The Web Hosting Decision: How To Choose A Web Host
If you are launching a new website, one critical decision is where to have the site hosted. A web host is the location of where your web site actually resides on the internet. It may help to think about this in relationship to a human family. They have many options where they may live, and there is just a single place that is there home at any given time.
Websites reside on web servers, which are computers attached to the internet which keep website pages and serve them up when people want to view them. A computer which stores websites is called a web host.
One choice you will need to make is if you will use a paid web host or a free one.
Using one of the free sites is tempting, because not only are they free, they often include easy site building tools. While using a free site can be quick and easy (not to mention free!), you should not rely on them. Not only do many of them display ads, but you also do not have control over whether they decide to delete your site or shut down the service tomorrow. That being said, using a free site can be an effective marketing strategy. Some popular services include Blogger.com and Weebly.com.
For your paid site, you can either buy space yourself or if you use the services of a web designer, they will often arrange or provide it for you as part of your fee. There are many capable web hosts available. When selecting a web host, you should consider the following:
Price: how much are they going to charge you every month? What features might you need that will cost extra?
Reliability: does the company have a history of problems with keeping sites up? Try and look beyond the actual out of pocket cost of hosting and gauge what it will cost if your site goes down for any period of time.
Cpanel: you should not consider any web host that does not offer cpanel for configuration.
Filed under: Web