There are thousands of web hosting providers out there and selecting the right package for your requirements can seem daunting. Our guide to web hosting may help you to choose the right package for you by giving you the facts.

What are Web Hosts?
At the most basic level a web host is company that provides a place to host your website. Your website is stored on a specialist computer known as a server that is permanently connected to the Internet and will serve up your site to users on the Internet

The size and scope of a web hosting company can vary significantly, from a small one-man company hosting a few websites, to large corporations with purpose built buildings containing many servers hosting possibly thousands of sites. Many web hosts out there are what are known as "resellers" for the large companies. A reseller buys up space on a server in a data centre and then makes a small percentage profit by selling web hosting on to end users.

All web hosting plans offer common basic features and determining what your web hosting requirements are in relation to these features can help greatly in the decision making process.

Choosing the Server Type
Depending on how complex your website requirements are will largely determine the choice of server you may need. Simple websites should be fine on any server, but more complex websites, such as those that generate the web pages dynamically from a database, may have specific needs and require software to be installed.

There are two main Web Server types. Most are based on Unix or Linux server software as these tend to be much cheaper, however Microsoft are also increasing their presence with technologies like Windows Internet Information Server and .NET technologies.

Database driven websites often use MySQL databases and need PHP, Perl or Python scripting languages to be supported.

How much Disk Space do you need?
Is your website likely to include a large database or just a few dozen html pages? Is your database likely to grow substantially over time? If you are running blogs, forums or systems that require images and particularly streaming media, then you need to allow room for growth. Some hosting companies limit the type of content, or the amount of traffic your site generates.

Bandwidth (or data transfer)
This is an often misunderstood measure, but it is crucially important if your web site starts to generate a lot of interest from web users. It refers to the amount of data your web site can transmit to web users. For example, if a web page in your web site is 10 kilobytes (about 1000 words on the page) in size, and one Internet user views it, you have used 10 kilobytes of bandwidth. If 10 users request that page you have used 100 kilobytes of bandwidth. Bandwidth is normally measured monthly.

Most small web sites will typically require under half a gigabyte of bandwidth per month. That means you can serve about 52,000 web pages per month (assuming the pages are an average of 10 kilobytes in size).

Exceeding your Bandwidth
Another factor is what happens if you go above your allotted bandwidth. Some companies might suspend or temporarily switch off your web site if this happens. Others will automatically add on extra bandwidth charges which are priced at a different (usually much higher) rate than your normal monthly hosting charges. It is therefore important to check the small print and understand the likelihood of incurring additional charges.


Server Type
An other differentiating factor between web hosting packages is the operating system. Just like your desktop computer (probably running Microsoft Windows as the operating system, or maybe an Apple Mac OS), web servers run an operating system. It's the software that makes the computer go. There are two major types of OS in the web hosting world - Windows and UNIX.

Features and components
These days it is quite rare to find a web site that consists entirely of simple, static web pages. Normally most sites offer at least some degree of interactivity. There are many examples of interactivity, including:

	•	forms - for users to fill in, which can email the data to the web- site owner
	•	databases - which can store user data, or contain details of many products on offer on a site
	•	blogs and forums - which can provide an interactive area where users can upload content to a website

Basic web hosting packages generally offer the ability to store static web pages. If you want the option of interactivity however, you need to ensure that your host offers the relevant components.

For details of how HitechDesign can provide a high-quality web hosting package for your website click here.