Small Business Web Hosting Services

By Jeff Solon

There can be a hundred reasons to create a website but the fundamental idea remains to share data, news and opinions. These days' websites, blogs and forums are also created with the purpose of doing business online. Web hosting helps you in creating a website, which serves as a gateway to let your services and thoughts known to people. A properly hosted website has many advantages. It can help you market your business effectively, especially to the target customers, whom you to be informed of your existence. To gain the utmost benefit from a website, it is important that you take care in selecting the right web host. This can often be a tough task and require proper research. If you search in the internet, you will find several web host companies. Before deciding on any web hosting service, it is important to inquire about their company background. You must also ensure about their dependability and whether they offer the required services or not.

The following steps will guide you in getting your web hosting needs fulfilled:

The primary step is to identify the requirement of web hosting:

After you are absolutely sure that you need a website in the internet, identify the main purpose for which you want to get it hosted. Make your mind up on which sort of website you want. The choices can range from business or hobby sites to dating sites. The choice is all yours. If you wish to use the website for business then security is a demanding factor. Secure Sockets Layer encryption and shopping carts are the primary components of an e-commerce site. On the other hand if you wish to host a customer e-commerce site then it is vital that you choose the right web hosting environment that supports the different software systems. PHP or Perl/CGI scripting are often used when developing blog sites and they also need access to MySQL or SQL databases. However, these aspects are too technical and ignorant people mostly depend on the web hosts. There are some web hosts that exploit a customer's ignorance and unreasonably charge for such things. The best way out is thus to gather some knowledge before venturing for any web hosting service.

Storage space

Usually it is your content and type of your website that determines the required storage space. A small website with lesser features and content needs less space. While a large website that includes numerous pages, videos, images and graphics will require more storage space. Basically, an e-commerce website includes huge information and a great deal of data. Thereby, these sites require more space than other sites. You can find some web hosts that offer separate databases to their clients, where others do not. However, separate databases often create trouble as the storage spaces provided are not always the same as your web host claimed earlier.

Settle on bandwidth:

Bandwidth of a website is essential. The number of hits that your website would experience could determine the bandwidth limit that your website requires. This can be stated in a simple way, if your website is a popular one and is used by the visitors frequently, your site would require or rather consume heavy bandwidth than a site on which visitors hardly click. Suppose you have a website that is simple without too many features and average webpage is of 8KB. If it is assumed that your web pages experience 10 hits per day, then your bandwidth per month would be 810x30.

Keeping in mind that bandwidth is a vital factor of web hosting, try to get an idea of the size your website would require before choosing a web hosting company. You can let the web host decide this but you must be able to provide the full specifications of your website. You must keep in mind that blogs and online forums require more bandwidth than that of a simple company website. The reason is obvious. Visitors to blogs or online forums do not just read. They also participate.

Important features of Web hosting

The next thing that you need to do is to select the web hosting features that are required for your website. Websites can be developed using simple HTML or using PHP/ASP and Flash. No matter what are the technical bases of the website is, you need to get it clarified from the web hosts that they have support to such services or not. Programming languages are of foremost requirements as they determine the look and feel of your website. As the owner of your website, you need special access to it. These accesses are provided with the help of FTP or Telnet. But what kind of access you need to your website will have to clarified and checked out with your web hosting service provider.

Different types of web hosting

The web hosts offer different types of web hosting services. The services differ on the basis of the finances and purposes of the web hosts. Web hosting can be of several types like dedicated, managed, shared, server co-location, reseller and free web hosting services. You can make your choice depending on your website requirements and budget. Dedicate web hosting is preferred mostly for bigger company websites with a huge budget. Smaller companies requiring a simple website generally opt for free web hosting. Every type web hosting of course has its own set of advantage and disadvantages. The most important factor however is the authenticity of the web host.

Essential tips to move forward with a website:

* Calculating the value of data that your website would create is very important. This is usually a rough calculation, which is likely to change with time and expansion of your website.

* If you are subscribing to a speared database then it is essential to check out how much extra the web host is charging you for the database.

* It is recommended that you keep some keep some bandwidth and disc space in store for your website if you expect it to grow in the near future.

* Bandwidth and storage are always limited to a certain amount. Therefore, be careful about the web host companies that offer unlimited bandwidth and storage.

* Always consider the Operating System you are using for your site. Usually, Windows web hosts offer access to a large number of technologies, which are not available with Linux or UNIX web hosts.

* Never compromise with quality because of price. If your financial resources allow you try to keep your budget flexible enough in order to get the best services.

* Do not change your web host frequently. However, you can change your web host in case there is an urgent situation.

* Check out the type of domain name services provided by the web hosting company. For search engine rules, related and significant domain name with that of the website and its goal is very important.

* Find if the web host can offer you ample information on SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This would determine the ranking of your website in the popular search engines like that of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

* There are ample web hosting directories from where you can get the references of companies, offering these services. Check out all the various types of services offered, the projects that they have already handled and read reviews before signing up with them.

About the Author:

This article is published with permission from WebHostingMadness.com, a provider of web hosting company reviews, comparisons and detailed articles about the web hosting industry.