Whether your website is set up for business, to promote an
organization, or for individual or personal use, one of the first steps to take
is to have your site customized to fit the needs of your intended audience,
customers, members, or fans, so that they can to buy from you, sign up with your
organization, or learn more about your talent in a given area though a personal
website. Whether you do all this, or pay
someone to do it for you, all of the above leads to the creation of different
files and pieces of data that will eventually come to represent the makeup of
your website.
Depending on the type of website you choose and in order to
present your web location information on the World-Wide-Web your next step will
be to find a source that will share your website information with the world. That is what web hosting is; finding an
Internet Service Provider (or ISP) that can host the website you have just
built by storing all of the files and other necessary data associated with your
website, while at the same time making your website available to your intended
audience 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The collection of files and data that make up your site is
also usually what determines the price you will pay for web hosting services.
Individual web pages are usually offered for free and require little file, or
data storage space. Organizational website requirements are a little more
complicated due to records that need to be stored; things like membership,
accounting and non-profit data (if applicable) for income in the form of a
subscription, or donation needs to be recorded and along with any services you
will provide (newsletter, regular updates or other unique information) for your
website audience.
Business websites can be complicated because of sales
records, inventory of incoming and outgoing stock item, record keeping,
returns, coupons, keeping track of different methods of payment sources and
more. Most business websites are not included in the Free Website range, and
the ones that are will usually be severely limited in their business operation
scope. However most of the above mentioned services do come already built into
some website templates. Once you have decided on the type of website you, your
business, or organization will need you’re ready to go ISP hunting, provided
your ISP isn’t already part of your website package.
So how many different ISPs are there? As of December back in
2012 I had read about twenty different Internet Service Providers. More
recently Askville, by Amazon, says there are anywhere from 3500 to 4000 ISPs in
the United States.
As for which ISP is best for you, that will depend on how
you answered the above (what kind of website do I want) question? Some ISPs
offer themselves for free, even helping you get setup up for free and in no
time your website is up and running on the Information Super Highway and headed
for search engine land. But that’s another article just be aware that there are
probably as many different search engines out there in cyber space as there
ISPs. Staying on topic, some IPSs are free, free ISPs usually have advertisers
as sponsors, meaning you have no choice but to put up with the advertisements
shown on your free website.
Then there is what I call free, with a small fee; ISPs that
charge a small subscription fee for virtually unlimited internet access. It’s
been my experience that a free IPS for a business website usually means that your
website access may not be limited, but your storage space is. Of course for a
small fee you can have your storage space or other restriction expanded too. I
have seen many different limiting factors that include everything from the lack
of data storage space to the inability to place associate ads on your website,
unless you’re willing to pay another small fee, or move on up to paying for a
higher subscription level.
While it’s true that nothing much beats FREE, I think the
paid ISP services are better if you’re taking a business website. Mainly
because you have more control, and as I already implied, the size and type of
website that you have is what usually dictates your true website expense. A lot
of the ISPs I know of have even figured out a sweet spot between their newbie
single page personal website user, and their blow the doors off full-fledged
Fortune Five-Hundred website user. A sweet spot where small business can not
only thrive but grow due to the non-restrictions and internet access offered,
at what I would consider a good price, (less than one-hundred dollars a year)
along with some pretty neat, and very much appreciated 24/7 Technical Support;
which will come in handy if your website will require ASP.Net, Cold-fusion,
PHP, or Java script.
Website hosting basically means you are leasing the
necessary space on an ISP’s computer server to store your website data, and to
connect your website to the internet. One of the big issues with ISPs is the
protection of your website data transmission and keeping it secure with SSL
(Secure Sockets Layer) which means, over a span of time moving from one system
(HTTP) to another (HTTPS) to better protect your data information, especially
if your website deals with the maintaining of personal data such as membership
and personal data.
I started with Yahoo as my ISP back in 2007 and had few
complaints the thing I liked most about Yahoo was the technical service. Back
then my job in science and engineering made my work, and awake-hours crazy so I
never really knew at what hour of the day, night, or weekend, I might find
myself in front of my computer screen piecing together my first website. It
felt really good, and was also really helpful to be able to pick up the phone
at any time to get the technical help I needed to understand and work with my
ISP choice.
Since that time I have worked with many different ISPs and
have amassed a knowledge of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, so-to-speak.
Recently Yahoo has changed its name, at least where their ISP service is
concerned, and became Aabaco; the change is still too new for me to give an
accurate account of the new management changes, except to say there are some,
so stay tuned!
Back on topic, try to have as many of your ducks in a row before you go ISP
shopping, what I mean is know the kind of website you want, and the name, one of the shockers
for me when creating my first website was that after working on, honing, and
sharpening the name I wanted to call my web business I was rejected early in
the process, several time, because the name I chose to use was no longer
unique. Only about two million people before me had come up with the same idea
for that domain name.
The computer of course tried to help by making several
suggesting on how I might change the name by adding numbers before, or after it
and eventually I did settle on one of the numbered versions, but it just wasn’t
the same. I got over it and at the same time became a little wiser about domain
name selection when setting up a website. Anyway it helps to have a couple
alternative version of your intended website domain name, just in case.
Choosing the right residential or business ISP package will
help with your near and long term plans for you website. Only you, or your
webmaster, (the person that takes care of your website for you) will know if
your needs will include an application development platform, or whether you’re
okay for the long run with just a few pages for your website or will you need a
little headroom to grow. Some homework
and hopefully this article should help. Or at the very least arm you with some
questions for the ISP you choose. As with just about any other business
venture, you pay for what you don’t know, one way or the other. The more you
know and understand about website hosting the better your ISP choice.
