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Web hosting is a service that allows you to run a website from a domain that you own. Big companies like Yahoo! or Google run sites using their own servers. While some individuals and small companies do this too, many choose a web hosting service for cost and convenience. Running your own server can be a headache and it requires a good degree of technical know-how. A web host does all that work for you, leaving you to create the content.
Registering a domain gives you exclusive rights to a domain for a given period of time (which is why two people cannot own the same domain). Domain registration does not generally include any type of hosting. It's a bit like owning a street address, but not the house that's there. If you want to run a website on your domain, you'll need to purchase web hosting.
Yes you can. When you sign up for hosting you will generally have the option of buying a new domain or transferring an existing one. You will be given some information (generally a couple of addresses called name servers) to provide to your original domain registrar, so be sure to follow the directions your web host and domain registrar give you.
There are ways to put your content online that don't involve a web host. Many Internet Service Providers offer free space on their servers. Online blogging services like Blogger allow you to host a blog on their site. Generally those options are rather limited and they don't give you your own unique domain (meaning you'll always have a domain like: blogger.com/your_name instead of your_name.com). Having a hosted domain means that you can have a number of different offerings such as a blog, store, and a personal or company website all at a domain that's unique to you.
The other key advantage is having your own email address from your domain. It lends professionalism and individuality to your online identity. You don't have to be yourname54321@generic_isp.com. You can be yourname@yourdomain.com.
This depends a lot on which web hosting service you choose. Some web hosts provide step-by-step site creation options all without ever having to leave your web browser. Some are suited more towards people with web design expertise. If you don't have a lot of experience, you should start with a web hosting company that provides easy site creation (ones that have a high rating for "ease of use for beginners"). Most web hosts will allow you to get more advanced as you get more comfortable with site creation.
WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. A WYSIWYG editor lets you create and edit a website as if you were looking right at it the way a visitor would. Some WYSIWYG editors have drag-and-drop functionality, meaning you can move around different modules with your mouse and put them where you want them.
You will always pay some kind of hosting fee. In most cases it's a yearly fee. Yearly fees run anywhere between $50 and $140 for the basic plans. Some web hosts will charge you a set-up fee in the $30 range, but most waive this fee. Similarly, some offer free domain registration with hosting, and some charge an additional fee for the hosting (remember that registration is a yearly fee, so look to see if a site offers free lifetime registration if you want to keep your costs down). Another common fee is for domain privacy (see below), though it's free from some web hosts. When looking at a web host's pricing structure, be sure to keep these costs in mind. It may be that a host that charges $10 a month comes out the same as a host that charges $5 a month plus additional fees.
One feature we've chosen to highlight is domain privacy. When you buy a domain you are required to give your name and business or home address. That's to keep people accountable for the sites they publish. However, that information is publicly available to anyone who wants it. There are many good reasons for wanting domain privacy including protection from spam, scams, junkmail, and cyberstalking. Most web hosting services offer domain privacy, meaning they will list themselves as the owners of the domain as a way to protect your name and address. Some charge for it, and some do not.
If a web host offers lifetime domain registration, they are offering to pay the yearly domain registration fee for as long as you host the site with them. If you move to another host, they will no longer assume the cost. This can be a substantial savings over the years. If a host does not provide lifetime registration, you'll want to note the price of yearly renewals before signing up.
Most web hosts do offer refunds of some variety. Often it's a full refund under thirty days. After the guarantee period, there's sometimes a pro-rated refund, so you'll receive a refund on any unused months. It is important to note that a refund will almost always exclude the price of domain registration, even if the domain came free with hosting. That's because domains are purchased for a year's time, and the web host assumes the charge for the domain. If you are charged, that domain remains in your ownership until it expires, so you can host it with another company if you choose to.
Most web hosts claim to provide "unlimited" storage and data transfer, meaning you can upload as much content as you want, and take as much traffic (i.e. visitors interacting with your site) as you want. But, in fact, there are limitations. Most will limit you to the storage of files intended for your website (but not, for instance, backing up the files on your computer). Also, they will monitor your storage and traffic statistics to make sure you're not monopolizing their resources. Since most personal and small business websites are pretty small, there's not much danger in this. There's also not any real difference between "unlimited" storage and a 10 gigabyte storage limit. Next Advisor's site is about 25 megabytes, while a personal site may be closer to 7 megabytes or less, roughly the same size as a couple of MP3 files on your personal media player.
