If you are an absolute beginner this is where you should start. if you already have your own domain name and web hosting you can fast forward to part 3.
In this article I'm going to be talking about the pro's and con's of both Shared Web Hosting and dedicated web hosting packages. By the end of the article you should have some idea what your online business needs now and what it will need when it expands.
No that you have your domain name, it is time to choose a hosting company there are hundreds if not thousands of Shared Web Hosting UK companies. Here are the important thinks to keep in mind before choosing a hosting company.
Up-time is the over all time the hosting company promises that their servers will be up and running. Some claim to have 100% up-time, but I find that to be almost impossible to have so I tend to go with the ones claiming a 99,9% up-time. This tells us that even though they take back-ups, have mirrored servers and all other stuff to keep the servers safe and running, there is always a small possibility that the servers can go down.
This is why I prefer Affordable Web Hosting plans. They give you more control of your website. If your site doesn't generate traffic right away you will not have to worry about having your web hosting service cancelled with no warning. You will also be given more tools to help grow your website and make your site more user friendly. Reliability is also something you get with paid hosting. They want to keep you as a customer so they will do more to keep you satisfied. Free web hosting can be crappy on purpose in hopes that you will upgrade to the paid service so you might as well get an affordable web hosting plan that fits your needs.
Bandwidth Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.
My one bit of good advice is do not sign up with any server for a long period of time to start with. It will be cheaper in the long run but at first just sign up for a little while. Try before you buy, make sure that the service provider is able to meet your expectations. If it does, then sign up for a longer period and save money.