Hosting companies make money to make sure that your web site is seen on the net. To increase your appreciation of what is behind your need of a Hosting service the following overview is meant to help you.

What is a host?
Hosting service companies purchase large quantities of connection lines from major suppliers such as MCI and charge you for the use of those lines. That is how they make money. Hosts attempt to provide the fastest lines they can afford.

What is a Virtual Host?
You may be on a server that also houses other web sites besides yours. This would be called “Virtual” account to the Host.

What is a dedicated server?
Your web site might be on a server all by itself that the Host owns and leases to you. This would be called a “dedicated” account to the Host.

What is co-locating?
You also have the opportunity to own your own server and house it at a Hosting company. This would be called a “CO-located” account to the Host.

Setup
Hosts should provide a pricing structure that is easy to understand. You would be expected to pay a “Set up” fee. This would include what the Host does to get you started. It would include creating the directory structure your web site will use, perhaps password protecting your site, and placing your domain name in their name server (so others will find you at their Hosting facility). You probably will be asked to pay your first month’s fees in advance. To the Host, web sites come and go, so they do not take many risks.

Some Hosts will charge you for registering your domain if it is not already registered with Internic. Some will do this as an added value service. Truth is that is a minor administrative effort (although an EXTREMELY) important one. If you want to transfer your own domain you will have to make the changes with the registry agency yourself. This is fairly simple and involves just substituting the IP numbers your host will provide you for the IP numbers that the registry agency assigned you for that domain.

Technical Support
The single most important aspect of any Host is their Technical and Administrative Support that can be provided to you and your web site. Technical Support implies being able to contact the Hosts Technical Staff 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Some Hosts will have actual manned Operations Centers. Others will contract out for such support. Still others will have no support outside of business hours. And some will only support you by E-mail. Be aware of what your Host provides. Do they respond quickly to your requests? Do they follow up? Are they respectful of your skill level? If you are technically competent then this may not be a big aspect to consider.

If you are not, then it is a really big aspect. Figuring out why your index.html page does not show on the next when you just FTP’ed it to your web site area on the server could take you a few minutes or a few hours to figure out. What is that difference in time worth to you? Determining what is wrong with your script could well be worth the $25.00, $50.00 or $75.00 an hour they may charge to correct your mistake. The idea is to determine what the Technical Staff of your Host is worth to you and your web site’s ability to make money. As with any competent person, treat them with respect and you will get much from them.

Administrative Support
The Administrative Staff of a Host is also important. Do they invoice you on time? Correctly? Do they admit their human errors? Do they respond quickly to your inquiries about your account? When you call, do you get Voice Mail or a human? As you grow your site, so does your Host. Pay your Hosting Fees on time. Hosts have to pay their bills for the communication lines or they get shut off. If they get shut off, so do you. Hosts will always want to provide faster, cleaner, better line connections. But they have to do that by buying them.

Be a good Client of your Host and pay your bills. Ask your friend’s at various gathering places on the Internet. With 80,000 so odd domains being registered daily, there are always new Webmasters asking the same questions you are asking. One of those questions is .…Who do you recommend as a Host? Listen to their answers. It may make a difference.

Free Hosting
There are two types of hosting available to the webmaster. Free hosts and pay hosts. Free hosts will offer you a specific amount of hard drive space and “all the bandwidth you need” for – well free. Sort of. To make money the free host will take some of the advertising space on your site and send the traffic that clicks on that advertising to his own accounts with that sponsor.

Typically free hosts will place adsense and other ads on your pages – top, bottom and/or in the sidebars. You can not take the host’s advertising down or modify it in any way. Some of the most popular free hosts on today’s net are those for bloggers such as blogspot.com and wordpress.com.

Pay Hosting
Pay hosts offer a specific amount of hard drive space and a specific amount of bandwidth for a specific monthly fee. This fee can be as low as $10 a month or can run into hundreds depending on what kind of a server you have, how much bandwidth you use and how much hard drive space you are using.

The pay host will also charge you for any bandwidth you may use that goes over the contracted amount. This can be very expensive. Bandwidth is usually quoted by the Gigabyte or mbps (megabits per second) of transfer. What this means is that every surfer who comes to your site uses your bandwidth to load the pages you have on your site. The more visitors, the more bandwidth.

With a pay host all advertising on the site is your advertising. There is nothing on your site that is placed there by your host. You will usually have some sort of statistical package that is provided by your host or allowed to be placed on the server that can show you how many visitors came to your site and from where.

I recommend two very good hosts:

http://www.MichelleWatersOnline.com – this lady has some great hosting packages for new webmasters – and she provides a TON of training and hand-holding to help you through the learning curves.

http://www.nationalnet.com/ – this host is for larger sites/webmasters who need dedicated servers. I cannot say enough good about this company. They are reasonable, fast, their support is absolutely UNREAL – they answer the phone on the first ring no matter what time of day and are always ready to help. 90 percent of the work orders I’ve put in are completed within 10 minutes or less – seriously. I’ve been a client of theirs off and on (yes, I was dumb and decided to move away for awhile) almost 12 years – they are THAT good.

We Recommend:

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