Step 2.0 – Website Hosting

Continued from Step 1 …

Your choice of a web hosting organisation is a more critical choice than your choice of domain name registrar in the previous step. The hosting company is the only way that your website will ever make it to the outside world on the world wide web! [Note: it is possible for you to do your own hosting with your own server(s), your own connection to the Internet, etc., but that is definitely NOT within the scope of Newbie knowledge level!]

Since you’re just starting, you probably will want to keep your costs to the minimum, and hosting is one place where a lot of costs can accumulate if you’re not careful. There are generally five types of free (or almost free) hosting accounts:

1. ISP and major Internet presences: Your Internet service provider (”ISP”) is the company that provides your access to the Internet. Most of the larger and some of the smaller ISP’s provide free web pages (mostly not sites with a set of pages) for personal use, and maybe for use by small businesses as well. Microsoft, Yahoo-GeoCities, Google, and other major Internet presences also do this. What you will be doing here is not really a web site, but a web page, even though it may have more than one page (for example, “www.my-ISP.com/myhomepage.htm” is a page). You don’t have control over the entire content and how it functions. You also may be required to have advertising on your page as a part of the deal, even if it is a non-commercial page…

2. A second source of free web pages (not sites) is organisations and clubs. As an example, the [imaginary] Dobermann Pinscher Society of East Bohunk has its own website, and offers its members free pages where they can advertise their own dogs or kennels or dog grooming services or pooper-scooper products or whatever. Again, these are pages, not web sites. You have one advantage here if you have a specific subject in mind and don’t want to put in too much work – you will be grouped together with a number of like-minded people, and have a drawing power for surfers that you would not have if you ran a web page or website alone.

3. A new source of something like web pages is the social site organisations on the web that provide space for your own use (MySpace, Yuwie, YouTube, FaceBook, Squidoo, etc. – there are many and the number seems to grow daily), but these are NOT websites! They’re not even really web pages, they’re mini-pages, more like electronic chicken coops or pigeon holes. Sorry, guess I’m not very positive on these things, however, the search engines seem to LOVE social sites (more about search engines later)! If you’re looking for quick “construction time” and are not very choosey about what you put on the Internet, one (or more) of these is probably the right thing for you.

4. A fourth source is also relatively new: blogs. Blogs (by now you probably know that this is an abbreviation of “web logs”) tend to fall somewhere between websites and pages. They are very popular right now – also with the search engines – and you have more-or-less two choices on how to do a blog – you can go to one of the more popular free blog providers, such as Google’s Blogger (www.blogspot.com), or you can “do it yourself” with a free online kit (their famous 5-minute installation) from WordPress (wordpress.org) or similar (like this site). If you want to go this direction, search your favorite search engine for “blog provider” and similar terms until you find what you like. One of the important differences between the two types is that the first one operates on commercial software and the blog is hosted on their site (which means that you do not have complete control of your blog), while the second is open-source software that you may host on your domain name or on the WP site. We have some of each, but are moving in the direction of WordPress blogs hosted on one of our hosting services. It’s possible to find blog hosting packages (we use DownTown Hosting) that are more advantageous if you only want to put up blogs – they have a one-click WordPress installation from the control panel, sufficient data bases, optimised software for bloggers, and optimised prices. We will talk more about blogs in a later post.

5. The fifth source is exactly what it says – free website hosting. There are not many organisations that really do free hosting, but there are a few. We propose 000 Webhost, and we do that because they go about their business without hype. They tell you up front that they give you the free website in the hope that you will be happy with their service, and they hope that you eventually will upgrade to a paying hosting program. It’s one of their forms of advertising – freebies! We have one account with one website there now; you can see it at The Hesser Family. I don’t think you will see any difference from one located on a host with fees – in fact, we moved the website from another (paid) hosting company with NO change in quality or appearance.

There is a second organisation that we also recommend; it is not 100% free – there is a one-time signup fee, but with no continuing payments. After signing up (which can also provide future income if you promote the site at all), you can get a free domain name and free website hosting for one year. This is called My MLM Toolkit, the same as above in Domains.

IF you want to build your own website, and do it for a minimum expenditure, the free website hosting companies are the way to go. Just a note of caution before you blast off into the search machines to find them all – if you can, try to get references from real users. After all, this is YOUR website we’re talking about here, and if it’s down (off-line) for 65% of the time, or it’s so slow that you can’t even upload your website, that’s not going to be much of an asset to you. This also applies to hosting by your geek friend down the street who has his own server and Internet connection – ask him when his system is on line, and what kind of down-time he has before you agree to host with him!

It’s also important to look at the way your new website will be built and controlled. Many hosting companies use Linux or Unix as their operating system (Windows is generally the other choice). Unless you’re using some fancy software to create your website, Linux is usually less expensive for essentially the same service (lower = 0 licensing fees versus megabucks for Microsoft). Many of the Linux hosting services use an interface (between you and the hosting servers) called “C Panel”. The function is necessary but “C Panel” itself is NOT a prerequisite. However, if you plan on using more than one hosting company, it is convenient – you won’t have to relearn how to control your website each time you go to a different server. If you go this way and you want to build a blog, it’s handy to have a hosting organisation that provides a one-click blog installation – look for this specifically, or in something called “Fantastico” (a software management utility) in the control panel.

One thing that will be interesting for you if you don’t already have your own software (and most of us don’t) is that your potential hosting company typically will provide some software for building websites as a part of their service package – most do and this is usually included for free. The software can range from simple systems for what you will probably be doing on your first website to more professional systems that would be prohibitively expensive if you were to buy one of them outright.

So, what did we learn here?

1. If you want to build a real website, do it on a real hosting company
2. Otherwise, use a prepared site or page that suits what you want to do and save LOTS of time!
3. Look for the things in a hosting company that YOU need

Next step in our series is Step 2.1 – “Free” Websites, and it’s coming soon . . .