SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Web Hosting
Teach Me Web Hosting Essentials
Your
Web Site Design
and the Web Host You Choose
Sometimes
a web page design plays a role in which web host you choose
to go with. The service of web hosting
is tremendous and varies from one host to another. For example
if your web design on your web page is to be very basic and
include a small amount of file hosting (which means “files
can be uploaded via FTP or a Web interface”) then you could
go with a web hosting service that offers a very basic “beginner-type”
value package. In this case files are uploaded to the net basically
“as is” and little designing or altering is required. There
are a variety of ISP’s that offer this for free, an example
being a web page hosting service such as GeoCities. However
this kind of option is best for personal home websites and
is not fancy and unfortunately, not always very professional
and therefore not the best choice for any business, even a
small home based business. The two characteristics of this
type of web page hosting are that it is generally free of charge
and full of sponsor driven advertisements.
More
complex, business oriented websites require more complicated
and intensive web hosting packages. When web page design is
to be complex, one needs to find a web host that allows for
database support as well as application development platforms
(such as ASP.NET, Java and PHP). This type of web hosting services
makes it possible for customers to do such things as “to write
or install scripts for applications like forums and content
management.” If e-commerce is on your agenda then a secure
socket layer (abbreviated to SSL) is an absolute necessity
and 128-bit encryption is the best way to go. If you choose
to get a hosted shopping cart (or online storefront) you will
also require a supported gateway because gateways “give shopping
carts the ability to connect and securely process credit card
orders in real-time.” The most reliable shopping carts will
be able to process payments from the larger payment processing
companies that exist online such as Paypal and Verisign and
therefore you need a web host that will adequately provide
you with the e-commerce services you need to run your site.
If yours is to be a “database
driven website” then the database
accommodation of the web host could play a big role in which
one you go with. For example, if your web page design includes
SQL scripting language then it will be necessary that it can
read whatever you choose to use in the HTML of your web pages
in order to gain access to the particular database, for example
if you choose to use PHP.
How much space you need on your website makes a difference
when choosing a web host and one’s web page design often dictates
this direction. Keep in mind that a web host basically means
that you are buying (or perhaps more accurately, renting) space
on someone else’s hard drive. Do not back yourself into a corner
by purchasing disk space you don’t need or else having far
too little room on your site if your web page design is to
be fancy and elaborate. As a general rule, a disk space of
50MB is sufficient room for twenty plus web pages and this
is approximately the size of a medium to small business website.
The more images, sounds, applets or animation you decide to
include on your web page, the more disk space you will require.
There are three general categories of web site design “sophistication”
and they include basic, database driven (as previously mentioned)
and multimedia. All websites in one form or another contain
elements of basic website design. Regardless of whether a website
is classed as a personal website, a hobbyist one, a small business
website or an organization driven website, it will partially
contain basic components. Plenty of websites are database driven
meaning that many websites have a “backend database for storing
and dynamically displaying various types of data.” Multimedia
websites are glitterier and more fancy than other kinds of
websites. They have a “multimedia enhanced appeal” to them.
Multimedia sites have sounds and lots of color and flashiness
and are more often for entertainment purposes more than anything
else. Website designs that need these elements for their success
need to find a web host that can accommodate them.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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