount of personal information. While it is acceptable to capture and reuse customer information, credit card information should be re-entered every time it is needed. Credit card information should never be stored. You would want your credit card information protected in such a manner and so do others.
E-commerce web sites likely will also need a shopping cart and front-end and back end capabilities to process a customer's credit card (a.k.a. merchant account processing).
A guestbook integrated into a database will help you in future marketing efforts by capturing the email addresses of all of your customers. That is a handy feature. Also, if you're interested in hearing what your customers have to say, a customer feedback form can also be integrated into a database. The creation of a Frequently Asked Question list is a nice web site feature that can be created with the information gathered on a customer feedback form. A customer feedback form is a great area for allowing customers to boast about your product or service (or unfortunately, to complain). Extracting a few glowing comments from the customer feedback form is a great way to add testimonials from actual users to your web site, which serves to enhance the credibility of your product or service.
Another acronym, POP, stands for Post Office Protocol and is the protocol in use by the Internet. What does POP mean, and how does it involve a web hosting company? POP is a neat little feature that allows you to have multiple names for the same email address. In other words, if you've ever seen a company that lists on the Contact page multipledepartments@companyx.com, for example, customerservice@companyx.com, technicalsupport@companyx.com, billing@company.com, etc. the company is able to do this by employing POP protocols. All these addresses are redirected into one email box - yours—provided the web hosting company can support this feature. The nice thing about this feature is that to the casual observer, your company looks like it is larger than it really is.
Web Hosting is more complex than it appears on the surface and in most cases it makes more financial and practical sense to have your web site hosted by a company that specializes in web hosting. Web hosting companies vary greatly in size, capability and reputation. Hopefully, you learned a few of the basics of web hosting by reading this article. Do some more research if necessary so that you will be able to make an educated decision when it comes time to find your web site a server where it can live out its life on the Internet. As your web site grows, you'll be able to find a web hosting company that will be able to accommodate its growth. Good Luck!
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