General Guide to Site Hosting
Page 2 - Hosting Options

(1) use your ISP's webspace (if provided)

(2) Use a freesite hosting company

(3) Use a pay for

(4) Host your own site on
     your own web server!

We're not going to discuss the last option here, that's for more advanced webmasters and beyond the scope of this article.

The vast bulk of people when starting out will use the space provided out by their ISP (Internet service provider - the people whom you use to access the internet). ISPs usually include some webspace as part of their package.

Hosting companies simply offer you webspace alone. They range from some companies that offer free space like geocites.com to very expensive hosting options.

A good computer/internet magazine (e.g. .net in the UK) will give you some ideas or you could try using a search engine like Yahoo to give you some option. Several sites exist comparing different hosts. UK readers may want to have a look at Tophosts for example.

Not suprisingly you get what you pay for

Any free space offered is not without its limitations.

• Free hosts often insist you carry adverts on your pages.
• Amount of space is often limited.
• You might not be able to pick your sites address
  e.g stuck with
  webspace.yoursisp.com/webspace/~your.email/
• Available features (e.g. no CGI , no Frontpage extension)

• Limited access for maintenance (rare but can happen)

• Premium rate phone support

• Limited bandwidth - This is usually expressed in Gb/months or Kb or Mb/sec. Effectively the larger the figure the faster your site can be accessed and more people can easily look at it at the same time. Usually limited and therefore may be slower or more difficult to access

• May have to comply with ISP content rules. Although no Host should allow you to publish anything illegal under your countries laws (and remember you can't get round this just by publishing your site on a foreign server in most countries that would still be regarded as publication) some ISPs have a reputation for limiting content (AOL for example)

• Space provided can be small and unexpandible

This obviously varies from company to company.

For example, this site originally on free webspace provided by the UK ISP lineone. At times access time could be slow, but otherwise they provided a good service with limited CGI support & 24hr editing possible.

Obviously with paid for web space these limitations decrease (but not all companies offer the same facilities and this isn't always related to price).

The other advantage is that they usually offer to host (and register) named domain (e.g. We're atwww.fluffbucket.com)

You can visit our domain registration article for more on this.

However you can set up web forwarding from your domain named site to another free space site for a small free (usually when registering a domain)

What you choose largely depends on what you do with your site. Many great sites on the web started out on free space and some remain there. And if you're starting out it is probably the best way to go until you have a handle on things (you can always move your site later as its needs increase).

If your site is a simple family home page intended for just friend or family or a major company site the choices are clear. However most of us fall in between these 2 camps

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Please note we do not endorse any companies listed on this site and people using them do so at their own risk and we take no responsibility for any problems that may occur in doing so. (See also legal notices) We strongly advise you look at several different companies