After thinking long and hard about it, you have decided that you want to make a presence on the web. Whether for business or personal purposes, there are important decisions to make. You must decide whether to use a shared hosting solution or a dedicated hosting solution. You need to know what hosting features you will require. Finally, you need to find a web host provider that provides the needed features at a price that fits within your budget.

When choosing a web host provider, shared hosting solutions are much easier to set up and maintain than dedicated hosting solutions. With shared hosting, the web host provider manages all the server software and makes a user account available that will be used for hosting your content. A web interface is provided to easily configure any aspect of your account. The hosting server is shared with other users who are hosting their content as well. With a dedicated hosting solution, you must manage the server software yourself, often manually editing configuration files and installing other needed software. Discussing how to set up and manage a dedicated hosting solution is outside the scope of this article.

Common features provided by web host providers are server side scripting languages for generating content, database access for storing and retrieving information, email support for contact, and more. Server side scripting languages are used to create dynamically driven websites instead of purely static content. Scripts located on the server handle requests from the web browser and produce content for the browser to display to the user. In addition to the server side scripting languages, a database is often needed to store and retrieve information. The server side scripts can then update information in a database or generate content for the user from the information in the database. No web site would be complete without email support. At least one email is needed for the site administrator. Email is also used to confirm registrations from site users as well as to send messages to the users and handle subscriptions to site content. Finally, you must make sure the hosting provider provides enough storage capacity for the hosted content. A small web site may only need a hundred megabytes, while a larger web site may need several gigabytes or more for files and database content.

Before choosing a web host provider, you will also need to consider what bandwidth is needed as well as whether other services are desired. A small site with only a hundred or thousand hits a day needs less bandwidth than a large site with a hundred million hits a day. If you are storing important information, you will want a web host provider that will provide backup services to perform routine backups of files and databases. If you are running a high profit web site, you will also want a web host provider that will provide redundant servers in case one server goes down.

Choosing a web host provider is important for anyone planning on making their presence on the web. The features you need must be considered as well as the available budget. Then you must find a web host provider that provides the features that you need for the price you can afford. You may also need a web host provider that provides backup services and redundant servers. After you find a web host provider that meet your requirements and are satisfied with the decision, you will take the first step towards making your own presence on the web.