Master The World Of Online Wealth

So you think you want to start up a website.  In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages.  Next we will discuss hosting:  Early on in your decision making process, you will want to shop for a hosting plan.

The next step after creating your website is to make it live on the internet, or publish it.  Publishing to the internet involves getting a hosting plan.  By purchasing a domain name you have branded, or named your website.  You own the name, but now you must pay rent to someone to actually get your website online.  With a hosting plan you will be paying a service provider to publish your website on the internet for all to see.  This article covers what to look for in a hosting plan.

SERVICE  The most important consideration is the level of service provided.  Bells and whistles and fancy features will do you no good if you can’t get customer service in a timely fashion.  Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time.  Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME  When shopping for a hosting company, find out if they have an uptime guarantee. Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers.  Even at 99% average uptime it can mean that your website will be off the internet for over 7 hours per month. The best hosting providers will have a track record of up to 99.9% uptime, which essentially guarantees you that downtime is negligible or even non-existent.

SIZE  How large will the website be?  The amount of disk space all of your website’s pages takes up will determine the size of the hosting plan you will need.  If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  Which operating system should your hosting plan use?  This question has no relevance to the brand of operating system you are using on your computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won’t really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.

TRAFFIC  Will you be expecting lots of visitors to your website?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  Obviously more bandwidth is better because it allows more visitors to visit your site, but at the beginning this will be hard for you to gauge.  The best advice here is to start off with a low cost, low bandwidth plan and upgrade it later as the traffic to your website grows.

 

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  Whether or not to choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting comes down to the following:  A shared hosting plan is exactly as it sounds, and means that your website will be stored on a server along with lots of other websites.  In this hosting format you generally have no ability to make changes to the resident software on the system, meaning you cannot change or upgrade the operating system, or the database management system, etc.  You will have to work within the software structure provided by the hosting company.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software.  This type of hosting is definitely geared to the more advanced user, and usually you won’t be able to get as much customer support because it will be a custom setup.  The bottom line:  start off with shared hosting if you are a beginner, until you are advanced enough to progress to your own controlled dedicated hosting environment.

At StartYourWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To review the options we offer, click HERE: Hosting plans.