Originally posted by Michael Milley mikemilley@hotmail.com at www.alon-cohen.com
So you’ve got a great idea for a web business - maybe you even have the site designed - but where are you going to keep it? You need to find someone to host your site. Web hosting services are where most individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses keep their websites. Their actual web pages are located on a web hosting company’s computer.
You might ask why you need a web hosting service when you could keep the site on your own computer? Even if your page is personal and meant only for friends and family, you need a computer that is online all the time. Anything much beyond a text-only site would load slowly onto the internet even with a DSL or cable connection. Your personal computer just isn’t designed for hosting a web site, and setting up the necessary hardware and software is a hassle, not to mention expensive. Only big, established internet companies host their own sites. Web hosting services already have all the tools to get your pages up and running. A host keeps your web pages on its computer so that they can be accessed day or night by the worldwide audience that surfs the net.
Whether you’re putting up a fan page for your favorite concert violinist or you’d like to sell your line of hand-made violins and accessories on-line, there are web hosting services to meet your needs. When looking at hosts, consider things like the overall size of the data on your pages, how much activity you expect to have, what extras you might want, as well as price.
If the site you have in mind is relatively small or meant primarily for informational purposes, you probably don’t need a lot of space on a host server. You are also not looking for a high bandwidth (the amount of information transferred to and from your site over a period of time). You may even be able to get free hosting through your current internet service provider or a company that places ads on your page.
However, if you want to set up a professional or commercial web site, your site is likely to be larger, so you’ll need to get more space. And you don’t want customers or potential customers waiting for your site to download onto their computer, so you probably need more bandwidth to accommodate more activity.
If you’re putting up a commercial web site you may also want to think about the options that your host service can provide. CGI can allow your site’s users to fill out a form online and have it converted to an e-mail message to your company. If your site offers products for sale, security is an important consideration. Your host should offer secure SSL connections to help prevent fraud.
Many web hosting services offer more than just a place to park your site. Most offer e-mail addresses to go with your site. Web hosts may be able to provide activity statistics for your site allow you to track the use of your online business. Some web hosts will help design your site and register a domain name for your web pages. At Alon-Cohen.com Internet Solutions we offer full service web hosting, with packages ranging from smaller, personal sites to 2-Gigabyte sites with many additional features.
