Choosing Your First Web Hosting Company
The first thing to consider is disc space. Disc space all
depends on the size of the web site, and how much money you are
willing to spend. Look in your web site folder and see how much
disc space it takes up on your computer. You should always get
more space then what is taken up on your computer (better safe
than sorry). For example, if your web folder is 200MB, you
should probably get 250-300MB of disc space. Sites with
complicated designs, or flash animation, and sites with a
variety of videos and pictures will typically take up a higher
amount of disc space than other sites.
You should do your best to estimate the amount of bandwidth your
web site will be using. Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer
that your web site can use. If you plan on having a massively
popular site with a large amount of files, then you should have
a high bandwidth. For casual web sites, bandwidth is not as big
a factor. Again, consider cost and try to have more bandwidth
than you need, not less.
Web site speed is seldom taken into consideration. The fact is
that there are many Internet users still on 56k dial-up
connections. If your web host has a very slow speed for all of
its web sites, then you may not want to go with that host.
People won't sit around at a page forever. If you want many
people to visit your site, having a fast speed is very helpful.
One technique to check how fast a web host's hosted sites are is
to simply ask the web host for a list of their sites. If the web
host is legitimate and wants to have your business, they will
comply in no time at all.
All of these elements need to be taken into consideration when
hosting a web site. Unfortunately, this does take some time and
effort. Taking time searching through web hosts and finding out
everything you can about them will be very rewarding. Have a
clear-cut view of what you want to accomplish with your web
site. The best web host is not necessarily the most expensive,
or cheapest. The best web host is the host that fits your needs.
For the casual webmaster, cheaper web hosts may be the way to
go. However, if your site is intended to 'wow' users, get them
to come back again, and tell all their friends about your site,
than you might want to consider getting a higher end web host.
Without web hosting, no one can see your site. It is important
to make the gateway between your site and the rest of the
Internet as successful as possible.
About the author:
Paul Herbert recommends Net Explorers for UK web
hosting.