Website Hosting

Website hosting is another vital element of setting up an online business. In the previous post we learnt how to buy a domain name, now that you have bought a domain name you will need to host your website somewhere. By hosting your site somewhere you are making your website access via the world wide web. Essentially your ‘web host’ will store the pages on your website and will make them available to other computers who are connected to the internet. A quality web hosting company should make sure that your website is online nearly all of the time, so that visitors never come to a blank site. Indeed many web hosting companies have impressive track records such as a 99% uptime. Web hosting companies also take security incredibly seriously, their data centres (where all the servers are stored) typically implement rigorous security measures, helping to mitigate the risk of any foul play.

There are many different types of website hosting packages available to the consumer, from free solutions to more costly solutions like owning your own dedicated server (or servers). A quality internet marketing company should help advise you on what solutions would suits your needs. If you are just starting out in internet marketing you don’t need to worry about getting hosting sorted out, just understand that in order for you to have a fully functioning website, you will need to host your website somewhere. Once your website is hosted it will be live to the world.

Main Types of Website Hosting

Free Hosting

As mentioned there are many different types of website hosting. The cheapest method is free website hosting. There are many providers available who will allow you to host your website on their servers for free. This can be an attractive option for people on a tight budget, however at PreciseInternetMarketing we would advise against it. The problem with choosing to go with a free web hosting provider is that you are totally at the mercy of the organisation providing the hosting. For example many people decide to set up a free Wordpress blog and spend a great deal of time and effort adding excellent content to it. However what many people don’t realise is that by setting up a free blog on wordpress, they are agreeing to terms and conditions which state that at any time Wordpress can close the blog down. Imagine how annoyed you would be if you had created an excellent site and really worked on creating content and driving traffic to it only for it to be taken away from you!!

Shared Hosting

This is a very popular type of website hosting that is arranged via web hosting companies. This is where a website is placed on a server with many other websites. This can range from a few hundred to a few thousand. The type of share hosting package you will need will depend on how ‘busy’ your site is, however shared hosting can be very inexpensive, starting as low as 5 pounds per month.

Dedicated Hosting Service

This is where a client gets their own server and retains full control over it although the client typically doesn’t own the server. Again whether or not your own dedicated hosting service will depend on your website needs.
As mentioned if you are just starting out make sure that you speak with your internet marketing company to find out exactly what package you will need. Typically though if you just have a small website, a quality shared hosting package should be enough to suit your needs.

So just to recap so far we have chosen a keyword rich domain name, we have bought a domain name and now we have set up hosting.

In the next part of the challenge we will look at how to set up a wordpress blog.