There are so many web hosting companies to choose from. This article discusses what to think about when choosing a web hosting company and publishing changes to your web pages.
Web hosting advice
|
U |
nless you plan to have your
computer permanently connected to the web you’ll
have to place your web site on the web via a
hosting company.
It’s worth buying the
domain name and hosting it with the same company
as moving the name to another company can cost.
"Avoid Free hosting like the plague"
Take your time over the selection of company and
make sure they provide the services you need, like
multiple autoresponders, so your site can send a response
email without your intervention.
Avoid Free hosting like the plague. Many search engines frown upon such hosts and mark your site as less relevant. Also your site will be slower to respond as it will be lumped in with a load of other unmanaged sites. Most hosting companies that charge offer 99% up time (your site will be available for 99% of the time), but the level of support varies greatly. Try to find a company that offers free email support – test response times before you buy, there are many ISPs who deliver poor customer service.
If you wish to keep costs down and expect the level of traffic to your site to be small (at least to start with) a good option is to take out the minimum package available that will also allow download of the raw log files. Compare UK hosting packages.
However if the business only survives on a high level of visitors then you'll have to consider purchasing your own server (this is just a rackmountable PC built for data traffic performance). One of the largest providers of this service is Rackspace. Expect to "invest" fairly serious money to get this level of service.
|
Web publishing
This is the process of copying all or part of your web site to your
hosting space so that the rest of the world can see it.
Your web hosting company should provide specific details when
you first pay for their services.
Copying your website
You can purchase an FTP client to manage which files should be promoted
and this simplifies the task.
I recommend CuteFTP
which I've used for years, because its easy to use.
"Organise files into folders or you may quickly get into a mess"
Its worth being organised about how you store your files (i.e. grouping similar files together – like images) or they may quickly get into a mess. I recommend putting all images in a folder, code in another, databases in another etc, even using subdirectories to split out images further (section 1 photos, 2 photos etc).
I also recommend building a folder structure that easily allows log file programs to identify what visitors do once they hit a certain landing page on your site. By keeping each mailshot landing page in a seperate folder with seperate images for example it becomes childs play to see how visitors react once they hit the site. This allows intelligent tuning of your pages later on.
