Wondering How to Host a Website?
How to host a website is not difficult, it’s just foreign to most people because they have not done it. Once you follow the easy steps found on this site, you can have your website or blog up and running on your own web host.
The first question to answer is “which” web hosting company to use when you want to host a website?
There are different types of hosting accounts from shared hosting to a virtual private server or a dedicated server. Not to 
mention the newer “cloud” hosts which can be part of these and add improved load times and possible increased rankings. Which type you use will depend on how many domains you need to host, the traffic volume (bandwidth) and your budget.
Regardless of which host you choose for your website, you will want dependable (uptime), relatively cheap web hosting with an easy to use control panel and responsive customer tech support. So, pick a good one because it can make all the difference in traffic and revenue (if that’s you goal).
Remember, hosting companies are not equal.
Consider the following when you decide to host a website:
- Is it recommended by others?
- Is it cost effective web hosting?
- Does it have unlimited bandwidth or enough for your traffic?
- Is it fast?
- Is the tech support responsive and knowledgeable?
- Is it reliable with 99.9% uptime?
- Does it allow add-on domain names?
- Does it have unlimited email accounts?
- Does it have website building tools like Fantastico for WordPress?
Here are a few of the hosting companies that meet the criteria and are most often recommended by bloggers and website owners on the forums when they decide to host a website on their own.
- HostGator – Usually the first or second choice on everyone’s “best hosting companies” list. They have been around since 2002, offering Shared, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated hosting with great tech support, low pricing and reliable servers.
- Bluehost – Great pricing and often recommended by IMers.
- Site5 – Not as big as the others but great support and up-time when you hosta a website. Plus they have Cloud hosting for unlimited domains, which can really reduce your sites load time.
- MyHosting – Since 1997 offering services for web hosting. Great value for 100% uptime guarantees and 24/7 support.
Any one of the companies listed here offer what you need to host a website.
Once choosing a website hosting company, decide which type of hosting account you will need.
The types of accounts you can use to host a website:
Free Hosting Accounts - Free is not “free” in the hosting world. The will have banner ads and even worse pop-up ads where you give up revenue to the host provider. You also sacrifice the support of a paid hosting company along with the flexibility and options for the type of site you host. If you do go this route, remember you are not allowed to complain about the poor load times of the site and frequent down-time.
Shared Hosting – This is the most common type of paid hosting and for most people the best solution when they want to host a website. It is economical while offering all the features needed for a business or personal blog. Your site is “sharing” the resources of the server with many other websites.
VPS Hosting – This is a “Virtual Private Server” and as the name implies the hosting company partitions a portion of the server for you alone. The web hosting company then allocates resources to you. The performance is better and more reliable and where and when your internet business grows, this may be a good solution.
Reseller Hosting - An account that can be used with Shared or Virtual plans where you are able to create separate Control Panels for each domain. These can then be sold to others that want to host a website and you charge them a monthly fee. Often these are used not to “resell” but simply add a little more control, where bandwidth and storage can be allocated to each domain.
Dedicated Hosting – This is where you have a dedicated server and only your domains are on that one server. It could a managed service or one where you choose and install the operating system, software, email client and so on. Because you have the most control here, you will need to know what you are doing. The cost is very high and unless you are running a business that requires this level, better to use Shared or VPS hosting. If you just need to host a website, this may be overkill.
Conclusion: Free is not free and the best solution for most people wanting to host a website is one of the Shared Hosting plans from a reliable company with excellent support. Most folks tend to go with HostGator. I use them, but not for this site. For this site I am using the Shared Cloud hosting from Site5. Be sure to read the other articles on how to host a website.
