Web Hosting Guide for you

If your site contains mostly text pages, you don't need much space and bandwidth. Most of web pages with a few images take between 10KB to 50KB disk spaces. If, say, your web site will have about 20 pages with an average size of 20KB, then the space needed is no more than 1MB. If your site contains images, sound files, movie clips, etc, you need a lot more space. Check the size of your multimedia files on your system to get an idea how much space you need.

A space of 10 to 100MB and a bandwidth of 1 to 10GB would meet the needs of a small site with light traffic. Business sites may need 100 MB or more space with 10 to 30 GB or more monthly transfer, depending on the expected traffic. If you have a database for your site, estimate how big it can grow.

CPU speed and RAM size, hard disk type, etc. are the main parameters to check for the servers. Most of the hosts are shared, which means you share the same web server with other web sites. Consider dedicated servers for high-traffic sites, strong security need, or specialized software.

Most servers run on either Linux or Microsoft Windows NT/2000 platforms. Linux operating system is more reliable and stable and less expensive. Windows are less stable, and more expensive to maintain. If you need a lot of Microsoft technology for your web site, you may consider Windows. Compare a few examples to see the feature differences at Linux Hosting and Windows Hosting.

Network speed depends on the capacity, but traffic load also affects the performance. A few bandwidth references are list below:

What features you need for your web site? Do you need scripting languages like CGI, PHP, ASP, etc.? What database you will use? Remember some features are only available on Windows, for example, Access and SQL Server databases. If you used FrontPage to build your site, make sure a linux host has FrontPage extensions installed.

It is important to get the type of support you need when you need it. E-mail support, chat support are common, you may need a phone number in case of emergency, and many of them don't have phone support. Check out the hour restrictions on support. FAQ pages to determine the support of the hosting company. You need best and fast web hosting support.

A web server can go down, most host has 99.9% uptime guarantee, make sure there are some sort of monitoring available, and what are the backup scheme.

You get what you paid for. There are free hosting, but many require advertising on your site, and don't provide reliable support. Be ware 'unlimited', that's more a marketing term, be sure to read the term and conditions of the host, usually you will not get unlimited space, for example. Also, remember that quality support is expensive, while disk space are very cheap. Also, don't overlook set up fee and domain fee. After determining the features you need for you site, find several hosts that fit your need, go to their sites to check the details, get a feel for their professionalism, and check out some of their customers and test customer service if possible. We'd like to recommend a host in the top ten list.