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Related Articles + Define a site in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Related Links |
Build your own website from scratch. 11. Get a hosting provider. First of all a hosting provider is the company that yields you with a virtual space in the net and most importantly a physical storage space on a internet capable server. There are many important points to look out for when searching for a hosting provider, but it is important to know your storage and transference needs as well. So the first step is to make a list of the features that your site uses, the total storage needs and the approximate transfer needs. Some of the features that are available are: SMTP (Web Mail); PHP, ASP, Java, Perl and CGI (Scripting Languages); Page Templates; Statistics and Counters; FrontPage extensions; FTP (File Transfer Protocol); etc. Full List of web Features. Once you have a list of all the features you'll need, you need to check the total space you'll need. If your site is somewhat content fixed or has mostly text content you'll probably need less than 100MB, some people might even get around with 25MB or so. Take in account the possible growth in a period of 6 months when doing your calculations. The next issue will be the available bandwidth; this is the total amount of data you will be able to transfer from the server to the visitors in a given period, usually a month. So if the bandwidth is 1 GB a month, you will only be able to transfer 1GB in that month, and when the limit is reached, your site will be unavailable for the rest of the month. From my experience, a small site with mostly text content, graphic layout and around 250 daily visits will use up about 1 ~ 1.2GB a month. One of the biggest issues is if there it is necessary to get paid hosting or if free hosting is enough. For beginners, free hosting will do, with some thorough searching you will be able to find a good free hosting provider. One thing to remember is that nothing is really free, so those who claim to be *free* hosting providers will just charge you differently, maybe not money, but they will put ads on your pages or force you to participate in some forums or to promote their services and the list of scams goes on. So if you are building a webpage for some serious business you might want to try out your web developing skills on a free hosting service, but seriously consider upgrading to a paid hosting provider as soon as you are satisfied with the page and are ready to move on to a serious enterprise. Most hosting providers will have some sort of signup process that requires you to fill a form, select a user name and a password, choose the signup plan and much other stuff. It is a straightforward process that shouldn't be much complicated. Once you have done that, you are ready to proceed. |
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