web hosting
Choosing where your site will live
A web host is usually a company that owns and maintains web servers. A web server is a computer that stores a copy of your web site from which it makes and serves up a copy to any computer on the Internet that requests to see it.
Web host companies exist at all levels of service and their prices reflect this. Some are even free but you will probably have to put up with seeing adds on your site, or slow, less reliable service, or limited space or features, or all these combined.
A serious site will be hosted on a paid server. How much you should pay depends on what you plan to do on your site and your budget, of course. Most small to medium sites with the usual requirements shouldn't have to pay more than $90 to $130 per year for web hosting services. (You may get by with less, if you shop around and are willing to compromise a little.) Most web hosting services in this range are shared or distributed which means that a single machine may host many web sites along with yours. In this case, the storage space and serving capacity is shared among all the sites. If many of the sites that share a machine with your site are having a burst of traffic, your site may experience a slow down. It's a bit like living in multi-unit apartment building with a single water-heater. If everyone decides to take a shower at once, some may get cold or lukewarm spray. But if managed well, this ought to be rare. Your host should have strategies to deal with this and still provide you a high level of service. That's where quality of service comes in.
There is a higher level of service, not often needed by small to medium sites, but which I will mention in case you want speed, vast resources, and few compromises: grid and dedicated servers. Prices start around $240/year and go up from there. These services will guarantee that either you have a web server just for your site and no one else's or that bursts of traffic are handled by automatically enlisting the resources of multiple machines just when you need them.
Some basic factors to consider in choosing a web host are:
Uptime, which tends to range from 99.5% to 99.9%. That fraction of a percent can make a difference both in the perception of reliability and in the cost. Each increment of reliability beyond the 99.5% gets increasingly more difficult to guarantee.
Space or how much storage room you will have for your web pages. Amounts tend to be pretty generous these days, but watch out if you will be using close to the amount being offered. Most shared hosts assume you will never use anywhere near as much as they promise you. If you are one of those few who will, you may be treated like you are a burden to them. In that case, buy considerably more than you think you will ever need.
Bandwidth or the amount of traffic you are allowed to have in a specified amount of time, say, monthly. Again, amounts tend to be generous at least for most people's needs, but be aware, that if someone links to a page or image on your site and the linking site suddenly gets massive traffic, your site's bandwidth demand may also spike. If it does, and it exceeds your allotted bandwidth, you will either have to pay more or your site may be down temporarily. (Also, check that your host control panel permits you to lock out direct external links to any large files hosted on your space such as music, video, or high resolutions images. Someone may easily steal your bandwidth this way and quite literally knock your site out of commission in a hurry.)
Database access, usually MySQL. This is important if you plan on running a blog or some other kind of content management system.
Reputation. Check web host forums and host review sites. Be careful that these are not affiliated with the host you are considering or, if they are, that this is clearly disclosed.
—Victor Muñoz
owner, aporia web design
