Webhosting - find a reliable home for your blog.

Here we explain some basic concept of webhosting, some of the simple technicalities, and what to look out for in a webhost.

Now that you have chose a domain, its time to find a server to host your blog/website. Most alternatively hosted blogs such as BlogSpot or TypePad users won't have to worry about this. You are already hosting by Blogger or TypePad, but it is still good to know about webhosting.


Websites & Servers

First off, website are hosted on servers. A server is just a computer(s) which contains your website files that is always on and always connected to the web. This way, the server can send your webpages to people half way around the world even when you are sleeping. The reason why sometimes you receive an unable to connect error from your browser is because the specific server for the website is down or too busy for some reason.

Because of the nature and speed of the modern Internet infrastructure, the location of the web server does not really matter. You can even use a spare computer as a web server. However as your blog/website out grows the capacity of your computer and bandwidth offered by your internet provider, you will be looking for a webhost. Besides, its much easier to let someone else worry about the technical stuff while you write.


Disk Space & Bandwidth

When talking about webhosting and servers there are two technical details you have to understand, disk space and bandwidth. Many people often mix the two since they are similar and both measured in megabytes or gigabytes. The concepts are quite simple, let me illustrate with a MP3 file. Although most bloggers won't offer songs for download, I will use it as an example because everyone is familiar with MP3 files and how its 'exchanged' around the world.

So, say you have a 5 megabyte MP3 file on your server, then you would have used 5 megabyte of disk space. The disk space usage won't change until you add or delete something on the server. As for bandwidth, when someone request the MP3, your server will send the file using 5 megabyte of bandwidth. When someone download the MP3 file again, the server will use another 5 megabyte of bandwidth adding up to 10 megabyte of bandwidth for a total of two downloads of a 5 megabyte MP3 file. Your bandwidth accumulates over the month while disk space quota remains the same until files are added or deleted.

It is important to know these two concepts and understand you pay for webhosting in terms of both disk space and bandwidth.


Type Of Webhosting Packages

Webhosting services rent their servers in two ways. First, shared hosting, which means a number of websites/clients are hosted off one server sharing the space and resources. On the other hand with dedicated hosting you have control over an entire server and its up to you how many websites the server will host. In comparison, dedicated hosting naturally give you more control, disk space, bandwidth. Needless to say, dedicated hosting cost a lot more than shared hosting.

Most webhosts should several different hosting packages such starter, intermediate, pro for shared hosting and different server specs for dedicate hosting. Some webhost also has free hosting packages.


Choose the Right Webhost

There are literally thousands of webhosts out there, so how do you find the one right for you? Some people trust big hosts like HostGator or Dreamhost while others prefer their local webhosts so when they have a problem they can talk to someone in person instead of waiting for a phone call or email reply. To find reviews for webhosting, you can visit http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ where many people share their hosting experience.

When choosing webhosts, make sure you have enough disk space, bandwidth, specific features (eg. PHP & MySql for WordPress) and an option to upgrade later. Also check the reference and reliability of the webhost. You don't want visitor only accessing your site at one o'clock in the morning. In the beginning, the minimal shared hosting package provided by most webhost should be sufficient. Finally, there is one very important advice that should remember: you get what you paid for. Never signup for a host that only offers free hosting or free hosting that give you a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space.


Never Signup For A Host That Only Offers Free Hosting

Never signup for a host that only offers free hosting? Why? Well, these kind of hosting usually only have one administrator, and one server. In this scenario, some must have server features such programming language or database support may be missing. Additionally, without monthly charges there are really only two incentives for the administrator to offer free hosting.

First, the admin wish to build a large user base so he/she could sell the hosting service quickly. To build a huge user base, administrators offer free hosting and often oversells (covered shortly). After sufficient level of membership, the hosting service will exchange hands. Sometimes there will a lapse of service ranging from days to months as the new owner sets up. When the hosting does return, the new owner most likely will stop overselling and charge for webhosting. Those people who are attracted by free hosting and overselling will probably move on after these changes.

The other reason is just plain good will. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the good will of the admin. I have found many admins taking hours a day to help people with their webhost. What I am questioning is without monetary incentive, how motivated is the admin to restore the server after it had been hacked or the database crashed. How motivated is the admin to make sure these disasters never happen again? Unfortunately, usually with only one admin, these disaster are more than common.


Avoid Webhost That Oversells

You should also avoid free hosting that offers a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space. In other words as described earlier, overselling. The biggest problem with overselling is not that the offer may disappear soon, but the practice itself.

As mentioned before, most free host only have one server and limited resources, yet they advertise as much as 5gig disk space/10gig monthly bandwidth. It would all right if the hosts limit the number of users to how many 5gig accounts their server can take. Instead, these hosts assume that most users use less than the advertised 5gig/10gig. In a sense these hosts are selling more resource than they actually have, hence overselling. There will be serious problems when the host's demand exceed its resources. Stop signups won't solve problem, the users already signed up are expanding beyond their 'actual' limit but far from the 5gig/10gig offered by the webhost.

Overselling is the reason why some webhosts are often down or extremely slow.


Those are the reasons you should never signup for a host that only offers free hosting or free hosting that give you a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space. People who uses these services usually have to switch hosts every few month. After reading that, you might think that totally against free hosting, but that's not the case. For free webhosting, I recommend signup for a reliable paid hosting service that also offers free hosting. One example is awardspace. It offers 200megabits of disk space. Honestly, in the beginning, that is more than enough. 50megabits for wordpress and a domain name, you are good to go with your blog. When you exceed the limit, you are doing very well and hopefully able to pay for webhosting.