If you’re just starting
out on the web, the process of picking a web hosting
company to run your site can be daunting and scary at
first. With all the technical jargon and features that
hosts offer, how do you separate what you need from
what you don’t need? In this article we’re going to
take you step by step on how to pick a quality web host
for your first site. You’ll learn how to separate needed
features from fluff, and what to look for in a host
with your eye on the future.
What are your needs?
The first step in choosing website hosting is to identify
your needs. Take a look at your site and ask yourself,
“What do I want to do with this site?” Is your site
just a family page to post pictures so your family can
keep up with you, is it a personal blog, is it a fan
site of some sort, or is it just a site that is dedicated
to something you’re interested in? You have to identify
what the target of your site is before you can identify
the immediate and potential needs your site will have.
Now you should have an idea of what kind of site you
want, and you can start looking at various hosts. You’ll
want to look at disk space, and bandwidth at first.
Disk space is how much space your files are allowed
to use up, and bandwidth is the amount of data you can
transfer to visitors. To get a better idea of bandwidth,
whenever someone visits your page, the page they visit
is transferred to their browser. If your page is 200kb
in size, you use 200kb of bandwidth every time a visitor
comes to that page. For a graphic intensive site, you’ll
need more bandwidth then if you just have a lot of text.
So should you choose based on disk space or bandwidth?
The answer is both. If you just want to have a site
that you share family photos with friends, you won’t
need a lot of either. While pictures will take up space
and use bandwidth when your family visits the page,
you can estimate with a pretty fair degree of accuracy
how many times people will visit the pages, so you can
calculate how much bandwidth you will need. If, on the
other hand, you plan on promoting your site and hoping
strangers will visit it, you may want to get a bit more
bandwidth since it’s hard to say exactly how many visitors
will come.
What about if my site grows faster than I expect
If you’re lucky, your site my skyrocket in popularity
quickly. If that happens, it can cause some problems
with your provider in the form of extra charges or service
stoppage. To prevent unforeseen costs and service stoppage,
before you pick a hosting plan you should check a few
things. First, what happens if you go over your allotted
bandwidth usage for the month? Do they start charging
you extra for the bandwidth you go over, or do they
just take your website down so users cannot access it?
You should also check to see about their policy on plan
upgrades. If you find yourself needing more space, more
bandwidth, or more features, can you upgrade a plan
without extra costs? If you are on a less expensive
plan, be sure your host allows you to upgrade to a higher
plan by paying the difference between the two plans
instead of having to purchase a more expensive plan
outright.
As you get more experienced with your website you will
have a better idea of what you need from a hosting plan.
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