Steps to getting your website:
About hosting
Web hosting is literally the physical space on a web server where the files which make up your website are located.
Web hosting companies vary enormously in their quality, downtime (i.e how often their machines crash), the services they provide (server side scripting, email, space, bandwidth, statistics, the list goes on).
You can use this as a rough guideline:
Shared hosting: your website is on the same physical machine as others
Small website:
- 50 MB storage
- 1 GB bandwidth per month
- 1-5 email addresses
- FTP access
Small - medium website:
- 250MB storage
- 2 GB bandwidth per month
- Some database functionality (ODBC, MySQL)
- FTP access
Medium website:
- 250 - 500 MB storage
- 2 - 5 GB bandwidth per month
- MySQL/SQL Server database
- FTP access
Larger website:
- 1 - 5 GB storage
- 5 - 50 GB bandwidth per month
- Multiple databases
- Multiple FTP accounts
Most people start about the small - medium mark and upgrade when necessary. Hosting costs can be anything from around £50 + VAT per annum to £500 + VAT per annum.
The higher end options are:
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting can be very expensive: an entire machine will run one or more of your websites, often managed by the hosting company. You will often have to pay for software for it etc.
Virtual hosting
This is a fairly new idea. With virtual hosting a single server can run as though it is 2 or more machines by dividing its resources between the various instances of the operating system. It is often cheaper than a single dedicated server, but offers the same sort of control as though it were a single machine.