Website hosting

So you have your domain name, now what do you do? You now need a server somewhere to store the information that is contained in your website. Here you have 2 options:

Hosting it yourself

Hosting the site yourself removes any limitations so you get the choose the server it is hosted on, and have full control over the operating system and software running on the server. There will never be any barrier to getting under the hood and modifying things to suit your site. Unfortunately though hosting a site yourself is expensive. There is the cost of the server and also the cost of the broadband connection. If you intend to have a very popular site you will need alot of bandwidth to be able to cope with the traffic visiting the site.

In general, I believe (unless you are a large company with alot of traffic or if you need to install applications that hosting companies won't allow) that having your site hosted by a hosting company is more cost effective.

Hosting for the rest of us

The alternative to having your own server is to have your site hosted by someone. There are several factors to be considered when choosing someone to host your site:

• Cost- there are many hosting plans out there so shop around. It doesn't matter where in the world your site is hosted so you can have your site hosted in the USA or wherever. I would refer to support a local company and have it hosted in Australia but I am yet to find a competitive plan from an Australian hosting company so if you find one let me know.
• Uptime guarantee- alot of hosts will give a guarantee that your site will actually be up and active for close to all the time (usually a 99% uptime guarantee). This is a good thing. You don't want to have your site hosted and then find that the server is down half the time and so half of the time people can't access your website
• Services which are supported- Your hosting server will need to run programs such as PHP and mySQL. Check that the services you need will be suported by your host.
• Databases- Most sites now require a database backend. Not all hosts include these in their basic setups so watch for this. You will most likely require at least 1 MySQL database
• Bandwidth and storage space- Most provide adequate bandwidth and storage for the average site but it is something to be considered.

I currently use and recommend Hostmonster. They fulfill all of the above criteria, I can host multiple sites using the one account and they have good support which can be accessed via a ticketing system or through instant messaging. They are also very cheap.

Once you have chosen your host they will tell you where to point your domain name servers. You then get your domain name registration to point to the host and then you have somewhere to host your site.

One last point- linux or windows- the majority of people use a linux host. Linux hosting is not scary, it works and is adequate for the needs of most sites. Web hosts will use a gui such as cpanel which lets you manage your site so you won't need to use command line. Windows hosting is more expensive and in my opinion not worth the extra money.