A rough guide to website hosting.

In this modern day and age, many people are creating websites for a variety of reasons. Some see it as a way to make money, some see it as a way to share their talent and others see it as a way of bringing people together who share similar interests and opinions. Whatever the reasons are for making a website, once it is designed and ready to go, you need to think about website hosting. Web hosting is where you site goes live on the Internet. Once you have sorted out your web hosting people from all across the world can access your website.

For people new to the Internet, web hosting can seem hard to get your head around. People ask why you need it? The easiest way to describe it, is if you were to go and build a cinema you would not just build it anywhere you would first need to find a place of land which you purchase then build the cinema upon that land. Similar with your website you cannot just place it anywhere, you have to find and purchase the piece of land. It’s just lucky that web hosting doesn’t cost as much as real land does, and can actually be a lot cheaper than you would expect.

Once you have created your website you will next need to purchase a domain. This is an address where people can access your site. Imagine it as a phone number, you type the number into the computer and you are taken to the website.

Once you have a domain you next need to find a suitable hosting company. There are actually a few free website hosting companies that will host your site for free, but this comes with a cost. They will place their advertising on your page, as well as using their own companies domain name if not using your own. Freewebs, Geocities and Angel fires are good examples of these.

If however you want a more professional approach and want your site hosted free of adverts, GoDaddy may be the place to go. Hosting millions of websites, GoDaddy has a worldwide reputation for good customer service, as well as outstanding hosting capabilities. Pricing can start from around $15 for a whole year! Obviously if you want more features and more bandwidth you will have to pay more, but for a basic website you can get all you need from GoDaddy or a similar site.