Web Design - Web Site Creation
All about Web Hosting
For 95% of web sites, it’s possible to forget about requirements and just purchase a hosting account. However, for the more advanced web sites, it’s very important to work through the requirements and get one that matches your web site exactly. The reason why is this. Consider that a web site is purchased for e-commerce purposes. Halfway through the install process, the technician makes the comment that the shopping cart is not compatible with PHP or ASP and it will be necessary to obtain another hosting service addition that costs 30 dollars more per month. That’s not a pleasant situation! The previous situation is why it’s necessary to make sure you know exactly which requirements you need for which software that you plan on using for hosting your site.
Let’s take a look at a few requirements that might be set forth on the web site hosting page of a standard web site host:
Disk Space
Disk space is an important consideration. Many web hosts offer what’s called unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth (which will be discussed shortly). However, it’s important to be very careful and err on the side of caution for both requirements. Unlimited anything is usually a sign that the host is overselling their services, and once a web site on a specific server reaches resource limits that are defined in the hosts’ terms of service contract, the host will usually shut off the web site until the customer pays much more to get their site back online. So, be extremely careful when shopping for a web host and read the contract before purchasing services.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth refers to the transfer of data between a web site and a user. It’s usually allocated in Megabytes (more recently allocated in Gigabytes). Bandwidth is where server resources are important. As with disk space, web hosts will advertise unlimited bandwidth as well. This is known as overselling, where a web host will attempt to sell as many web site hosting accounts as possible and crowd a server with thousands of web sites, gambling on the fact that 95% of web sites will not use more than 2% of the server resources per month. Be careful to read the service contract as well, because it will outline exactly what the host plans to do to an account if the site exceeds specific server limits.
Domains Allowed:
Some accounts will have a limited domain requirement, and require that customers pay more for a domain name if they wish to use an additional domain name pointing to the primary domain name in the future. It’s important to be aware of these requirements if the eventual marketing plan will utilize additional domain names as well.
Site Builder
The term Site Builder refers to automatic site generation software that’s installed on some web site hosts. With this software, it’s possible to use templates (and with most web hosts, create original templates). If one is not that savvy with design software, it may be advantageous to obtain this option on a web site host. While it may not be the best option for professional sites (always use a professional designer for a business site), it’s a wonderful option for personal sites. Ask if the host offers customization services as well.
24/7 Support Options
Support options are an important requirement. Without significant support options, a web site can be left in the dust. The web host should at least offer 24/7 support for those hosting accounts that are advanced in nature. This is, however, depending on the company. There are those web sites that don’t require 24/7 support.
Domain/FTP Features
Add on / Parked Domains
Add on domain names and parked domain names can be essential for some marketing plans. It all depends on what the webmaster plans on doing with the web site’s marketing campaign.
Sub domains
Sub domains, also called third-level domains, will take the form of domain.domainname.com. These are useful when creating a sub domain in order to point to a specific page that’s located deep within a web site’s structure.
FTP Accounts
FTP, known as File Transfer Protocol, is extremely important if a web site is going to contain a very large number of files to upload. File Transfer Protocol can be very quick depending on the internet connection that’s installed on a particular computer. In addition, it’s much easier to login to an FTP account and set file permissions than it is to login to an account via http:// protocol and manually set file permissions to dozens of different files.
Anonymous FTP
This is just a function that allows one to login to an FTP account anonymously.
MySQL Databases
MySQL (SQL stands for Structured Query Language), pronounced My Sequel, is essential for those sites that will utilize databases through either ASP or PHP languages. Without MySQL installed, it would be impossible for most shopping carts and other database intensive applications to run.
CGI
CGI, which stands for Common Gateway Interface, is a Unix-based infrastructure that parses the data from forms sent from a user on a web site to the site owner’s email account. A software program that runs on the interface, such as Perl, can take the data from the form, send it through a CGI, and send it to an email account and retain specific formatting depending on the format of the script. It’s essential to work with a web host in determining specific requirements necessary for the script itself to run (such as file permissions that must be set, and others).
PHP4 & 5
PHP, which stands for hyper text pre-processor, is an open-source language that runs primarily on UNIX platform. It can best be described as CGI on steroids, because of the fact that it’s a more robust and powerful language.
There are many other features available that you will need to research and decide which ones you need. Plus, it's also a ton of fun learning about these different technologies and how to implement them!
Ruby on Rails
SSH
Perl
Chillsoft ASP
Python
SSI
Cron
FrontPage
Curl
GD
Image Magick
Streaming Audio/Video
POP3 Accounts
Web Mail
E-mail Alias
Auto Responders
Mailing Lists
Catch Alls
Spam Assassin
Mail Forwarding
IMAP Support
SMTP
Latest CPANEL Version
Fantastico
Soholaunch
Hotlink Protection
IP Deny Manager
Redirect URLs
Web Based File Manager
phpMyAdmin
Referrer Logs
Error Logs
Shared SSL
Private SSL
Agora Cart
Os Commerce
Zen Cart
Cube Cart
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