It is no good working on a site that you want other people to visit if it is only going to sit on your hard drive collecting dust! For other people to be able to see it you will need to let other people access it, and the only safe way to do that is to put it on a host computer that is permanently connected to the internet.

There are many, many, many web site hosts available on the net and it can take many days of research to find the best host for your site, particularly if the site is a commercial one! A personal web site is so much easier to find a web host for because they usually don?t need so many special requirements; there are plenty of hosts that offer free web space. One good place to visit if you are looking for a host is Free Web Space - which has helpful charts and advice on many of the free web hosts available.

However, it is not enough to know that you are looking for a certain amount of web space for your personal site; you need to know a few other things before you go looking for a host. Otherwise, you may find yourself moving your site in the future because they don't have all the features you need to be able to do the update to the site that you want. Things you will need to consider when choosing your web host include...

Size
Of course the amount of web space you need is important, however you should really try to get an idea of the size of any future projects you may want to do. If you choose to buy your web space then you should be able to purchase more space at a later date as and when you need to.

However if you decide to opt for a free web host, then you should consider the size of any future projects more carefully if you want to avoid outgrowing your allotted space. Don't forget, that if you do have to move hosts and you don't have your own domain name, you will probably need to change your URL, which is likely to cause problems with both your visitors and the search engines.

Bandwidth allowance
Your bandwidth and data transfer quotas can play a very important role when choosing a web host; particularly if you intend to pay for your web space, as mistakes in these calculations can cost you very dearly indeed! Again, if in doubt always go for a hosting plan that will give you room to expand without incurring extra charges; if you find yourself buying extra data transfer each month then it would be a good idea to upgrade your hosting plan.

Quite a lot of the free web hosts do not quote data transfer or bandwidth limits, thus if you are going to host a busy site with them it is always wise to check up on any bandwidth limitations; there may be hidden charges or your site may be deleted or have restricted access for using too many resources!

File Transfer
If you intend to pay then you should expect access to the remote server via FTP as a minimum! Some web hosts may give telnet access to shell accounts if on a Unix type server, but most personal sites will not need to use telnet.

Many of the free hosting solutions available tend to make use of some sort of web based FTP interface; allowing you to log into your account and upload, create and edit files using a special web page. Some that offer this web based editing also offer FTP access for those that know what they are doing, however it is always best to check with a host (particularly free hosts) to see if they have FTP access or not.

If you are new to making web sites then it is probably best to avoid FTP access until you have a better idea of what you are doing. However not having FTP capability will make backups of your site (as your visitors see it) difficult to make and so it is best for beginners to find a host that has both FTP and web access to files so they can take the time to learn about FTP.

Special Features
If you want make your site interactive without having to use any of the free services that are available, then you will need to find a site that will support the technologies that you want to be able to use. For example, if you want to use a customisable guest book script that you found at a site hosting Perl scripts, then you will need to find a host that has Perl installed and lets you use your own scripts. If you want to use a script, but it uses ASP, then you will need to find a host that lets you use ASP... you get the idea.

Server Type
For those of you wanting to find a host for your personal web site that uses plain old normal HTML pages, then the type of server will not really be important to you; so long as it gives your visitors the pages as you made them, why should you care! However, for those of you thinking of writing your own scripts or using scripts that are pre-built, the server could make a lot of difference.

On a Unix based server you will need to set file permissions and check your file paths before your scripts will work correctly. You don't really need to pay much attention to these on a Windows server; the permission setting is not the same and you tell the server to use Perl by the file extension and so the path to Perl is not needed.

Having said this, there are far fewer scripts that will work "out of the box" on a Windows server. This is because many of the scripts available make use of a Unix program called sendmail, which just does not exist in Windows!

Server Software
Not only do you have to think about the type of server you host on if your site is more than just basic HTML pages, but you may also have to think of the software that it runs too.

If you use FrontPage and you have used the special scripting features, then you will need to find a server that supports FrontPage extensions if you want these features to work as intended. Even then you should make sure that the version of FrontPage you are using is supported as later versions of the program are unlikely to work well with earlier versions of the server extensions. You will also need to check that other scripting languages you are using are supported by your host, a host that supports most of the more common languages is rare.

Even if you do not rely on such features you may still be interested in the server software that your host is using; there may be security loopholes you may need to be aware of or there may be features that you may want to make the most of.

Author: Rosemarie Wise
Site: Web Site Owner