Determine Your Needs Before Choosing A Hosting Service
Determine your needs BEFORE choosing a hosting service
Choosing a hosting company for your web site can be very
confusing given the multitude of companies available on the
Internet today. Do not choose a service by price alone. The very
cheapest is not necessarily the best. You can get a good hosting
service for under $10.00, but first determine your requirements.
Before going into any more detail, let’s look at some
definitions:
Hosting service - A hosting service or company is an Internet
company that provides hundreds or even thousands of computers
like yours with service by “renting” you space. With this
service your web site is now on the Internet and can be viewed
by millions of others. Sure you could be your own host, but it
would be very expensive because you would need to buy a server,
house it in the proper environment, maintain it 24 hours a day,
and put up with all the other headaches that come with hosting.
Wouldn’t you rather concentrate on selling your product? Server
A server is a large computer, which can service many other
computers. Sometimes a large software package on a host’s server
(like a mail software package) is also referred to as a server.
Have you seen scenes on TV which show rooms wall-to-wall with
big computers busily working and flashing their lights? These
are servers.
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. If you started your web
site from scratch, you will need to upload your web pages to the
host you selected. To do this you use a FTP software package.
There are some excellent tutorials on FTP at
http://www.pageresource.com/putweb/ftptut1.htm CGI CGI means
Common Gateway Interface. While CGI primarily refers to the way
a server communicates with other software on the server, CGI
scripts are a popular way programmers install counters, forms,
and other interactive items on a web site. If you see cgi-bin,
the “bin” refers to binary from a time long ago when most
programs were referred to as binary. Now cgi-bin refers to the
location in the server where cgi scripts are stored. Now, let’s
go back to the hosting service. When you surf the net and “go”
to a particular site, you are not actually going to that site.
The hosting company’s server (in this case your ISP) receives
your request, searches the web, finds your requested site, and
downloads it to your computer. So you see, you don’t go to a
site, the site comes to you, courtesy of a server. How do you go
about choosing a hosting service? It is pretty much up to you
based on the size of your website, the number of visitors you
expect, and, of course, the state of your wallet. If you are
just starting out, a free or low cost service is all you will
need, but as your business grows you might want to consider a
service that gives you more storage and more transfer room.
Storage is the amount of room your web site takes up on the
hosting company’s server, “Transfer” refers to network transfer
space. If you have a large web site and a lot of visitors you
will need more storage or disc space and more network transfer
space. The more people accessing your site; the higher the
volume of data being transferred. How to calculate your disk
space:
1.Count the number of pages in your web site and add a buffer
for future expansion. 2.Determine the average number of
characters per page - not the number of words. The number of
characters includes everything, letters, spaces, and,
punctuation. Most word processing programs such as MS Word will
count the number of characters for you. 3.Multiply the average
number of characters times the number of pages in step 1. 4.Now:
one character = 1 Byte, and 8 Bytes = 1 bit, so divide the total
number of characters determined in step 3 by 8. This gives you
the total number of bits. 5.1000 bits = 1 KB; 1000 KB = 1 MB,
and 1000 MB = 1 GB. Note: For the technical minded 1 GB actually
equals 1024 MB, but there is really no necessity to get that
picky in this case. 6.Divide the total number of bits by
1,000,000 and your answer will be the number of MB of disk space
you need to rent from the hosting service.
Determining the amount of transfer space you will require is
largely an approximation based on the number of visitors you
expect per day. Most of the better hosting services provide you
with about 3 GB, which is ample for the average web site. If you
expect more than a thousand visitors a day, you will, of course,
need more transfer space.
The top ten hosting companies are listed conveniently at
http://www.webhostinginspector.com/index.php?from=1 along with
their rankings, disk space offered, bandwidth (transfer space),
and reviews.
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ About the author: Nancy Casseur
is a Team Leader with Strong Future International Marketing
Group (SFI Marketing Group). SFI is considered to be the largest
and most successful affiliate program in the world. To find out
more about SFI go to http://www.moreinfo247.com/8459751.35/FREE.
Nancy is also the Webmaster of two websites;
http://www.newsiteinfo.net and http://www.notreallyretired.com .
Copyright 2005 by Nancy Casseur.
