There are so many web hosts competing for your business. It
can be completely overwhelming, and it would take you a month
to check out every single web hosting company to determine
which one would be best for you. If you aren’t a hosting
expert, you’ll usually find the jargon so complex that you
don’t even know what you need or don’t need. With hosting
prices ranging from “free” to hundreds of dollars a month, it
might seem impossible to determine which host plan is the best
deal for you.
To clear some of the confusion, you should figure out the
requirements for your specific site. Different sites have
different needs. If your site is basically just for information
and has less than twenty pages, you won’t need the same hosting
plan as a complex shopping site, or a site that runs dozens of
embedded programs.
MICROSOFT FRONTPAGE, HTML, PHP, ASP, DATABASES – HELP!
Some hosts are very limited on the type of programming language
you can use. If you are new to creating web sites, you might
find a program like Microsoft Frontpage much easier to use.
It’s a WYSIWYG program, which simply means, “What you see is
what you get.” The program allows you to make the pages like
you would documents, and the program fills in the HTML to make
the site appear like you set it up. You will need to make sure
that your host offers “Frontpage extensions.” Some hosts charge
more for this service, but you can (and should) usually get this
included in the basic price.
All hosts support pure HTML, but you will probably need PHP
or ASP capabilities. PHP somehow stands for “Hypertext
Preprocessor,” and it is a scripting language used within HTML
to create dynamic pages without having to use miles of HTML
code. ASP stands for “Active Server Pages,” and they usually
use ActiveX scripting. Both PHP and ASP are similar to and can
do everything CGI scripts can do. PHP is usually preferred to
CGI scripts because it is compatible with so many more databases.
ASP is preferred to CGI by people who are more familiar with
Visual Basic.
Whichever language you plan to use, you should make sure that
your host not only allows you to set up your pages in that
language, but that they also offer technical support. The
smartest move is to find a host that supports all of the
possibilities, especially if you plan on learning different
scripting or want to outsource parts of your programming.
Because you will want the ability to collect and organize
information from your visitors, it’s important that the web
host also offers database capabilities that work with the
different languages.
DIFFERENT FEATURES AVAILABLE
Space usually accounts for the biggest differences in pricing of
web hosts. The trick here is not to get the minimum amount of
space you need. While it might seem like you won’t need so much
space right now, you want to be optimistic and plan on expanding
your online capabilities. After all, companies that are not
online don’t have a chance of growing in this high tech age.
Multiple domain hosting is a newer feature offered by some
hosts. In the past, you had to have separate accounts for
different domain names. For example, if you are a corporation
with different subsidiaries that each have domain names, there
wasn’t a good way to integrate all of your sites. Now you will
find multiple domains at one site such at http://Maxmillian.net.
You can host three domains under one corporate account for
$14.41/month. This works out to $4.80 per site per month with
4Gigs of space to share. These kinds of hosting companies allow
you to manage everything from one account, and to keep your
separate domain names. This is a lifesaver for busy webmasters
of larger companies.
Some hosts now offer free domain name registration. Getting a
free domain name as part of your hosting plan is a good deal.
Even though prices of registering domains have come down a lot
in the past few years, it is still money and time saved –
especially if the plan is inexpensive as well.
SO WHAT TYPE OF PLAN SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
SPACE TO GROW
Whatever hosting plan you choose should include plenty of
space to grow. Even if right now you only have more of a
“brochureware” site, you will want the capability to grow. As
more and more visitors are getting high-speed connections, many
of the slower-loading features that were annoying in the past
are now commonplace. You can make your site more exciting by
adding some dynamic features and making it more interactive.
It means less interaction time spent with your staff, a more
informative site, and it just looks better. More advanced sites
reflect well on your business, especially if your business
is anything remotely technical. Better looking, smooth,
easy-to-navigate sites make visitors feel that your business
is more competent.
SUBDOMAINS
You might want to choose a plan that offers subdomains. If you
aren’t familiar with subdomains, they are just domains within
your domain. A good example is Yahoo. If you’ve ever been to
their site, you will notice they are organized and divided with
subdomains appearing before the domain in the address. For
example, games.yahoo.com will take you to the games subdomain
and mail.yahoo.com to the email section. Subdomains make things
more organized, easier for you to manage, and easier for your
visitors to navigate.
EMAIL ACCOUNTS
You will also want email accounts in your plan. When you
have your own domain name, your business is instantly more
respectable. The same is true for email accounts. It is much
more professional to have email addresses @yourdomainname.com.
You want every worker who will be corresponding with customers
to have their own email account. You also want a large number
of email aliases. An email alias is simply an email address
that goes to a different account. For example, on your
customer service page, you don’t want to show the email as
susan.jones@yourdomain.com. It’s not very professional looking,
and there’s a chance it will change. Instead, you can have an
email alias such as customerservice@yourdomain.com that actually
goes to susan.jones@yourdomain.com so Susan can take care of the
customer service problem.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to contact customer
service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If a host simply provides
email customer service, keep looking. No matter what your level
of expertise, you will at some point need customer service.
When your site is not available, you lose money and appear
unprofessional. Be sure to get live 24/7 support (best) or
at least 24/7 phone support available.
TRANSFER OF DATA
Hosts limit how much data can be transferred to and from their
site every month. While you might not think you will use that
much data, you still want room to grow – especially when most
hosts charge big if you go over the limit of your plan. Big or
unlimited amounts will be one less thing for you to worry about.
IN CONCLUSION
Whichever type of plan you choose, if you choose a good host,
they will help you figure out your specific needs and provide
a lot of support to help you with every aspect of your site
design and maintenance.
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