Finding the Right Web Host

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Finding the Right Web Host 

Choosing the right Web Hosting service for your website can be a little bit confusing. There's so many choices out there and many people aren't exactly sure what they should be looking for. 

Here's a few things you should take into consideration when looking for a Web Host: 

File Storage Space/ Disk Space 

How much disk space do you need? That depends on how many files (pages) you plan to upload to your hosting space. If it's a personal or ecommerce site (a site that sells products) with just a few pages and graphics, than 25 MB of disk space a month should be more than enough. If it's a multi-page site such as an online shopping mall, then 2000 MB would be safe. 

Storage space is specified in kilobytes KB, megabytes MB, or gigabytes GB, a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes and a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. 

Bandwidth / Traffic / Transfer 

All words above are used interchangeably. It's the amount of data that flows through your site, the amount of hits or how many people visit your site. If you're expecting a few hundred hits a day then 10, 15 of 25 GB of Transfer should be enough. If you're expecting hundreds of thousands of hits every month then you should get a hosting account with as much Bandwidth as possible. 
Bandwidth is usually expressed in Gigabytes. 

CGI 

Common Gateway Interface, is a protocal script used to make your site dynamic. Flash banners, moving objects. With the right web design program or scripting knowledge and a host that offers CGI you can easily bring your site to life. 

Frontpage Extensions 

Now-a-days more sites are offering Frontpage extensions. Microsoft Frontpage is a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web design program that lets you easily create web pages while the software does all the coding behind the scenes. The great thing about using Frontpage and having a host with Frontpage extensions is once you design your webpages all you have to do is click one button that says "publish site" and all your pages go from your computer to your hosting space with one click. 

Shared Hosting / Dedicated Servers 

Shared hosting, or sometimes called basic hosting means that the webspace that you rent will be shared on the same web server with other clients of the company you've purchased web space from. This is the most common. 

If you purchase a Dedicated server it means your website will have it's own unique server. This is the preferred choice for sites with a huge amount of traffic and many graphics that would take to long to load on a shared server. 

Finding a Web Host can be confusing if you're not sure what to look for. If you're planning on having an average website with a few hundred hits or fewer a day, than shared hosting is the way to go. 

Fast Web Design For The Skint Webmaster

About two years ago, I had a go at commercial web site design. I put a medium-sized ad in a London classified ad paper. Nothing fancy: "Web designer seeks work ..." etc. This was expensive, about £500 for a month's run. 

Got a few replies. Lesson number one: advertise where clients of the calibre you want will see it. The clients I got thought £300 was a lot for a web site. They didn't want to pay web hosting. They wanted a lot of bang for their buck. 'Mission creep' was a term I grew to know and loathe. 

This set me thinking: how could I give these people all they could ever want, but not spend a lot of time and money? Lately, I realised how. 

So how can you get a full featured site up in a day? Easy (ish!). 



I wish I'd found this software a couple of years ago. It's freeware. The default set-up allows people without web design skills to update the site. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) option. This adds HTMLArea code to text input form fields. Each HTML code input box becomes a mini HTML editor. 

If you can use Microsoft Word, you can add formatted HTML code to the site. 

To get it running you need to know how to install MySQL databases, or have PHPMyAdmin as part of your web-hosting package. 

You can add articles, edit them, send emails to members, and be contacted by users. 

The only criticisms I have of this software are: 

1. The admin interface is confusing. It's all there, just finding and using it is the problem! 

2. You need to search around template sites to find ones suited to your site purpose. I wanted simple, clean, business ones. Most of those available seem to have a fat graphic which covers half the screen. There are more restrained ones out there. 

These are minor gripes, compared to the relief of finding what is essentially a web site in a box. It can be installed in an hour, once you get familiar with it. 

To add ecommerce to your site: 

Oscommerce Shopping Cart

Again, this is a full-featured, freeware software. You can add lots of freeware 'plug-ins' to it, to get a professional shopping cart. 

Therein lies the danger. Some of these plug-ins require altering or overwriting the default cart files. When you try to upgrade the cart version later, you may 'break' it, by overwriting a plug-in, thus creating errors. 

The trick here is to only install plug-ins that add files (rather than overwrite them) or that require minor alterations to existing files. 

What I do is download all the versions of the plug-in type I need e.g. a WYSIWYG editor. I then choose the one which has the least files, or which creates a new directory for its files. If it requires that important files be overwritten, or is complex, I chuck it. 

Mambo and Oscommerce. Don't try to integrate them! Hyperlink from one to the other. I've tried integrations of other softwares, like PhpBB and PhpNuke. Fine, when it works, but when you upgrade one or the other, arrgh! 

*Keep databases separate*. If one goes skew-whiff, then at least the other will still work. Same goes for adding chat rooms and the like. If they're all running off the one database, and that database becomes corrupted ...