 Choose a Hosting Provider
While you can make a web site on your computer, it doesn't do
any good when no one else can look at it. If you want your web
site to be "live," you'll have to host it on a server. Servers
are special computers that are always connected to the internet
so that other people can view files on them. Hosting companies
specialize in these special computers. Most hosting providers
charge a monthly fee and usually will provide email account
service as well.
There are several free hosting providers, but there are
several drawbacks to them. Most of them have pop-up banner
advertising that they put on your site. Others require you to
use a clumsy web interface for uploading your files. Others
don't provide email accounts. If you want your site to be a
professional effort, you'll probably want to go with paid
hosting. (Think of it this way - they aren't making money from
you, so they must be making money some other way...
usually through banner ads on your site!)
Which hosting provider you choose depends partly on how
you're building your web site. If you're using FrontPage, you'll
most likely want to find a hosting provider that supports
FrontPage extensions. If you're using any other method of
building your web site, you'll want to make sure that you can
"FTP" your files. (See our previous article about choosing an
FTP program.)
Hosting Providers
There are hundreds out there, all with different levels and
types of service, so do your research! (Just type in "hosting"
in a search engine and see what comes up.) Below are a few
places to start...
Some terms and issues that you may come across when looking
at hosting providers:
- Disk space - How much space you are limited to
for your web site. As a real-life example, a small basic web
site such as our Five Star Dining template comes in just
about 150 KB (which comes out to about .14 MB). The more
images, sound files, and documents you put up, the more
space you'll need. Please note that some hosting
services include your email accounts AND statistic
information within this "disk space" amount, so you'll want
to get a realistic idea of how your hosting company
calculates it.
- Bandwidth or Data Transfer - This is a limit on
how much "activity" can happen on your web site over a
certain period. Unless you're going to have thousands of
people looking at your site and/or downloading things from
your site, the basic plans are probably good for you!
- FrontPage Extensions - You should look for this
if you're going to be using FrontPage to publish your web
site. FrontPage Extensions allow you to use some special
features of FrontPage in your web site (like creating forms
or using certain kinds of navigation bar styles). You'll
want to look specifically for FrontPage 2002 Extensions if
you're using FrontPage 2002 to build your web site.
- FTP Access - You'll want to look for this if
you'll be using FTP to upload your site.
- POP Email Accounts - These describe the kinds of
email accounts that you can set up in an email program such
as Outlook, and "match" your domain (like yourname@yourdomain.com).
Many services allow you to have more than one email account,
so you could set one up for each person in your company or
for different areas (such as "info@yourdomain.com" or
"support@yourdomain.com.") POP Email Accounts allow you to
receivee mail from your
email accounts.
- SMTP Email Accounts - These email accounts allow
you to send email from your email accounts. Usually
it's not very clear if the hosting service provides these
accounts, or if they expect you to use your own email.
You'll probably want to check on the specific hosting
service and ask them.
- Web mail - Some hosting services provide a "web
mail" option where you can check your email using a web
browser interface instead of using a program such as
Outlook.
- ASP support - If your web site is going to have
ASP programming on it, you'll want to make sure that there
is ASP support. ASP support comes automatically with Windows
servers, but not always with UNIX servers.
- SSL Secure Certificate - If you're going to be
transferring confidential information (like credit card
numbers or personal information) on your web site, you'll
want part of your web site to be on a "secure server."
You'll want to make sure that the hosting service provides
this kind of service. It's possible that you'll have to buy
your own "certificate," which can cost around $300. If you
aren't going to be transferring confidential information
(for example, if you use PayPal for transactions), you won't
need to worry about this. .
- Search engine submission? - Some hosting
companies offer "free search engine submission" as part of
their packages. You'll want to look very carefully
into this to determine if you want this service or not.
Usually what it means is that they submit your site to tons
of free-for-all links pages, and then you are spammed with
all kinds of junk email... probably not what you
want! Real search engine submission takes a lot of work, and
we'll cover this in a later article.
- Support! - Make sure that your hosting service
will provide you personal support by phone or by email. If
you're new to this, you'll definitely want to find out if
they will "hand-hold" you in the process if you run into
problems or have questions.
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