Easy Web Hosting For Beginners

After considering several characteristics of your intended website – complexity, content, and your own technical abilities – in Part 1 of this article, we arrived at the following conclusions. It will be a personal website of a very basic technical nature; it will have a fair amount of dynamic content on it; and, that you’ll be doing the website development, publishing, and maintenance yourself. (We’re assuming, also, that you’ve already identified and registered an Internet domain name (e.g., www.mysitename.com) with GoDaddy.com or any of the other domain name registrars.

Because the site you’ll be putting up will be simple and basic in nature, you’ll only need some of the more fundamental tools. All of the cheap web hosting for beginners providers include a simple web design tool (usually a set of automated templates), a file manager utility to manage your website’s files on the server, and more than enough email accounts. As far as disk storage and network bandwidth allowances go these days, the trend is to offer unlimited levels for both, even in the most basic hosting package. (You can always purchase more later if you want to take your website up a notch or two in complexity.)

Beyond those preliminary requirements for your basic website, here are several more factors to consider. Do you plan on keeping your website online for a significant length of time? You can choose an easy web hosting for beginners monthly plan, or you can save quite a bit of money by signing up for a multi-year plan. Since it will take some time for you to get your site established on the web, I’d suggest you purchase at least a one-year deal. You’ll also probably save some money on that, too.

Virtually all hosting companies charge their customers’ credit cards these days, and it’s not uncommon for them to keep your credit card number on file for auto-renewal purposes. This provides two benefits for you – security, as using a credit card online is very safe, and availability, as your website won’t be deactivated mistakenly due to lack of renewal payment. I’d suggest having them set up your account in this fashion.

Even the easy web hosting for beginners providers’ plans differ a little, so you’ll probably want to do a little comparison research. You’ll want to try to get a sense of their server and network characteristics. Here are some things to stay alert to while you’re making these comparisons:

- Each plan offered will have a list of features for that package. See what it says about the server hardware you’ll be hosted on. Try to determine if your website will run a generic “white box” server, or on a quality server like those from Sun, HP, Compaq, or Dell.

- Make sure you can call a toll-free 8xx number for technical support; is that included in your potential hosting plan? Email and chat support channels work, but you may want more support than that.

- Will your account be using a shared IP address? It will only be a problem if another hosting account on the same IP address engages in bad behavior like spamming. The IP may then be “blocked” for some length of time. If it happens, then request your own “static IP”; it should cost you only a couple of dollars a month.

These tips may seem like a lot to remember, but if you do, you’ll be one of the better-informed new webmasters out there and will come out ahead. Try to take full advantage of any pricing specials being offered. Make your pick and it won’t be long before you’ll have your own unique presence on the World Wide Web. Enjoy! – 35303