Webhosting Services

Probably the most important choice you'll make when setting up your website is your choice of Webhosting Company. It's also the area in which there is the widest choice of services and the widest range of prices. However it's not a choice that's etched in stone. The nice thing about having your own domain is that if you don't like the first company you chose to host it, you can switch to another company and take the name with you. Visitors to your website won't know you've switched hosts, it's totally transparent to them.

There are several things you pay for when dealing with a Webhosting company. The first is the amount of disk space they allocate to you. Do you need 100MB or 1GB? How many files will you have on your website and how large will they be. Again this isn't etched in stone as most Webhosting companies have several different plans with different amounts of disk space and different prices. The same situation applies to the amount of data you expect your site to have to transfer. Do you need 1GB/month or 15GB/month? Again you can usually switch, so maybe the best idea is to start small, and move up to a bigger allocation if you need to.

Another factor to consider is what services you may need. Do you need to be able to run a database application, and if so does the Webhosting company support the database you want to use (e.g. MySQL or Access). Similarly does the site support PHP applications, ASP applications, Perl scripts etc. You may not need any of those to start with, but if you do make sure the host offers what you need. Again you can always switch hosts if later on you find you need something your current host can't offer.

Pricing for hosting runs from maybe a low end of $20/year for a tiny site with a small amount of data transfer, up to $1000/year for a fairly large and active site. For a huge site, the sky is the limit, with hosting fees of several thousand dollars a month. However the hosting fees for a small or even medium traffic photo website shouldn't amount to more than $100/year.

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