Web Host Help - What To Look For In A Web Host

By Craig Deane, Blue Ice Web Design Limited

Free Hosting

Most people when looking into web hosts will find free ones, free hosting is good depending on what you need a website for, if you are running a business then most free hosting will not be for you.

A lot of free hosting companies will offer you free hosting but they will put advertising up on your site to cover their costs, so be wary, always look at the small print before paying or signing up to anything.

PHP And CGI-BIN Access

If you plan to run forms, polls, mailing lists etc then you will require php or cgi-bin to be run on your hosting server, not all servers will allow this, including many free hosts.

It is important to note though that these days there are many websites that offer to host your form, poll etc on their site which is great if you don’t know much about coding but you will probably have to put up with some advertising of some sort.

Technical Support

Before purchasing your hosting try to find out as much as possible about the companies technical support as you may well need to use it from time to time. It may be worth searching the internet to see if there are any message boards or forums where they talk about certain hosting companies, you may then be able to get a view of what previous or current customers currently think of the hosting companies support or services.

Shopping Cart

Running an online business will require a shopping cart, you may be able to create one yourself and set up the security as well, however most people will not find this easy and so some hosts do provide a shopping cart service with security built in. You will usually have to pay extra for this service however if this is something you are interested in then you should take a look at whether the host offers them.

Price

Price is no doubt an issue for most people, although most of the time you will get what you pay for.

Your Own Email

If you run a business or a website in general, you will probably want a personalised email like tom@yourdomain.co.uk, not all hosts provide this so make sure you find out before paying.

Changing Emails etc

Most hosts will have a control panel where you can set up emails, change passwords, even add files to your website etc, however some do not and will require you to phone or email technical support each time, this is obviously not a good thing.

Disk Space

Make sure the host offers you enough disk space for what you need, generally you will not need much, most sites will not even use 10MB, many offer you unlimited disk space but take this with a pinch of salt as you are very unlikely to need anywhere near that much anyway.

Depending on your company's size, another option is to operate a Dell Blade system for in-house hosting; just remember to factor in the cost of a 24/7 IT support team.

Article created by Blue Ice Web Design

Author Information

This article was created by Blue Ice Web Design Limited, they are a website design company based in the UK that offers many website design services at competitive prices.

http://www.blueicewebdesign.co.uk

Website design, redesign, logo design, seo, internet marketing, website maintenance at competitive prices

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