Your website and where to put it. Hosting services

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Your website and where to put it. Hosting services

There is no such thing as a free lunch or a free host. Remember that. Why would a company let you use their expensive computer equipment and data lines for nothing? If you use a "free" host you may find ads popping up all over your site, you may find you are suddenly faced with rules that were not there when you started, you may find that all the people who have learned where your site is won't know how to find it if the "free" company begins doing things you don't like, or goes out of business and you have to take your site elsewhere.

Companies that provide internet access often include "free" website hosting. This is very clever. It locks you in to their internet access service, since your website will vanish if you stop using their internet access service. Once you have your own domain name you can take it with you to any hosting company you chose, and you can easily move it whenever you want to.

If you haven't already done so, be sure to see the section on naming your site and owning your own domain name.

Companies that register your name for you may want to also host your site. You can do it that way if you want to, but it isn't any easier, and you probably won't be able to get the best hosting deal that way.

There are several levels of hosting service:

"free hosting" - to be avoided.
"shared hosting" - this is what most people use.
"dedicated server" - expensive, and more than you need.

Shared hosting is simply using someone else's computer to store your pages on. Hosting companies have many computers that are permanently connected to the internet, and many websites on each computer.

Most shared hosting companies offer similar packages. The differences are usually in:

The amount of space allowed for storing all your pages and all the pictures and music files, and anything else you have on your site.
The amount of "bandwidth" - how much data is allowed to be transferred from the hosting computer to your visitor's computer. A site with a lot of pictures or music files, or one with thousands of visitors will have to worry about this.
Customer service - how often the computer is "down" and how much they care when you have a problem.
Price, of course. To some extent price and service will be related. A very low price means they won't be able to afford many support people. But a high price doesn't necessarily guarantee they will hire them.

Some Hosting Companies I think you should consider:

I recently came across TH Media who take a great deal of pride in their customer service. If anything goes wrong they are right there to take care of it. And they are willing to spend time helping their customers understand what they are doing. They are my first choice at this time.

These companies all have reasonable pricing, and all the extras you are likely to need. This information is from their websites in early 2002. If any of these interest you, visit their sites and see if the details are still correct.	*Storage*	*Monthly Allowed Data Transfer*	*3 month total including all charges*	*12 month total including all charges*
iPowerWeb seems to be a very good choice if you have a lot of traffic.	150 MB	15GIG	$59.95	$95.40 (plus free domain)
Lunarpages.com Looks promising but I have no personal experience with them.	200 MB	20GIG	$29.85	$95.40
Pow Web has one standard package. 200MB and 12Gigs of data transfer is enough for almost anyone.	200MB	12GIG	$43	$93.24 (plus 2 extra free months)