Web Site Hosting Deals

Choosing a Web Site Hosting Service

With thousands of website hosting companies to choose from, making a decision can be harder than it seems. While most web hosting providers offer similar services, not taking the time to chose the right one can prove disastrous down the road. The web hosting services that we list have prices that are affordable or really cheap. All of the web hosting companies listed here provide services that are good or excellent.

What's the point of your Web Site?

Well, what is it? If your web site will be selling goods or services, you need to choose a web hosting service that is equipped with the necessary ecommerce/shopping cart software to handle credit card transactions and complete the sale. If you will be hosting images, audio and/or video, you need a hosting plan that offers a large amount of disk space and bandwidth so the files can be transferred back and forth to your visitors, with the risk of exceeding those limits as minimized as possible.

Speak the Right Language

For anything but the most basic site, the use of additional scripting languages is often necessary to build an effective website. PHP and ASP are two popular dynamic scripting languages, which deliver web pages conditionally and communicate with databases. Perl and CGI are "workhorse" languages that perform behind-the-scenes operations that extend the functionality of a website, such as facilitating ecommerce through shopping carts. WindowsMedia and Real are two formats for streaming audio and video, which is a term that refers to delivering big files in small chunks versus requiring the user to wait until the file has completely downloaded to view it. If you think your site may need any or all of these features, be sure that the hosting plan you choose supports it.

All in a Name

Now that you've identified your web site's purpose and needs, you're ready to put it all together. Their are two main steps to making your site live; 1) registering the domain name and 2) finding a web hosting service. A domain name is the unique address (URL) used to access your site, so if you haven't thought of one already take some time to think one up. Some of these plans offer free domain name registration, but if they don't you'll have to register it on your own. Expect to pay about $10-20 a year with the domain name registrar (the site you purchase the domain through). Once you set up a hosting account, you will need to register their nameservers with the registrar by editing the DNS entries, so the web browser knows where to look for the site files when someone types in your domain. After that you're business with the registrar is through until the time comes to renew, which is usually done through an email notification. After updating the DNS records, it should take about 2-3 days before the central registry is updated and you're web site is accessible by typing in the URL you've registered.