Now you've got your website, you need somewhere to host it

Your website has to "live" somewhere in cyberspace, available at all times to people who are looking for the information that you provide.

Practically, this means that the files which make up your website, have to sit on a webserver. A webserver is like a large capacity computer, which "serves up" your webpages, when somone requests them.

Unless you have a great deal of time and money to invest in your own webserver, the standard method is to rent space on someone else's server.

The cost of this can range from free, to hundreds of pounds a month, depending on the size of your website, and the amount of traffic it receives.

Disc Space and Bandwidth

There's no getting away from some of these terms. Internet marketing has jargon all of it's own.

Disc space means the amount of physical space you use on the server. Simply, a large website will take up more disc space than a small websites. Images consume a lot of space too, and are best avoided if possible (more on that later).

Bandwidth refers to the amount of resouces that your site consumes, usually, the more visitors that your site attracts, the greater will be your bandwidth consuption.

You'll find lots of offers for free webhosting, and very cheap webhosting, if you look. I strongly advise you not to use either.

Here's why:

"Free Hosting" often carries advertising, this just plain makes your business look cheap.

Very cheap webhosting often means that too many sites are packed onto a server, a bit like battery hen chickens. Inevitably the server crashes, or runs very slowly, and your website stops working.

Neither do you need top end hosting, unless you have, or want, a very large site, or begin to get serious traffic. 

We can supply hosting and support for £14.95 per month

The Hosting that we use and recommend is from Hostgator

Hosting Account key Features:

• 100 GB of disc space and 1000 GB of Bandwidth - plenty for a large website or numerous smaller websites 
• 99.9% uptime Guarantee - to give you confidence that your website will always be online
• No contract - Pay monthly - cancel anytime
• 30 day money back guarantee - your money back if not delighted
• Host an unlimited number of domains - add more websites add no extra cost
• Latest C Panel contol - the industry standard
• Unlimited email accounts

We've used Hostgator for over 3 years, and never had a problem with them. Currently we have around 20 websites hosted on one account.