Website Hosting
Hosting your own website is no longer an expensive and only an option to big companies. Hosting prices have dropped tremendously over the years allowing just about anyone to have their own website and domain name. Let's say you are a small seller at ebay. By having your own website you can:
- Host additional images for your auctions and reduce your auction cost.
- Have a gallery or slide show of all your auctions.
- Have your terms and conditions in one place.
- Have your contact information posted.
- Post directions to your warehouse/store.
- You can even have a list of additional items for sale.
There are many other advantages to having your own website.
The website hosting prices have dropped because of one reason: Competition! The only issue is that now there are so many hosting companies on the web that is hard to know which hosting company offers the best price and service.
Making the Decision
There are a few things that needs to be taken into consideration when choosing a hosting company.
- Do you need shared hosting or dedicated hosting?
- Do you need a linux based hosting or a windows based hosting?
- How much disk space your website use?
- How much bandwitdh will your website use each month?
- Do you need an email solution along with your website?
Do you need shared hosting or dedicated hosting?
This is probrably the easiest question to answer. First of all a shared hosting account is alot cheaper than
a dedicated hosting account. The main difference is that with a dedicated hosting account, you get a server all for your
self, while in a shared hosting account there are many websites in the same server. Unless you are big company with in house developers
and custom solutions the shared hosting will be your best bet.
Do you need a linux based hosting or a windows based hosting?
This is mainly a question for the person building your website. If you are having an outsite company or developer
create your website, ask them which language will they use to create your website. The most common languages used
to create websites today are: HTML, traditional asp, asp.net, pho, perl and many others. Asp and Asp.net usually requires a windows envirorment, while php usually runs in linux.
If you are building the site your self or plan on having static HTML pages, you will probrably not have to worry about which type of server your hosting company uses.
How much disk space your website use?
Disk space also known as your disk Quota can be a very important factor when choosing a hosting company. Disk space is usually expressed
in MB (Megabytes) or GB (Gigabytes). How much disk space you need will depend on what kind of website you will have. If your website is an
informational website with a few images here and there, 100 MB most likely will have you happy for a long time. If you site will have alot of images,
audio files such as MP3 files or movie files, you may want to go into the Gigabytes.
How much bandwitdh will your website use each month?
Bandwidth is a very important factor when choosing a hosting company. Bandwidth is the amount of network traffic your hosting company
will allow you to have each month. Some hosting companies will provide a huge amount of disk space, but a very limited amount of bandwidth.
Everytime someone visits your website, they are using up your bandwidth. If you your site contains alot of multimedia, the amount of bandwidth
used by each visitor will be alot greate than a simple mostly text website.
Do you need an email solution along with your website?
Most hosting providers will also provide you with a email solution. In another words they will host your email for you. If create
a domain name such as easytemplateauction.com, you probrably want to have your email be yourname@easytemplateauction.com. This
is lot better than having a professional website and still have your customers send emails to your AOL account. The things to consider here are;
How much space will each email user have and how many users your hosting company will allow you to have.
Other things to consider...
Other things that you might want to consider when choosing a hosting company are:
- How many FTP accounts does the hosting company provide.
- How many DataBases does the hosting company allows you to have.
- What type of databases do they support.
- How much will each database have
- What type of technical suppport does the hosting company provide.
- When things go wrong...will you be able to talk to a real person?
- What will the hosting company charge if you go over your disk quota or bandwidth limit.