Your Website is Your Face to the World
May 31 '01
The Bottom Line Look around, ask questions. Don't go buying excessive bandwidth and space but always get a little extra. Free hosts are also good for some people.
*If you remember rating this opinion before, I had to re-post it because epinions messed it up during maintenance.*
With the amount of Web Hosts out there, its very easy to get confused or to pick a package which will exceed or fall short of your needs. In my guide, I will give you some helpful information on choosing a Web Provider. I am not going to recommend any web providers because I have only had experience with one and my opinion will be biased.
(If your want to read my opinion on Yahoo Website Services, go to http://www.epinions.com/content_24642883204)
What exactly do you need?
Before you prepare to shell out cash on a web host, you must analyze your needs. Many people can do just fine with one of the free web providers instead of paying monthly fees.
Personal Websites – Many people these days are putting up their own personal pages, or family pages. If this is your site, consider if it really bothers if there is a banner ad on your site. If it doesn’t bother you much, go with a free service. Some of the better free services sites have smaller banners. They also include web based website building making your site easier to make.
Content Sites – These sites refer to individuals who may put up some useful information, from projects they have done in the past to questions and answers to computer problems. I am not talking about professional content sites. A free web host may also serve you best here if you can forget about the banners. Just make sure that the amount of webspace is sufficient to host your content.
Small Businesses – Most small businesses, in fact any business should have a website to just establish an Internet presence. I don’t necessarily mean sell products online, just have some company information online. If this is you, then you should get a non-advertisement website because its not a good image to have the ad banners on your website, unless you put up your own banners to help generate income. But these websites do not need advanced features like E-commerce, e.t.c.
E-tailing – Any business that intends to do business online must have a reliable host with secure connections so you can guarantee your customer’s safety. E-commerce services, like the shopping cart system and digital certificate prices do add up. Just remember, the Internet has broken the location barrier, and if you sell something that Amazon.com sells for cheaper, even though you may be closer to the customers, its very easy for a customer to type Amazon.com instead of yourname.com
Web Addresses
There are many choices for your web address. I am not talking about deciding what to name your website, though this will affect how much traffic your website will get. I am talking about the multitude of domain extensions and subdomains available. Listed below are the common ones.
http://www.yourname.extension - Anyone who thinks of the internet thinks of .com as the extension. But recently, ICANN, the organization that manages domain extensions, has issued new extensions. Examples of other extensions available are
.net – Was intended for Internet Service Providers but is now just an alternative for .com
.org – Usually represents Non profit organizations but profit organizations, fan clubs, e.t.c. us this extension
.ws – One of the newer extensions, ws standing for WebSite
.tv – Just another domain extension. Not necessarily a TV station website.
.edu – Qualified educational institutes can get this extension for free
.gov, .mil – US government and Military extensions
.biz, .info, - All future extensions being launched later this year. Some others launching next year and beyond are .pro, .name, .aero, .coop and .museum
There are also country specific extensions. E.g. .us for United States, .uk for United Kingdom, e.t.c. Actually, some countries sell their extensions to companies to market it for them. Example, Tonga, .to sold some of its domains to a US company which offers sub addresses for come.to/yourname . Another country doing this is .cc , some islands in the Indian Ocean which I have no idea about.
You can also get subdomains, which mostly come with the Free web hosts. There are 2 general type of subdomains, either http://yourname.webhost.com or http://www.webhost.com/yourname. To an extent, there is also http://www.webhost.com/category/category/yourname.
Choosing a domain could take a whole opinion itself. The thing is, whatever is easiest to remember and reflects your website should be what you should take. For people who want a free webhost want to avoid the long web addresses, you can buy a domain and just redirect it to your website. Domain costs are much cheaper than web hosting costs and people may never know you use a free service by looking at the address.
From now on, I will be talking about the paying web hosts, though you can pick and choose free hosts and my information below could be used as a guide to picking one
How much webspace should I take?
This decision should be made in conjunction with your needs. People running software download sites may have to stop talking megabytes but gigabytes. But other sites may not need as much space. Look at how big your website is, and choose a package with extra megabyte space for expansion. In my opinion, whatever your website size is, you should get 25% extra space on what you actually use.
In general though, many websites, even ecommerce sites, don’t need too much space. Ecommerce sites should choose size considering a few things. They should think about the size of their scripts. They should also look at all the product images and product sites they have. I don’t actually run an ecommerce site so I cannot estimate a number.
Content sites also don’t need as much space as one may thing. A site, filled with text, even a huge database, might be able to live under 200 or even 100 Mb. Pictures, pdf files and other things like that can add more space than text itself.
