Hosting

Alternatives

What is hosting?

http://www.coffeecup.com/html-editor/help/what-is-hosting.396.html -- what is hosting?

http://www.tizag.com/webhost/ -- comprehensive guide that explains hosting, domains

and everything else you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

A shared "host" consists of four parts:

1. A share of a hard drive that's used to store your webpages and other files.

2. A shared HTML server that "serves" files when a browser sends a "get" request to your IP address.

3. An associated FTP server that lets you upload and download files directly between your computer and the storage space.

4. An IP address that your host company pays an annual fee to a registration agency to get.

Email:

Mosts hosting plans also provide email accounts under your domain name:

Advice:

In general, don't get your web hosting where you get your domain name.

http://whreviews.com/honest-host-award.htm -- a personal website

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,124771,00.asp - find a good host for your web page

http://www.hostgator.com/tips.shtml -- checking out a host

http://www.hostgator.com/moving.shtml -- how to go about switching hosts

Reviews:

Be wary of reviews. Review sites often tout hosts that pay for good reviews one way or another. The review sites below seem credible. The comments are my personal impressions about them.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters -- I'm confident this is a trustworthy source :-)

http://webhostmagazine.com/ -- seems reliable

http://whreviews.com/honest-host-award.htm -- see his list of "Honest Hosts"

http://webhostingtalk.com/ -- I've seen favorable comments on this review site.

http://www.hostingassured.findmyhosting.com/

http://www.hosting-review.com/

Buzz words:

Linux (Apache Web Server)

cPanel (standard -- makes switching hosts easier)

100 MB of storage (min)

5 GB bandwith (min)

Server Side Includes (SSI) -- not essential

Setup -- free is better :-)