How Do You Choose a Web Hosting Service

By Chang Seward

Before choosing a web hosting service it is advisable to design your web site and try its performance using browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla/ Firefox, Opera etc. Your browser will display the web page so you can determine how it works. By testing the web site offline will ensure that all related bugs are rectified. Now that you have completed your web design all files connected with your design will be available on your computer. The next task is to get these files on to the Internet. To facilitate this you require a company in whose servers you can upload your web pages. You also require a domain name so that you can access your web site using this domain name. These are not difficult; a large number of providers are available with a variety of plans. Before you select a company you should identify what you require from this service. Factors that require consideration is bandwidth, server storage space, e-mail boxes, operating system, speed and performance requirement, scalability and manageability. Some of these issues are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Bandwidth

The term digital bandwidth or bandwidth used in computer networking refers to the capacity for a given system to transfer data over a connection. Unit of measurement for this is a bit rate expressed in bits/sec or kb/sec or Mb/sec. On the other hand, the term "bandwidth" is often used to describe the amount of data transferred to or from the web site or server within a prescribed period of time. This is nothing but web site traffic or data transfer in a specified period. Normally hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 500 gigabytes per month. If the total amount of data downloaded from the website in a particular month reaches this limit, the servers may be set to shut off further public access to the site. To give an idea, a MP3 song is about 4 MB whereas a movie could be as high as 900 MB.

It is possible to estimate the bandwidth requirement taking into account the bytes required for each of your web page including photographs, average number of people who are likely to visit your website everyday etc. Persons visiting your web site and clicking on that page will be using that many bytes. You should also provide certain extra traffic that can come to your site. You should constantly monitor the bandwidth consumed; in case the consumption exceeds your purchased bandwidth you should increase your bandwidth with your web hosting service provider. Normally most of the companies allow this increase without much of a problem; however they might not be happy to reduce the bandwidth.

E-Mail Boxes

This depends on the number of persons for whom you would like to give an exclusive email box at your web site using your domain name. For example, suppose your domain is www.widgetsunlimited.com and you have e-mail address joeschmoo@widgetsunlimited.com you can count this as one e-mail box for your site. It is advisable to have a general e-mail box to allow for expansion.

Server Storage Space

This is the space your page will take up on the web server. This can be estimated by listing all the items that will go onto the webpage including pictures. Addition of the bytes of all pages will give you the amount of space you need which is a minimum for your website hosting. You should not buy exact requirement of space; you may add, delete and modify your website and all of these will change space required for storage. You should ensure flexibility in storage space by providing extra space in your plan to account for additions, changes and upgrades. You will find that you will be in a mess if you do not provide for expansion. If you're going to host only home pages for your typical Web surfer, you won't need a lot of room to store data. But if you're going to host an e-commerce site that takes in thousands of orders daily, the server hosting the site will need room to store the database of user information and transactions.

Other factors that require consideration are operating system, speed and performance requirement, scalability and manageability. You should consider all these aspects and evaluate web hosting services and decide on a good plan for you.

If you found this article interesting and helpful please visit webhosts101.com for additional information and articles for webmasters to help them design and host their web sites.