Why not get a free hosting plan??

When you’re ready to choose a web hosting provider, many choices come up. One of your decisions will be to choose free or paid web hosting.

A free web hosting service may fit you and your content. Want to host a blog? A free web hosting service can handle that with no problem. Want to have an online store? A free or even cheap hosting provider is not for you.

Free hosting plans generally come with some limit on bandwidth. Ever go to a page with: “This user has exceeded their bandwidth for the month. Please try again next month” These people are using free or cheap web hosting providers and hitting the limits. If you hit this bandwidth limit, for the rest of that month anyone going to your page will see that message. It wouldn’t matter if you posted an important update, no one could see it.

If you’ve setup a page with basic information and a limited set of visitors, bandwidth is not your issue. If you want to get past the basic web page and start setting up video clips, there’s the problem. Bandwidth on even a short video clip would equal thousands of regular text page views. One video clip to a few people can take up your entire bandwidth for the month.

Another problem encountered with free web hosting is advertising. A free service still has to make money for the host - and if you’re not paying someone else has to. When you provide content to be published, they can link in to certain words to promote products, sell banner ad space on the sides, etc. They key here is that they are choosing what runs and what doesn’t. If you’re talking about the PETA movement and the abuse of animals - do you want a banner for a dog food company? The text of your article could provide keywords for things you’re speaking about, so it would be possible to get conflicting messages. What if you have something against a certain advertiser? With a free web host it wouldn’t be possible to refuse space for that advertiser, it’s free and you get what you pay for.

To decide on getting a free web host, take a look at what you want for your content. To publish an article or get a general blog going, a free provider can be a step in the direction you’d like to go. For more specific content or for a professional appearance, you’ll want to go to a reputable web hosting plan.

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How do I make a choice between Linux web hosting and Windows web hosting?

We’re often asked this question and what differences it makes to your final site. Linux and Windows are operating systems and both have fundamental differences, but also many similarities. The truth is it all depends on what you have to have. Easy right?

Let’s start with the web site idea. When you begin to pick a web provider you’re moving past the “I have to have a web site” phase and starting to move into the “I want my web site to do this” phase. Don’t try to make a decision on a back-end right away, you’ll just confuse yourself and get bogged down.

Let’s start by thinking of your web site having a back-end and a front-end. The front-end is what your customers and clients see - this is the face of your business. That face can be professional, whimsical, informational - anything you design. The front-end is where you debate graphic design, visitor interface and content of the site. This is also the part you’re designing things on paper and not worrying about how it works - just how it looks.

The back-end is getting into the technical portion and most likely where you’ll need someone to work things through with you. This is the portion of the web site that no one will see except you and your technical consult. When you chose a form in the front-end, what do you want it to do? Sure it can collect an email address for you to contact them - that’s a basic function. Now decide what path that information will take - do you want to store that information, along with when they contacted you? Do you want to store that information just in your email client or do you want a database?

Now you have an idea of where you’ll be when you choose Linux or Windows for your web hosting. The tools each provide will focus your decision further. In our example your form is collecting email addresses. If you just want your information mailed to you and you’ll call them and delete the email - it won’t matter what operating system you choose they both have simple email functions available. Do you want to store those emails in a contact database? If so, do you already have a database to store those in?

Linux hosting will generally come with a MySQL database. MySQL is a major database, able to hold millions of lines of information and is supported by major companies and numerous web support sites. MySQL is also free to use, easy to set up (with the right help) and a web standard. It interfaces with major publishing systems like Drupal, Wordpress, PHP pages and general HTML. If you don’t have a database for yourself it generally won’t matter what is setup - pick the cheaper one in this case. For most companies if you don’t have a specific need - pick a Linux host, they’re generally cheaper.

Windows hosting is more specific to what tools you have to publish, maintain your site or internal tools you’re using. If you currently have an in-house SQL database, it’s a cleaner and easier solution to host that database on the web using a Windows-based hosting provider. If you have tools or programming done with Visual Studio, those tools can publish directly to your Windows-based website or directly convert into a web page hosted there.

Either choice in creating a website can be a technical challenge and it’s recommended to talk with a technical consultant. Even a short consult from one can help you save hours of work on your part.

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