Many small businesses, just establishing a presence, can run with a lot of space with just 50 Mb space. Html pages are not that big. A typical 10 page small business website uses under 5 MB webspace.
Bandwidth
How many visitors do you expect on your website? You should be realistic. Many webhosts offer about 40 GB/month bandwidth limit max. But most webhosts have bandwidth minimums of atleast 1 GB.
To give you an example. I maintain a 25 page small business website which receives about 5 – 25 unique hits a day. The monthly bandwidth usage is about 15 Mb per month. This page is not very graphic intensive and contains mostly text. I also run a heavily animated website with about 70 pages and about 30 hits a day. Monthly bandwidth usage is about 80 Mb per month.
If your site is going to receive hundreds of hits a day, you should look for atleast 10 GB bandwidth per month. Typical ecommerce sites can live with less than 20 GB a month.
Email
Actually, you don’t need as many pops as you think. Many webhosts offer unlimited forwards, and you can have as many forwards directing to one account. For example, sales@yourname.com, support@yourname.com, webmaster@yourname.com, e.t.c. can all go to your email address. It presents a good image for yourself.
Larger businesses may want more pop accounts, to give to their employees. Then, you should look for a host offering many or unlimited pop accounts, but these may be more expensive.
Another feature which is basically standard with all hosts now but a few still deny you it is the catch-all email service where any email sent to any address on your domain that hasn’t a pop or forward set up under it will go to an account. Another feature which some people may consider useful is autoresponders, where you send an email to an address and it automatically replies to you with an automatic message. E.g. you can set up that when someone sends any email to prices@yourname.com, it will email them a pricelist.
CGI, Perl, Php, ASP, SQL, Frontpage extensions
If you have no idea what the terms above mean, then you don’t need to bother. But people who run scripts on the website need the ability to host these scripts. Many webhosts don’t include these features in their basic hosting because scripting error can crash their entire server.
Be prepared to pay more for these technologies. You can also look for alternatives to these like XML, which many webhosts are providing support for. A popular flavour of XML allowed provided by hosts is Miva, which is a rather powerful scripting language.
Frontpage extensions are command built into the server which makes sure that the page you made in Microsoft Frontpage looks exactly like the finished product. But then again, anyone still using Microsoft Frontpage to do their website should just as well be using a free service, but that’s my personal opinion (I have a editorial on HTML editors here http://www.epinions.com/content_1577689220 )
Ecommerce
For you to run an ecommerce system, you need a couple of things. First, you need to get a digital certificate, from Verisign (Normally the webhost will get this for you). You also will need a shopping cart system and SSL servers.
One way to go is to get a rack server for your ecommerce site. You can normally buy the rack and pay for the hosting and bandwidth fee. Prices on servers run at well over $100/month. Another option is to get a premade ecommerce store, like Amazon Zshops and Yahoo Store. But these options do limit your flexibility in site design and features.
Support, Speed and Dependability
Look for a webhost with good support plans. Contact them before buying your site, ask them general questions and see how long they take to answer. Most of the basic hosting packages offer email support and phone support, during working days.
If you run an ecommerce site, 24/7 PHONE support is a must. Don’t be fooled when they say 24/7 email support because they really mean that they receive the questions 24/7 but normally take a day or two to respond. Phone support guarantees your are actually getting help.
See if you can find some sites hosted by the webhost, even their website itself. Check how fast it loads and compare to other hosts. It will be hard to tell if the host has a lot of downtime before actually purchasing the site. See if you can find their maintenance schedule and make sure they are not doing ridiculous maintenance like during the day.
Try to get in contact with people who have used the host, or look for the host on epinions. Ask them how it has been. Remember, you website is your image to the world so ensure that the host is as good as they claim to be.
Price
Prices vary from host to host. You can pay as little as 4.95 a month for basic hosting facilities to as much as 200 a month. Look out for setup fees as most of the times, setup is automatic and webhosts try to earn extra money with them.
There is no average price. The best thing to do is go to each webhost and compare the rates. Compare packages, feature for feature. To give you an idea of the kind of prices, I pay 14.95/month for my website. My webhost pays my domain registration fees, I get 100mb space, 10gb bandwidth per month, 10 pops and unlimited forwards.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I’ll just like to say that picking a webhost is like choosing a building for your business. You have look for which one offers the features you need and a price you can pay. Do not go out and take a package with features you know you will never use. Don’t buy space and bandwidth that you know you’ll run close to maximizing, leave some room for expansion or a sudden burst of traffic. And remember, for many sites, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with free hosts.
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Epinions.com ID:
adamadi
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Reviews written: 56
Trusted by: 25 members
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"The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall" Bob Marley
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