About Website Hosting
Find a home for your website on the internet

What is a Web Host

• Be sure that they provide 24/7 support. You should be able to contact them anytime day or night. You should be able to maintain your website whenever it is most convenient for you, not for them.
  
  
• Don't sign-up for more than you need. Start with the cheapest plan and work your way up if necessary. Often web hosting companies try to get you to subscribe to more services than needed and of course this will needlessly increase your expenses.
  
  
• Do not transfer your domain name registration to them. If you do then they will have full rights to the name and you will have no further say in the matter. The domain name will belong to them not you. Should you want to change web hosts in the future you will have to change your domain name and lose those visitors who have come to know you by it.

Free vs Private Web Hosting

The free services also limit the amount of memory space available to you as well as impose many restrictions as to file sizes, types, etc.. For a business site this can pose problems but a personal site might use this service quite well as long as you are not seeking much exposure.

Also, the search engines tend to rank free websites rather low. It is difficult to obtain a good ranking on the major search engines with a web address that is several layers deep. Such an example would be, www.freehost.com/id number/your website. Your website is not an upper level address but a second or third level one. This makes it difficult for the search engine spyders to find you.

Private Web Hosting
Private hosting services charge a fee for their services but afford a greater range of freedom for the webmaster. The amount of storage space and website support is limited only by your pocketbook. However, these services vary widely in the fees that they charge and the quality of their services. You need to do some shopping around if you a looking for the best value.

One of the most important things about the web host that you select is its reputation. If they host spammer sites and other questionable customers your standing in search engine results can suffer right along with theirs.

Go to an independent web host ranking service such as Webhostingratings and do some homework. You will not be sorry that you did.