Guide To Web Hosting
What is web hosting?
Select The Type Of Web Site You Want To Create:
- Personal Website
A site where you display family pictures, your thoughts, etc. You may or may not have a domain name for the site, and being indexed by a search engine is not your utmost concern.
- General Website
This type of web site can be anything from a personal web site to a small business site. Web hosting plans for this type of web site include script support, as well as generous disk space and bandwidth. You will need your own domain name.
- Web Store - eCommerce
If you have product(s) to sell, need a shopping cart program and the ability to accept payments, then you might find these web hosting plans are just what you need.
- Heavy Traffic - Large Web Site
A web site that uses large amounts of server resources, such as a popular video sharing web site, may require a dedicated server. View the information on dedicated servers to see if one is right for you.
Personal Web Sites:
For personal web sites there are three primary web hosting choices:
- Free, ad supported web hosting without your own domain.
- Free, ad supported web hosting using your own domain name.
- Fee based web hosting using your own domain name.
If you are creating a web site that is exclusively for family and friends, then free web hosting might be all you need (be aware that advertising will be placed on your web pages).
However, if you have dreams of your site becoming popular with the public, then we highly recommend that you acquire a domain name and purchase a basic web hosting plan. If you are interested as to why using your own domain name is important, you can learn about domain names here.
Basic web hosting plans (Go To) can be purchased for a few dollars a month, yet provide many more features than free hosting services offer. Also, most fee based web hosting services offer hosting plan upgrades that will allow you to add web hosting options as you need them.
Listed below are the free web hosting services we recommend:
Free Web Hosting:
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 NetworkRegister: - get free ad supported web hosting with every domain registered.
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GoDaddy: Our second choice for free web hosting is GoDaddy. As with NetworkRegister.com, they offer ad supported free web hosting that allow you to use your own domain name.
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GeoCities: Ad supported free web hosting provider.
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Universal Web Sites
The web hosting plans we've included in this section allow you to create almost any type of web site, for less than $10 per month.
Universal Web Hosting Plan Features:
- Generous disk space and monthly bandwidth
- Script and database support
- eCommerce enabled
Disk Space and Bandwidth:
Disk space - is the amount of disk space the web host assigns you for your web site's files.
Bandwidth - is the amount of data transfer per month the web host allows you to consume per month.
* Web sites that feature a large amount of graphics, photos, videos, or sound files often consume large amounts of disk space and bandwidth.
Script and Database Support:
Script Support - Scripts can make a web site more interesting and useful for your visitors. Below are some examples of popular scripts:
- Blogs
- Forums
- Database searches
- Shopping carts
- Form submission
- and many more...
Database Support - If you install a blog and/or forum script in your web site, one or both will likely require a database. Therefore, as a minimum, we look for web hosting plans that include at least two databases.
eCommerce Enabled:
eCommerce Enabled - typically means that SSL (data encryption) and other features necessary for running an ecommerce web site are included with the hosting plan, or are available for an additional fee.
Listed below are the universal web hosting plans we recommend:
Universal Web Hosting:
midPhase: Currently we have several of our web sites hosted with midPhase Web Hosting. midPhase universal hosting plans range in price from $4.95 - $8.95 per month. All plans offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Our experience with midPhase web hosting has been a good one, and we highly recommend that you see what they have to offer yourself.
1 And 1: We have multiple web sites hosted with 1 And 1 web hosting. As of this writing universal web hosting plans ranged in price from $1.99 - $9.99 per month. 1 And 1 offers good disk space and bandwidth with their hosting plans as well as a variety of other features. Our experience with 1 And 1 has been good - no uptime problems etc. Support requests have been answered within 24 hours.
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eCommerce Web Hosting
eCommerce web hosting plans are designed to help you get your web store up and running as quickly as possible. They typically cost more per month, but the cost is easily offset by the ease of use and commerce friendly features.
Product management, real time inventory updates, and payment gateways, are all part of most eCommerce web hosting plans.
If you're serious about doing business on the internet, eCommerce web hosting will get you up, running, and earning income as quickly and securely as possible.
Listed below are the eCommerce web hosting plans we recommend:
eCommerce Web Hosting:
Yahoo: Yahoo provides everything you need to start selling your products online - store template, database, shopping cart, payment options, and more. It's a complete solution. We've purchased items from online stores using Yahoo's store system and were impressed with how smoothly it worked. If you are shopping for an online store solution, we recommend you take a look at a Yahoo eCommerce store.
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See Also:
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