Web Hosting

The purpose of a website is to spread the word about you and/or your business and web hosting is a service that allows you to publish your website on the Internet.

Firstly you need to "create" your website using any number of programs, by using HTML code or a web template. You can then save this website onto your hard disk drive or a disk and then FTP it (upload it) on to the DNS servers of your web hosting company.

Once you are ready to go online, you need to make sure you have properly thought out and organised your web hosting. Even if you are just a regular non-business person, a web hosting service can help you find a place on the Internet. You can use the web pages you create to share your ideas, creative work, or photos. Many people see their website as personal expressions and some people even use their website to meet new people.

There are many companies that provide both free and paid web hosting services although paid website hosting services are usually more reliable and offer you more options.

Today, there are many web hosting service providers and you are spoilt for choice. The major difference in the various providers is really in the features they offer which, obviously is reflected in the price quoted.

When deciding on your web hosting provider, you need to decide on a number of important issues including:

• how much you want to spend;
• your current and planned size of your web site;
• anticipated volume of traffic both short-term and medium-term;
• service provider reliability and track record;
• the number and size of the eMail addresses available;
• language and other scripts such as, cgi, perl or php,fantastico;
• cron jobs;
• customer service response times;
• forum & conferencing facilities;

If you run a business, finding a reliable web hosting service to manage your web page(s) is especially important, since you need to make your customers comfortable visiting your website and you need to ensure that there are no slowdowns or down times when a customer wants to access at your company information.