Web Hosting Today

Websites today, are identities of both individuals and companies from all over the world. Everyone does their best to design them to be catchy and easy to use, but when they are done with this, they need to give a place for it, accessible on the World Wide Web. It is just like renting office space, only in this case, it's virtual.

Web hosting is the providing of space for storage of a website on a server with internet connectivity. In other words, web hosting is leasing out of space on a server by a web hosting company to a customer who intends to upload his website on it. Now, as a customer, one has to check for various specifications before he chooses the hosting provider. Lets pin point a few these:

1)Is the server reliable?

You would never want people to come to your web address and find the server down. So you must check if the company is reliable and can handle the kind of traffic that may come to your website and also, be 'up' all the time. Many of the companies guarantee 99%+ up-time, but still a check is must.

2)How much space am I getting?

Individual sites don't really need much space for uploading. Even a few megabytes can do. But company websites, do need a lot of web space based on the number of pages and the content of the website. So, the space being provided should preferably be more than ample.

3)How much is it going to cost?

This is always the big question. No matter how less the cost, there always cheaper options available on the internet. The price can range from $1.5 to $10 a month, depending on the service provider. So, if you are done with checking on other specifications you may just want to check this out.

4)What kind of software the server uses?

This becomes important when your website does more than being static. If you have interactivity, forms, huge number of files and lots of information transaction happening on your website you will need strong database and management system. You may need to know if the server supports e-ecommerce, multi-domain, php hosting or if it offers email id's attached to the domain, if you are looking for these functions. This is worth a mention, because the quality of these services does vary a lot from provider to provider.

5)Do I get customer care all the time?

If your site hits the jam for some reason and you don't know what to do, you will like to have the web hosting provider to help you out. So, its great to check if the provider offer 24/7 customer care or maybe only during office timings.

Web hosting is provided by websites like yahoo, enom, networksolutions, xinet, buy domains, dream host etc. Well, there are thousands of them now, but now that we know the points mentioned above, it will easier to choose. Happy Uploading!!