HostGuide

If you want an web site in the internet, no matter if it’s for business purposes or just a blog, it’s very important to know what types of resources you will be needing. This knowing can save you money for services you most likely won’t be using and most importantly frustration of something that does not work.

The first question is What Type of Website are You Building ?

Will you web site be a Blog, Online buisness web site, E-commerce web site? Will this website be a simple forum or web site with lots of dynamic content? These are all key questions, since as mentioned above you must meet certain requirements in order to successfully build your website.  For example, if you want to build an E-commersce web site first you need to find a SSL provider. Sometimes the hosting company can offer you SSL packages or stand-alone SSL certificates at very affordable prices. The SSL is important for your clients since it protects the confidential information(such as credit card numbers) to be stolen. You should check if your future host provides the Secure Socket Layer(SSL) before going to the next step, which is actually purchasing the package.

An other example is if you are building a personal Blog or something similar that is simple compared to the E-commerce web site. Then you must ensure that the host provides PHP, Perl/CGI Scripting and Database support such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. Also, make sure they have one of the latest versions of these software since the applications you might be running on your hosting could require latest versions of PHP, MySQL and etc.

The other important question is How much allocated disc space you will need?

Again, if you are running a small and static website you shouldn’t need much disc space. However, if you are planning to upload much multimedia content such as videos and pictures, make sure you have plenty of disc space on your host. Another example for a high-demanding of disc space web site is business site or some other dynamic web site, which will have big database. You should watch for such things like what;s the database storage because database storage and disc space can be quite different things on some hosts.

The third important question you might ask is How much traffic should I need?

To be honest, this totally depends on your website. Large, business websites can suck up huge traffic every month. The unlimited bandwith package however might be a bit more costly than the one with limitations and if your website is small like some hobby website or personal site, you’ll probably do fine with these limitations. You can determine the average traffic by the things displayed on you web page aswell. For example, one small logo is about 5kb and if you have multiple banners/pictures in your website their total size won’t be that much. However if you receive many hits per day this size significantly adds up to your total bandwith. Another example are forums. Forums tend to use alot of traffic since there are multiple hits as well as transmitted data per user.

One last thing you should watch for is The Hosting Features You Will Need.

The most important things you should watch are the features a host provides. In most cases, you will need the languages PHP, Perl/CGI, Java installed on your server as well as database support from software like MySQL, PosgreSQL or Microsoft SQL. These days most hosts support these features, but you should watch for the version of these features since the newest software you will be installing will require new versions of the above mentioned features. The other thing you will need as a feature is the FTP support, because that is the easiest way to upload your website on the web quickly and effectively. SSH support is advanced feature which costs more and we do not recommend using it, unless you don’t know what you are doing. One last feature which again most hosts provide is the POP3/Email, but you want to check out if it is available anyways.