What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host? The
criteria for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are
slightly different although they do overlap. Since thesitewizard.com caters to
people who might be looking for either of these types of hosting, I will deal
with each of these in turn. If you are only interested in one of these types,
you can simply skip to the appropriate section. I have written these sections to
be as independant of the other as possible.
Choosing a Free Web Host
1.Advertising
Most free web hosts impose advertising on your website. This is done to cover
the costs of providing your site the free web space and associated services.
Some hosts require you to place a banner on your pages, others display a window
that pops up everytime a page on your site loads, while still others impose an
advertising frame on your site. There is really no hard and fast rule which is
to be preferred: some people hate a pop-up window, other webmasters dislike
having to stuff banner codes onto their pages, and many people cannot stand an
advertising frame (which may cause problems when you submit your website to
search engines). Whichever method is used, check that you're comfortable with
the method.
Note that free web hosts without forced advertisements aren't necessarily good
news. Without a viable means to recover the costs of running their server, many
of them close with alarming frequency.
2.Amount of web space
Does it have enough space for your needs? If you envisage that you will expand
your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most sites
use less than 5MB of web space. Indeed, at one time, one of my other web sites,
thefreecountry.com, used less than 5MB of space although it had about 150 pages
on the site. Your needs will vary, depending on how many pictures your pages
use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.
3.FTP access
(In case you're wondering: What is FTP?)
Some free hosting providers only allow you to design your page with their online
builder. While this is useful for beginners, do you have the option to expand
later when you become experienced and their online page builder does not have
the facility you need? FTP access, or at the very least, the ability to upload
your pages by email or browser, is needed. Personally, I feel FTP access is
mandatory, except for the most trivial site.
4.File type and size limitations
Watch out for these. Some free hosts impose a maximum size on each of the files
you upload (including one with a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file
types you can upload to HTML and GIF/JPG files. If your needs are different, eg,
if you want to distribute your own programs on your pages, you will have to look
elsewhere.
5.Reliability and speed of access
This is extremely important. A site that is frequently down will lose a lot of
visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and he tries to
access it but find that it is down, he'll simply go down the list to find
another site. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors (and for you
too, when you upload your site). How do you know if a host is reliable or fast?
If you can't get feedback from anyone, one way is to try it out yourself over a
period of time, both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it is
free, so you can always experiment with it.
6.Perl and PHP
(In case you're wondering: What is PHP and Perl?)
This is not particularly crucial nowadays for a free web host, since there are
so many free script hosting services available that provide counters, search
engines, forms, polls, mailing lists, etc, without requiring you to dabble with
Perl or PHP scripts.
However if you really want to do it yourself, with the minimum of advertising
banners from these free providers, you will need either PHP or Perl access. Note
that it is not enough to know they provide PHP or Perl access: you need to know
the kind of environment your scripts run under: is it so restrictive that they
are of no earthly use? For PHP scripts, does your web host allow you to use the
mail() function? For Perl scripts, do you have access to sendmail or its
workalike?
7.Bandwidth allotment
Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your
website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic
images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per
day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you
a bill). It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of bandwidth,
since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the
number of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB
traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page
and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting
out. Your mileage, however, will vary.
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