Choosing your Web Host Service

 When it comes to publishing your website, you need a hard disk on the World Wide Web to save your website files on; these hard disks are called servers or Web Hosts.

When you choose your web host you don't look for the space they provide only, it's a little bit more complicated than that, there are many criterias you should look for depending on the website you are trying to build.

If you want to build a static website then you should look for their HTML editor or their FrontPage extensions or the site builder they have, while when building a dynamic website you want to see if they support the programming language you are using like PHP and ASP.

Note when building a blog using online tools like Blogger.com or SiteDiary.com or LiveJournal.com you should not be worried about hosting because they provide you with a free sub-domain or a second level path name (you can move your blog to a Domain Name of your choice), BUT if you want to build a blog using other tools; then you need a web host just like you need it when building a dynamic website.

There are things in a web host you should look for no matter what your website type is, things like bandwidth usage per month this means how much data can be downloaded form the site by the hole users, if you have a lot of pictures and a lot of users then you need a large bandwidth, you should also look for the security they have, number of emails . . .etc. Some of these features can be upgraded, just check before.

Main features to look for in a web host

• Web space
• Bandwidth per month
• Number of domains that can be hosted on one plan
• Number of sub domains with each domain
• Number of FTP accounts
• Number of email accounts and their size
• Log file of the web site activities
• Statistics system
• Add on applications

And if your site is dynamic check if they support the database you want and the programming language you are using.