Understanding Web Hosting Features
For those unfamiliar with websites and how to create them, finding the right web host can be intimidating. You are filled with words and abbreviations that seem like a foreign language. Rather than muddling your way through this sea of confusion, this page will break down some of the more popular terms to help you understand. For clarification, here are a few words that will be used in the definitions:
A web page is a single page on the internet.
A web site is a collection of web pages.
A server is where the where the web host stores the information for your website.
The web host is the company that provides you with space on their server.
A visitor is someone who comes to your website.
Setup Fee The setup fee is a one-time fee that web hosts charge to do get everything arranged for you. Fee ranges from $9.95 to $29.95, although it is usually waived if you sign up for a year or more.
Monthly Fee The monthly fee is exactly what it sounds like, the cost to host your site for one month. Typically, the monthly fee gets smaller the longer you agree to sign up with the company.
Hosting Space/Disk Space/Web Space
Hosting space, disk space, and web space all mean the same thing. It is the amount of space the hosting company will allocate for your site. This includes all the html files, graphics, audio/video files, emails, and anything else that makes up your website. A good way to estimate the size of your site is to place all the graphics and web pages into one folder and right click on it.
Typically, hosting plans give you much more that you will ever need, and often provide options for your should you need more—but its rare that one would. Most sites advertise between 50-300 Gigabytes (GB). The total size of a web page (including all graphics) should be around 20-30 Kilobytes (KB) and never exceed 60KB. Larger than this and your page will load too slowly, which will cause you to lose visitors. Considering 1 GB equals 1024 Megabytes (MB) or 1,048,576 KB; a mere 30 GB of hosting space would allow you to have over 1.7 million pages (if they were all 30 KB in size).
Domain Name Registration
Domain name registration refers to officially declaring ownership on a URL or web address. The cost of this service runs from $4.95 on up. Word of warning: do not try to save a few dollars by registering the name cheaper someone else before signing up with your web host unless you know what you’re doing. Most web hosts provide you with at least one free domain registration when you sign up with them. Transferring a domain to a different host can usually be done, but it’s tricky and could cause you quite a few headaches. Notice the word “usually” in that last sentence. A few domain registrars do not allow you to transfer your domain to another company or will not allow you to transfer until after a certain time. Read the fine print whenever you are registering your domain name with a company that you don’t plan to use to host the site.
Unlimited Domains / Multiple Domain Hosting
When a web host advertises unlimited domains or multiple domain hosting, it can mean one of several things. It can refer to how many add on domains, how many parked domains, or how many sub-domains you can have. Here’s the difference between the three:
Parked domain: A parked domain is a domain that points back to another site. Consider it an alias or AKA for your site that links two addresses to one webpage. For example, if you had the site www.mysite.com and you decided to park www.anotherofmysites.com, visitors would go to the same site no matter which address they typed in. Often, people will register both the .com and .net of the same address and then park one of them.
Add on domain: An add on domain is when you have two separate websites using the same hosting plan. It is like two people living in the same house. The two sites share the resources between them, but they remain separate sites and few would ever be able to tell that the sites were connected unless you told them.
Sub-domain (or sub domain): Sub-domains are typically used by larger sites and enable them to create individual identities for users on their site. An example of a sub-domain would be tomsmith.mysite.com or forum.mysite.com. Blog hosts and podcast hosts typically create sub-domains for their users instead of creating new domains for them.
How many additional domains you will want to ad to your site will depend on its content and purpose.
Domain Transfer
Domain transfer allows you to transfer a domain from the current domain registrar and then register it through the web host provider.
Gigs of Transfer or Monthly Data Transfer
The number is usually written in GB and, ironically, often smaller than the amount of web space that the web host provider provides you. Monthly data transfer refers to how much data you can upload to the site each month. Every time you upload a new HTML file, graphic, or other file to the site, it is considered data transfer.
Bandwidth
While the monthly data transfer refers to the amount of data you transfer, bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred by your visitors. Every time a website is loaded, it uses bandwidth. The larger the page is and the more times it is loaded, the more bandwidth it will use.
The easiest way to estimate how much bandwidth your site will need is to multiply the number of visitors times the number of pages they viewer times the average size of each page. For example, if your site had 2,000 visitors a month, each visitor viewed 20 pages, and each page was 25 KB; your site would need 1,000,000 KB or about 1 GB.
Bandwidth only becomes a real issue for sites that offer video or audio files, since they are notorious about eating up bandwidth. If you plan to host a podcast from your site or post videos, then you need to make sure that your web host will provide you with enough bandwidth. If you don’t, you could end up with additional fees or, even worse, discover your site going down once you have exceeded your allotted bandwidth for that month. Most small and medium business will be able to get by with about 20-40 GB per month.
Dedicated or Static IP Address
A dedicated or static IP address indicates that your IP (or number) of your site will not change. Those who preach search engine optimization (SEO) will tell you that a static IP address is a significant factor when it comes to search engine rankings. Others will tell you that it’s not that important. Either way, it did not take long for web hosts to notice this and start advertising this feature with their plans. Whether or not it is important to you depend upon whom you want to believe.
Secure Shell Access (SSH Access)
Secure shell, or SSH access, is a network protocol that links two computers together. It encrypts the data that is passed between the two computers.
SSL
SSL stands for secure sockets layer. It is technology that provides security by encrypting information during transfer (preventing it from being read if stolen). If your website will require visitors to transmit information such as a password or credit card number, you will want this option. You will need to get an SSL certificate before you can provide it on your site. However, it you plan to use a third-party merchant such as PayPal, SSL is unnecessary.
FTP
FTP stands for file transfer protocol. It is a method of uploading and downloading files onto the server. FTP is only an issue if you are using a program such as Dreamweaver and GoLive use FTP to maintain your site. Otherwise, whatever method the web host provides to upload files to the server should be sufficient.
FTPS FTPS stands for FTP over SSL. It enables you to transfer files using a more secure protocol.
FTPS CGI, Perl, Java, PHP4, PHP, Python, Ruby (RoR), SSI, TCL, PHP4, Perl, Ruby, Python, and TCL are types of scripting languages or web-based applications that may be used by advanced web developers. They are used to create more dynamic or interactive web pages.
MySQL
MySQL is a database management system that is popular with web developers. Websites that have dynamic pages, have a Word Press Blog, or utilize interactive features such as a shopping cart typically use MySQL as part of its underlying database structure.
Your Own CGI-bin ACGI-bin is a secure folder. You will need your own CGI-bin if you want to process or run CGI based scripts such as Perl, PHP, etc.
Front Page Extensions
Front Page is a program used to design web pages. In order to function properly, it requires special server extensions.
Stats
Stats is short for statistics. It allows you to access some basic information about the visitors to your site, such as how many, where they are from, which pages are most popular, etc.