Help With Determining Your Web Hosting Needs
This section is designed to help you determine what you will need from a hosting provider.
These are the questions you need to be able to answer for your self. You may find it useful to refer to our article on Determining Your Target Audience.
- Is this a business or personal site?
- Does the site need to be found on the search engines and are you prepared to spend money and time to get it positioned properly?
- How many email addresses do you need? Do you need forwarders or auto responders on any or all of these addresses? What size mail boxes do you need?
- Will you be traveling a lot without a computer? Would browser-based web mail be a help?
- Once your site is designed, how big is it exactly? How much storage will you need? Do you intend to add-on in the future? 50 mb will hold about 175 text and graphic based pages depending on the content
- How many visitors is it realistic to expect to your site? Don't trick yourself into thinking you are Microsoft or Google. If you are you will need an array of private servers. 1000mb (1 gig) is good for about 10,000 visitors per month depending on the content delivered.
- Do you need one or more databases? If so, what kind?
- Do you need to use CGI scripts?
- What kind of support do you think you might need? (Support is a very subjective issue. Most host providers offer support only if there is a problem with the server. They will not help you develop scripts or author your web site. Read the fine print with any provider you may be considering.)
- What is your primary spoken language? Make sure your provider can communicate with you and you with them.
- How would you like to pay; monthly, quarterly, every 6 months or yearly? Would you like to pay by cheque, wire transfer, credit card or by some other means?
- Do you need some of the more esoteric services like ASP, SSI, or SSL.
- Are website statistics important to you?
- Would one-click installs of things like blogging software be helpful?
- Do you need or want a dedicated IP address?
- Will you be using your own software or an online program to develop your site?
Once you have answered these questions, you are in a much better position to select your hosting provider. Of course, we would like you to consider our services.