subject: How To Choose A Good Web Hosting Plan [print this page] Lets get the first part cleared up; if you think your website is small, and wont need too much bandwidth/disk space, if your website is not something really serious, or business-related, then what youre probably looking for is a free web host. They have enough facilities to satisfy your needs. These are some common features on free hosting:
Limited storage and limited bandwidth
File Transfer (FTP)
MySql database
Php, JavaScript
On the other hand, if you want a professional website, you need to get a paid web hosting service.
But how to choose the best web hosting plan for you?
One of the most important factors that help you decide is: how much disk space/bandwidth will you be using? Decide on that, first thing. Depending on the size of your website, you can decide what kind of plan will suit you best.
If your website is small (example: most of your average blogs) which means, if it doesnt need audio/video uploads, then you dont need a lot of bandwidth.
If you website is big, though (like yahoo.com, or youtube.com) if you need to upload audio/video files, and if you have downloads and lot of pages, then you have to make sure to check what the company means by unlimited bandwidth. Look in their Terms of Service. This is where they generally specify the limit of their unlimited bandwidth. If this is the case, then choose your plan based on what exactly your bandwidth requirements are.
Make sure you know what all of these are so that you can choose which you need and which you dont, and get a suitable plan.
FTP File Transfer Protocol. Its a standard network protocol used to copy files from one host to another.
PHP Hypertext Processor is a widely-used, general purpose scripting language.
Perl is a programming language which, again, is essential for the proper design and functioning of your website.
.htaccess hypertext access is the name of a directory-level configuration file which is useful especially if youre using a Unix, or similar operating system.
SSH Secure Shell is a network protocol that allows for secure exchange of data between two networked devices.
TELNET is also a network protocol that enables interactive text-oriented communication on the internet or local area networks.
MySQL it helps in data storage and logging of user data.
Crontabs it is a configuration file that specifies shell commands to run periodically on a given schedule.
If youre planning on doing business through your website, then it would help to have an SSL shopping cart.
Also make sure you know how many email addresses youre getting through the domain name of your website. Furthering this option, see if you can set a preset message to automatically reply to a sender (called autoresponder), and if you can retrieve all of your mail with the email software, and if it can be forwarded to your current email address.
And lastly, make sure you can track the progress of your website with logs. All good hosts will provide you with the ability to access your logs via download.
