How to compare hosting services?

There are many web hosting directories on the internet; they all claim to be great resources. For the consumer they are useless, because you can not find any fair information. These advertising-based web hosting directories have lists of recommendations, top 10 lists and so on ...They are all just advertising lists similar to the ads in junk mail that might arrive through your mail slot. Stay away from these sites. You cannot trust any information you will find in them. There are thousands of web hosting services available, all with different types of plans and at different prices. It can be hard to understand all the options, especially if you are completely new to web hosting and just want to get your website up on the web.

First you need to look at what server type or server operating system you need. This is the type of server software that is running on the server. Most common are Windows servers supporting ASP and SQL databases and Linux or UNIX servers running PHP and MySql database support.  If you have a basic website then the server type does not matter. If you have a more complex website that has database functions and serves up dynamic pages (guestbooks, shopping carts, forms), then the server type will be more important. I recommend Linux or UNIX for their excellent stability and security. Windows servers are very often attacked by hackers and viruses.

What is web hosting?

A web hosting service  is a service provider that places your website on a server which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The web hosting service
basically rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the World Wide Web.

Disk Space

This is the quantity of actual space available to you for storing your website on the web server hard drive.

Monthly Bandwidth

This determines how much website traffic is available to you. Every time somebody looks at your website, data has to be accepted over the Internet from the web server where your site is hosted to the browser of the individual looking at your site. Bandwidth is a measure of how much
data transfer is available. High traffic sites like Yahoo, for example, have very high bandwidth requirements, but the average site does not. There are web hosting companies that offer unlimited bandwidth. This sounds like a good deal. The truth is that this is nothing but a lie, and you should avoid web hosting companies that offer unlimited
bandwidth. Bandwidth is a commodity that costs the web hosting company money - unlimited bandwidth is not only impossible, but would cost an unlimited amount of money. When web hosting services offer unlimited bandwidth, they are trying to trick you. They know that you will probably not use much bandwidth. The moment you try it you will find your website shutdown. One of those tricky web hosting services is www.onedollarhost.net. For one dollar a month you can have unlimited everything, and it's nothing but lies. I was hosting images on one of those cheap hosting sites for my auctions on eBay. I had about 40 auctions with many photos on eBay, and the customers did use up some bandwidth. What happened was they shut down my hosting one day before the auctions ended, so there were not any images available for the most important day of the auction. So you can imagine how much money I lost this way. Anyhow, if you see unlimited bandwidth or 99.99% up time or any kind of unbelievable deals, then it's just lies so they can target naive customers.

Here are some  links for  hosting services to look up:

hosting.com
fortunecity.com
dotster.com
yahoo.com
shieldhost.com
ipowerweb.com

The hosting service I recommend to all my customers is

http://www.premiumHostingService.com

  It is very important to have a good hosting provider if your website is part of your business.  If you choose the wrong hosting with banned IP addresses your website will most likely be impossible to find in search engines. Some web hosting companies participate in
illegal internet activities, and some of their IP addresses are banned, usually because of sending spam emails or hosting illegal material on their servers.

How to compare web design services?

Comparing web design services is a little hard for amateurs; there are so many things to look at. There are a lot of people who make websites with FrontPage and start calling themselves professionals. You really need to carefully pick the right webmaster because the quality of the website is so important. I have found an interesting site with a list of web design services and webmasters, so you can spend some time to look and compare.

 http://www.firstwebsitedesign.com

Rupert Hog --- Saturday, August 7 2004, 12:29

This is a useful site. Thanks. I have a query...just utilise onedollarhost.net. and found that I cant access my webpage or control panel, been waiting for over a week to ask them to reset the password, but I have not heard from them...how do I get hold of their contact tel no.? or any monitoring body that can ensure they carry out their obligations? Pls advise. Thanks. my email: ruperthog@yahoo.co.uk

Just forget about the $10 and get different hosting

Here is an excellent source of information about web hosting services: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ It’s a forum