subject: Things You Should Consider Before Choosing Your Web Hosting Company [print this page] It does not matter if this is the first website you've ever built or your thousandth: the time has come to choose a web hosting company. You might have never chosen hosting before. You might just be tired of the host you've been using for a while and feel the need for a change. Whatever your reasons for needing hosting, make sure that you take the time you need to make an informed choice. After all, this project is your newest "baby". Your hosting company should meet all of your needs. Here are some tips to help you choose a company that is perfect for your project.
Define the parameters of your project before you begin searching for a good web hosting company. Do some research to figure out how much traffic you can expect, how much space your site will take up, etc. Figuring out things like this will help you better define your hosting search. A good example of this is that if you think you will immediately see a bunch of traffic on your site as soon as you put it up, you'll want to find hosting that offers lots of bandwidth for reasonable pricing. Finding a provider to give you the server space you need for good rates is also important, especially if your site will be large and include lots of graphics and images. On the other hand, if you want just a small site you won't need all of the bells and whistles that a more extensive and popular site will need. Figuring out what your site is about now will save you valuable search time later on. Are you building one website or many sites that will be networked together? If you only want to build a single site you have plenty of cheap options available to you. If you want to build a network of sites you should choose hosting that will allow you to put several domain names on your server space. Many hosting companies will limit the amount of sub and add on domains you can have. The more complicated your project is, the more complicated your hosting needs will be. The goal is to find hosting that gives you a wide variety of options without charging you an arm and a leg to access them.
What do you think about advertising? Have you thought about using your website to put up your own advertising? Would you mind using space on your site to display someone else's advertising? Answering these questions will help you figure out which kind of hosting is best for your project. There are a lot of free hosting providers out there who will give you space in exchange for your running ads for their company and clients-which works well if you do not care one way or the other about advertising. Paid hosting is also available for people who do not wish to showcase outside advertising or who want to sell their own advertising space for a profit. Most paid hosting plans don't have any rules about selling advertising on websites. Other hosts prohibit ads on sties. Make sure you read the fine print about this before you choose your hosting company. The amount of space you need and the cost you want to pay for it are both important factors in choosing hosting providers. Make sure you take your time when you make your decision so that you can look at all of the options you want to explore. What we mean is that you shouldn't rush your decision-instead take all the time you need to figure out what you actually need before you start searching for a hosting provider. When you take the time to figure out what you want and need, you immediately start to narrow your search which can help make the process easier.
