A Web hosting company provides everything that you need to put up a Web site, including the computer space and all the Web site software. You just create the files for your Web pages and move them to a location specified by the Web hosting company.
About a gazillion companies offer Web hosting services. Most charge a monthly fee (often quite small), and some are even free. (Most, but not all, of the free ones require you to display advertising.) Usually, the monthly fee varies depending on the resources provided for your Web site. For instance, a Web site with 25Mb of disk space for your Web page files costs less than a Web site with 100Mb of disk space.
When looking for a place to host your Web site, make sure that the Web hosting company offers the following:
The company will be reluctant to change a working setup, fearing that a change could cause problems for the company’s system or for other customers. Access to MySQL databases is controlled via a system of accounts and passwords that must be maintained manually, thus causing extra work for the hosting company. For this reason, many hosting companies either don’t offer MySQL or charge extra for it. Also, PHP has myriad options that can be set, unset, or given various values.
The hosting company decides the option settings based on its needs, which might or might not be ideal for your purposes. It’s pretty difficult to research Web hosting companies from a standing start —a search at Google.com for “Web hosting” results in almost 400 million hits.
The best way to research Web hosting companies is to ask for recommendations from people who have experience with those companies. People who have used a hosting company can warn you if the service is slow or the computers are down often. After you gather a few names of Web hosting companies from satisfied customers, you can narrow the list to the one that is best suited to your purposes and the most cost effective.
About a gazillion companies offer Web hosting services. Most charge a monthly fee (often quite small), and some are even free. (Most, but not all, of the free ones require you to display advertising.) Usually, the monthly fee varies depending on the resources provided for your Web site. For instance, a Web site with 25Mb of disk space for your Web page files costs less than a Web site with 100Mb of disk space.
When looking for a place to host your Web site, make sure that the Web hosting company offers the following:
- PHP and MySQL: Not all companies provide these tools. You might have to pay more for a site with access to PHP and MySQL; sometimes you have to pay an additional fee for MySQL databases.
- A recent version of PHP: Sometimes the PHP versions offered aren’t the most recent versions. As of this writing, PHP 6 is close to being released. However, you may have trouble finding a Web hosting company that offers PHP 6. In fact, you may find that most Web hosting companies still offer PHP 4, although I hope that will change over time. It is worth the time to find a Web hosting company that offers at least PHP 5, if not PHP 6. Some Web hosting companies offer PHP 4 but have PHP 5 or 6 available for customers who request it.
- Reliability: You need a Web hosting company that you can depend on —one that won’t go broke and disappear tomorrow, and one that isn’t running on old computers, held together by chewing gum and baling wire, with more downtime than uptime.
- Speed: Web pages that download slowly are a problem because users will get impatient and go elsewhere. Slow pages could be a result of a Web hosting company that started its business on a shoestring and has a shortage of good equipment — or the Web hosting company might be so successful that its equipment is overwhelmed by new customers. Either way, Web hosting companies that deliver Web pages too slowly are unacceptable.
- Technical support: Some Web hosting companies have no one available to answer questions or troubleshoot problems. Technical support is often provided only through e-mail, which can be acceptable if the response time is short. Sometimes you can test the quality of the company’s support by calling the tech support number, or test the e-mail response time by sending an e-mail.
- The domain name: Each Web site has a domain name that Web browsers use to find the site on the Web. Each domain name is registered for a small yearly fee so that only one Web site can use it. Some Web hosting companies allow you to use a domain name that you have registered independently of the Web hosting company, some assist you in registering and using a new domain name, and some require that you use their domain name. For instance, suppose that your name is Lola Designer and you want your Web site to be named LolaDesigner. Some Web hosting companies will allow your Web site to be LolaDesigner.com, but some will require that your Web site be named LolaDesigner.webhostingcompanyname.com, or webhostingcompanyname.com/ ~LolaDesigner, or something similar. In general, your Web site will look more professional if you use your own domain name.
- Backups: Backups are copies of your Web page files and your database that are stored in case your files or database are lost or damaged. You want to be sure that the company makes regular, frequent backup copies of your application. You also want to know how long it would take for backups to be put in place to restore your Web site to working order after a problem.
- Features: Select features based on the purpose of your Web site. Usually a hosting company bundles features together into plans — more features equal a higher cost. Some features to consider are
- Disk space: How many MB or GB of disk space will your Web site require? Media files, such as graphics or music files, can be quite large.
- Data transfer: Some hosting companies charge you for sending Web pages to users. If you expect to have a lot of traffic on your Web site, this cost should be a consideration.
- E-mail addresses: Many hosting companies provide you with a number of e-mail addresses for your Web site. For instance, if your Web site is LolaDesigner.com, you could allow users to send you e-mail at me@LolaDesigner.com.
- Software: Hosting companies offer access to a variety of software for Web development. PHP and MySQL are the software that I discuss in this book. Some hosting companies might offer other databases, and some might offer other development tools such as FrontPage extensions, shopping cart software, and credit card validation.
- Statistics: Often you can get statistics regarding your Web traffic, such as the number of users, time of access, access by Web page, and so on.
The company will be reluctant to change a working setup, fearing that a change could cause problems for the company’s system or for other customers. Access to MySQL databases is controlled via a system of accounts and passwords that must be maintained manually, thus causing extra work for the hosting company. For this reason, many hosting companies either don’t offer MySQL or charge extra for it. Also, PHP has myriad options that can be set, unset, or given various values.
The hosting company decides the option settings based on its needs, which might or might not be ideal for your purposes. It’s pretty difficult to research Web hosting companies from a standing start —a search at Google.com for “Web hosting” results in almost 400 million hits.
The best way to research Web hosting companies is to ask for recommendations from people who have experience with those companies. People who have used a hosting company can warn you if the service is slow or the computers are down often. After you gather a few names of Web hosting companies from satisfied customers, you can narrow the list to the one that is best suited to your purposes and the most cost effective.
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