It is possible that a web host may penalize you for unusual traffic spikes, or excessive storage.
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is the way files get from your computer to your web host. If you create a website by writing the code yourself, or using website builder such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expressions, or Apple's iWeb, you will use some form of FTP program to upload your site to your web host. If you create your site using an online sitebuilder that comes with your web host service, you won't need to FTP the files. However you may find it useful to learn as your needs change.
We used every single web host that we reviewed. We signed up for each one using a different domain, and performed various tasks we think a user would go through, focusing on the needs of a beginning user. This included installing Wordpress, using the sitebuilders, and installing shopping cart scripts. We also kept track of uptime, response time, and download time, as outlined in the following three questions.
We continually monitor the server response time for a website on each web host that we reviewed using website monitoring service Pingdom. The response time measures how long it takes for the test service to download 48.77KB of html (about 12KB larger than NextAdvisor's home page). This test occurred over a month's time. A smaller number indicates a faster average response time. The average for the whole group was .518 milliseconds, or just over half a second. Business sites have the most to gain from a fast response time, as website visitors will probably be more forgiving with personal sites.
We uploaded a 77MB Quicktime file to a site on each web host. Then we timed three separate downloads of the movie into our browser (over a wi-fi connection), throwing out any unusual outliers, and averaging the scores. 77MB is a pretty big file, and we did not optimize the movie for streaming. While this may not be average user behavior, we wanted a sense of how the web hosts handled large chunks of data. We feel it represents overall speed of data transfer, for those sites that need it.
Again, we use Pingdom to test a site on each web host we reviewed. Pingdom attempts to "ping" each website, every minute, from different servers around the world. When a website is unreachable, Pingdom lets us know the duration of the downtime. This translates into an uptime percentage, and a measure of downtime in hours and minutes. As with server response time, uptime is generally more crucial for businesses than individuals. When looking at a web host, think about how much downtime is ok with you.
Yes, most of them do. And you'll notice that a good number of the web host uptimes that we recorded fall below that. The percentage provided by web hosts gives users a baseline uptime. If your site is unreachable for less than that time, they may choose to compensate you for the time your site was unreachable. Uptime and downtime guarantees are misnomers though, as web hosts can have outages that they don't consider to be downtime (such as acts of god, or planned maintenance). Also, you often have to report the downtime as it occurs, and not after the fact. Our downtime figures are total downtime figures, and should be used to give an idea of a web host's general reliability.
Yes and No. You can only host your domain with one web host at a time. That means either trying out one, canceling the service, and transferring the domain name to a new host, or buying a number of different domain names. Of course, even if you cancel, you'll own those domains for an entire year. Next Advisor is now the proud owner of 12 domain names that we acquired during testing.
There are a number of different services offered by web hosts; they are, quite literally, too numerous to list. To keep the reviews simple, we chose the services that most users, particularly first-timers, are likely to use. Here are some things you may want to look for if you have specific needs:
Google Adword/Yahoo! ad credits for advertising: For those that plan on marketing their sites in search results, this can make your initial foray cheaper.
Search Engine Optimization: These will help make your site more search-engine friendly, which can be important for ecommerce sites. Many of these services are extra, though a few sites offer some automated help.
Dedicated IP Address: An IP address is a numerical address where your site resides, although it's essentially invisible to 99% of people who use the Internet (you might think of it like the zoning in a city), while the domain name is the street address). Often a web host will move you around to different IPs because it's easier for them, and chances are you won't even notice. A dedicated IP means you'll be assigned one IP address and you'll keep it. Then again, chances are you won't even notice that. You should only need a dedicated IP if you're doing something complicated that requires you to own a secure certificate.
One of the key advantages of having your own hosted domain, is the ability to set up your own email addresses at your domain. Some web hosts offer unlimited email addresses, and some have limits. If you plan on having a large number of email addresses, this is something to look into.
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