Web Housing - a Home for Your Website

Either you have a website or you are thinking of getting one. It's no surprise that the number of people who own a website is exploding. There are many reasons both professionally and personally for having a website. Let's assume that you have made the decision to own a website. Where will your website be housed?

Many of the domain name companies are offering hosting for your domain name. The problem is they offer very few features. It's best to look elsewhere.

Where you host your website depends on what features you need. Are you going to have lots of graphics on your site? Do you want to have an email address at your website? Do you have lots of articles or products you want housed at your site? Will there be lots of traffic to your site?

When searching for a web housing company, familiarize yourself with these:

Storage - The more MB storage you have, the more you can put on your website. If you are going to be housing lots of graphics, pictures, audio files, and video files, you'll need a hefty amount of storage space. There's a GB bandwidth per month concept. This is how much data your website can transfer each month. If the number of visitors is small and your downloadable files are small, this will not be a problem. Larger files and more visitors may necessitate more bandwidth, thus a higher fee.

Databases - The number of databases your website will have to store things. One database makes things easier for you. Stick with the MySQL type as they are the most prevalent type of databases.

Scripting languages - Perl and PHP are the basic scripting languages used to write a website. Make sure the software you're using to write your website can 'speak' the host's language.

Subdomains - These allow your website to be divided into sections. If you want news.yourname.com and shop.yourname.com, you'll need subdomains. You'll probably do just as well if you use subfolders like www.yourname.com/shop so don't worry if your housing company charges too much for subdomains.

Addon domains - If you want to host more than one website on the same hosting, you'll need what's called an addon domains service. Some hosts allow unlimited domains without paying any extra hosting fees.

FTP - This is what you use when you upload your website to your host. This is an automatic freebie so no extra cost for this.

POP3 - This stands for "Post Office Protocol". You can probably guess that this is referring to email. You need one POP3 account for each email address you have. So if you want a sales@yourname.com and a support@yourname.com, you'll need two POP3 accounts

The price for web housing has become very reasonable in the past few years. Competition has become fierce, so you as a consumer will reap the benefits. There are many sites offering housing for under $10 a month and some for under $5 so shop around. Armed with the above terminology, you'll be able to talk and understand the language of web housing providers as they present their offers to you.