Hosting |
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you create your website, it's basically a bunch of files gathered together
in a folder on your hard drive. It's not actually a website until it's
uploaded onto a host, otherwise it's just sitting there and surfers can't
get to it. A host has HEAPS of space on their servers for your little
site, and they are constantly connected to the net, so your site is always
available.
Hosts Normal hosts charge money for your site to be on their computer and therefore on the web. Most will charge a startup fee, plus a fee for each month that your site is "live". On top of that, they charge extra for bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that travels to and from their server, or, to put it in simpler terms, the amount of traffic that visits your site. Hosts have different packages to suit different needs. These are based on how much traffic they expect the site to receive. If you've got 100,000 people accessing your site each day, when you've only paid for the equivalent of 10,000, that's going to "clog" up the phone line, and thus the host will charge you extra. Bandwidth is a major concern for larger sites. Since, however, you're only starting out, it's probably not going to be a problem until you get on your feet and expand. Most in the industry agree that you're better off having an independently hosted freesite with your own domain name, because the returns are better in the long run. But be prepared for the possibility that you may lose money in the first few months. You need to make enough signups to pay for your hosting, or you will make a loss. If you're interested in paying for your own site, here's some hosts. ProTGP
- Very cheap and reliable host. Prohosters You can get a site for $15 a month - 5 gig of bandwidth at $3 per gig, and no setup fee. Worth using! CyberWurx is recommended by Sandra from WEN. They've got an exciting range of very small beginner hosting accounts, starting from $9.95 a month - although this comes with a very small amount of data transfer, and a $25 set up fee. Excellent for your very first site. OneNetHosting offers $95 a month for 15 gig, with a $99 setup fee. A bit steep perhaps, although they offer discounts if you advertise them. 2BucksaGig.com were offering a beginner's plan, but they seem to have dropped it. As their name suggests, they're cheap, but prices start at $100 a month. May be worth checking for future specials. Check out TopNiche's fabulous list of hosts, including freehosts! This is all you'll ever need. *Note: these prices may change Freehosts A freehost offers space on their server (and thus a "live" website) for free, in exchange for advertising space on your site. It's a symbiotic relationship; you provide the content for their ads, and they provide the space for your content. There are a number of pros and cons to using a freehost. The cons are fairly impressive, but, for a newbie a freehost is still ideal for getting started. Pro:
Con All in all, I would recommend you pay the money and start up on a real host. This is because lately freehosts have gone overboard with their ads, and they have become exceedingly large and extremely hardcore. You risk not getting any signups at all, which means you've wasted your time building your site. To sign up at a freehost, you simply find their main page, find the link that says "signup" and add your details. You may need to think of a username and password. Some Freehosts Freehostfinder. This is a database of 138 freehosts. You can search for the kind of freehost you want - whether it has FTP access, free content, large storage space or subdomains. If you want to check out what's available, go here. Sexspaces by Sextracker. Fairly major ads, huge subdomains, but you do get listed in their database. They are linked to Freehosts.net, a conglomeration of freehosts. Domain Names A domain name is the "dot-com" part of your address. Thus, to use a well-known example, www.amazon.com is a domain name. You can also get .net and .org, although these aren't considered to be as desirable as a .com name. Recently, a new crop of domains have been released, these being .biz, .info, .aero, .museum. You can only have one version of a .com name. This is why people rush to register them. A court decision recently awarded the man who originally bought "sex.com" (the most valuable domain name on the internet) the rights to use it. He had registered it several years ago, but another person had "stolen" it and made millions from a porn site on that domain. You need to be increasingly creative when coming up with a domain name. A lot of the good ones are taken, and many new sites have increasingly long winded or strange names. They're still good to have, as search engines take domains into account when looking for relevant sites. As a newbie freesite owner, you don't necessarily have to worry about buying a domain name. You only need one if you are going to pay for hosting. Some freehosts allow you to use your own domain if you have one, which gives your site a look of independence. To buy a domain name, you visit one of the various domain vendors, search for the availability of the desired name, and sign up as a user. You then hand over your credit card details, and the domain becomes yours. After that, the name is "parked" on their server until you find a host. Your new host will give you a couple of IP addresses (a big line of numbers) called DNS server details. You need to go back to the domain seller, log in and change these addresses over. The host will give you proper instructions on how to do this. After you've changed them over, the domain moves from its parking spot to the new host, and is ready to use. You then request that the host officially set up the domain as part of your hosting account, and upload the files to your new host. DirectNIC sells domains for $15 a year (recommended). Godaddy is currently offering domains for $8.95 a year. A warning: you may see people selling "dot-sex" (.sex) domains. This suffix has not been officially ratified by ICANN, and you need special software for .sex to even work. Don't be fooled into buying one of these domains. FTP and Uploading Files FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and its basically the easy way you upload your files from your hard drive to a host's server. If your freehost offers
FTP, you can basically do it within Explorer. You simply type in the
FTP address instead of a "www" address, for example: It's probably easier to invest in commercial FTP programs like Cute FTP. This program can upload multiple files to your domain, and help you manage your site once it's set up. FrontPage offers FTP at the press of a button, however you need a host who offers FrontPage Extensions for this to work. The other, painful way of uploading your files is to do it one at a time. A freesite sometimes has a file upload window, whereby you have to input every single filename (it lets you browse, a small blessing) and hit enter. Most let your input ten files at a time. For big sites, it can be a tedious process. Still, that's one of the trade-offs for using a free host. |
Hosting
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