Where Do I Get Web Hosting?

Answer:
In order to have your website be visible on

the World Wide Web, you’ll need to have your website hosted on a web server. Of course, you’ll need to decide on the type of hosting service you need.

Single web page hosting may be a less expensive choice for personal websites. Often, personal website hosting doesn’t cost anything if you’re willing to provide advertising space.

For business purposes, you’ll want services which provide you with technical support, as well as application development platforms and software. These services will allow you to install programs for applications such as content management, e-mail, and message boards etc. Again, the type of web hosting depends on several factors including the complexity of the applications your running and the amount of traffic of space you'll need. Often times, for a business brochure type site that simply lists services and has contact information a simple shared hosting account should suffice. You can get one for as low as a few bucks a year. I would recommend a major brand in this instance. Try GoDaddy or 1&1 for your shared hosting needs.

Some of the more complex web applications and demanding sites will run on dedicated servers or even colocated servers at a hosting facilities data center. If you get to this point you then have options that deal with the different levels of support. Often times dedicated servers come in "managed" and "unmanaged" packages. I recommend SoftLayer for unmanaged servers and RackSpace for managed dedicated servers.

There are thousands of web hosting companies – so do your research before choosing one. The company you choose should provide with excellent hosting reliability and uptime. (Network downtime usually occurs during server maintenance.) Use the Internet and post on message boards requesting feedback on several different web hosting companies.


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