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Chapter 3 - Hosting?

I'm sure if I tried, I can easily write a book on hosting. But for the sake of time and energy, here's the Cliff Note's Version:

Finding a good hosting provider for your website is like looking for a good home for your furniture. A FREE hosting provider will have its own rules and limitations and you should ALWAYS read the fine print. (Just like moving into an apartment complex).

Now simply because you're paying MONEY for a hosting provider doesn't mean it'll get better. You must also read the fine print to see what you will get for what you pay for.

Some hosting providers (such as Geocities) will charge an arm and a leg for paid hosting. But if you're new to the web and don't know what "expensive" is, you should definitely do some research before you start. Paying $20 here or $25 there a month doesn't seem like much at first. But over the course of say 5 years, that can definitely add up. So you must always be on the lookout.

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Why should I even pay for hosting?

The #1 reason webmasters pay for hosting is bandwidth!!! Bandwidth is how much capacity your visitors can download from your website. Most FREE hosting providers give you 1 Gigabyte per month for bandwidth.

If you have a popular website, 1 Gigabyte won't be enough. Gemele.com uses an average of 10 Gigabytes of bandwidth per month. Which is the reason I switched over to paid hosting. I would have stayed with my FREE hosting at Tripod (even though it has annoying ads) but I needed BANDWIDTH!

When I was hosting at Tripod, my domain name wasn't Gemele.com. It was http://sunyee.tripod.com/ Which leads me to reason #2 of why webmasters pay for hosting.

In order to have your own domain name (like Gemele.com or Designcove.com), you generally need to pay for hosting. Of course, there are hosting providers that will HOST your DOMAIN name for FREE, but you MUST BE CAREFUL!!! Some of the fine print might say that the hosting provider has ULTIMATE control over your domain name. If anything goes wrong, they are the ones that will OWN YOUR DOMAIN NAME, NOT YOU!

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How does this relate to the PHP Management System?

Something as fancy as a PHP Management System won't be provided by a FREE hosting provider. A PHP Management System requires access to PHP and a SQL Database. Something that only a PAID hosting provider can provide.

For example, let's look at a paid hosting provider by InsiderHosting (a host that Gemele.com used to use).

At the very top of their hosting plans page, they IMMEDIATELY list what websites hosted with them gets:

RedHat
Apache *
PHP *
MySQL *
Zlib
cgi scripts *
Perl *

All the ones with the (*) are very important if you are interested in using a PHP Website Management System to design your website.

Another important factor to consider for paid hosting is how much Web Space (measured in megabytes) and Bandwidth (measured in Gigabytes) you are getting.

1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte

PHP Website Management System takes up more bandwidth because all editing for the webpages are done DIRECTLY on the Internet. So each time a webpage is being "generated" or "updated" a small amount of bandwidth will be used by the PHP Management system. If you have a VERY popular website and many webmasters are editing and updating the webpages using the PHP Management System, then that "little bandwidth" will become "a lot of bandwidth".

In addition, if you're updating your website that often, then that generally means you're getting a lot of visitors and "hits" to your site. Which in turn will also use your bandwidth. It's just all cyclical.

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Should I worry about bandwidth?

Back in 2002, when Gemele.com first started, I was updating my website often because I was getting so many visitors. In one month, I was using over 25 Gigabyte of bandwidth. When I saw my hosting bill, I had to pay over $100 for that month because I went OVER MY allotted bandwidth amount. (It was NOT a fun month for me). And I wasn't even using PHP back then.

But generally most webmasters don't have to worry about bandwidth that much, not unless you're website is about a hot topic like Inuyasha or Star Wars or Superman or etc....

Also a warning about hosting MP3's on your website. You're hosting account can be quickly cancelled if you are caught sharing illegal MP3's on your website. Not is sharing MP3 illegal, it also uses a lot of bandwidth.

For example, an MP3 file is 5 megs. Each time a visitor downloads the file, it uses 5 megs of your bandwidth. If 10 visitors download that mp3, it'll use 5 x 10 = 50 megs. If every day, for 30 days, the mp3 file is downloded 10 times, that would be 50 megs x 30 days = 1500 megs a month. That's equal to 1.5 Gigabytes per month! For JUST ONE MP3!!! And that's assuming that you only get 10 downloads a day for ONE month!

So be REALLY careful over the size of the files you have on your website. It could eat up bandwidth faster than you think!.

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Who do you recommend to be a good hosting provider?

I recommend the following based on your budget. I know that Gemele.com and Designcove.com and many of my other dot-coms are going to be around for a while, so I have no problem paying 2 years in advance. After all, in the long run, I will save money.

I currently use DreamHost for my hosting provider. Although you are paying TWO years in advance, the amount of space and bandwidth have no comparison!!!

If you are on a tight budget and can only pay on a monthly basis, I recommend Insiderhosting. They have a reputation for being very quick at responding to help and they have steady servers with VERY little downtime.

Now before you start dishing out money for a hosting provider, you must consider what domain name you want.

Next Chapter -> Chapter 4 "Domain"

Lasted Updated: April 20, 2007