Build Your Own Website

Web hosting goes by several names:  Hosting, domain hosting, webhosting, web site hosting, web domain hosting, and probablyothers.  They are all the same thing. What you are doing here is renting space on a Hosting Service’s computer(s,) and that space is where your site will live.

There are thousands of web hosts these days. Some tiny, some in the garage (or bedroom,) some pretty big (1and1.com.) Some actually rent servers and or space from bigger companies and resell it, others have their own hardware.

They all have hosting packages that contain various features, usually ranging from a an inexpensive starter packages to expensive dedicated servers. Which one you pick will depend on your needs, but the starter package is a good first stop for most people. Skip the expensive packages for now, you can always move up later.

Ordering is really pretty simple, but let me cover a couple of definitions first:

• Domain Names: The name of your site. Most hosting services will let you register a domain name when you sign up for their service, which is convenient.
• Web space: This is the amount of space on their computers that you can use for your stuff. While 100 megs will cover all the web pages you’re ever likely to put up there are other things that use that space. The two biggies are email and your web statistics logs. Unless you’re running some massive picture gallery or a site with a zillion pages you won’t have huge space requirements. 500 megs of space will cover everything you will do for awhile.
• Bandwidth: This is a measure of how much data/stuff your server can send over a month and is usually measured in gigabtes. Every page or image on your site takes a certain amount of space. Someone comes to your site and looks at four pages. You’ve served them four pages of data. If each page is 100 kilobytes in size then you’ve server 400 kilobytes of data.
  10,000 megs (10 gigs) of bandwith is a minimum, but if you start getting lots of traffic you’ll want to upgrade. We have three sites that greatly exceed the 10 gigs mark.
• Cpanel: Cpanel is the interface that you use to manage your site. There are a lot of different user interfaces out there, but Cpanel is pretty common and we like it a lot.
• Fantastico: is a nifty little device. It will let you install software (scripts,) such as a WordPress blog, into your webspace with a couple of clicks. It can save a lot of work. I believe it only comes with cpanel setups, other systems might have something similar. Anyone care to comment on that?

Shared Hosting: this is hosting where several accounts share one computer/server and all of it’s total resources. This is perfectly fine for most websites. Big sites with a lot of traffic will want to move up to a ….

Dedicated Server: This baby is all yours. One account, one computer, and the hosting company handles all the hardware issues. A dedicated server costs a lot more and is far beyond what most sites need. Build that big site that gets lots of traffic and you might want one, though.

There are other alternatives, depending on the host. A Virtual Private Server is one. It’s a cross between shared and dedicated. Meaning that you get more control and more resources, but you don’t get the whole machine to yourself.

Ok, Here we go…

Most hosting services will be very similar in how you buy hosting. It’s pretty straightforward and is much like buying anything else off the web.

1. Figure your your needs and pick a package that works for you. Usually the starter shared hosting package will be fine, but if you need more then go for it.
2. Look for the section on their site which says, web hosting or shared hosting. You will generally see three or more package choices. Pick the one that fits your needs. There will be a button or link that says “add to cart” or something similar. Click that.
3. You may hit a page which asks you to create an account. Make sure all the contact info you enter is real and that your email is one you will check on occasion.
4. Most likely the next page is where you finalize your package choice and enter your payment info. Keep in mind that this will be a monthly payment. You’re renting space on the system, not buying it.
5. Once payment is made the host will get to work setting up your account. Sometimes it’s not instant, but it should be live in a few hours, tops.

When the account is live you’ll get an email with complete instructions for accessing that account. That’s why you need to give them one that you actually check.

Most hosting services are pretty similar to the above. Pick your package and order. Some will offer some added bells and whistles and some will give you a free, or greatly discounted, domain name if you order that domain name through their service.

I prefer to order my domains elsewhere, then point them at the new host. Use whichever method works best for you.

Welcome back!

Tags for this post: hosting, hosting service, web hosts

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