Where to Host Your Site
Once you've created your website (see our 'how to create a website page') you want everyone with internet access to be able to see it. In order for your website to be seen by everyone who has access to the internet, you need to rent space from a web-host who is connected to the internet. There are thousands of these web-hosts out there and the important factors to consider when deciding which to use are:
- Cost - Your cost per month can range from $7 per month to over $1,000 per month.
- Reliability - You want your web-host to be reliable - if your host is 'down' the people who want to view your website will be unable to do so. Also called 'uptime' You want your uptime to be 100%, or very close.
- Bandwidth - This is a measure of how fast your internet pages will be transmitted from your host to each person who wants to view your pages.
- Features and Services - tools which make it easy to build your site - examples are integration with Microsoft Front Page, e-commerce tools, and site-building tools.
We've done extensive research and we recommend all of the following hosting companies because
- They all offer a great combination of Cost, Reliability, Bandwidth
- They all integrate with Microsoft FrontPage
- They have free or very inexpensive shopping carts build in
- They all also offer site building tools which will allow you to build your site without any third party software or product knowledge.
Click on a link to go to their websites - find the one which most appeals to you and sign up today. It doesn't cost much and you'll need your site address before you can get a site name, start advertising, etc.. I've ranked the best sites first (based on cost, features and ease of use), although they're all very good:
PowerWeb.com - Ranking AA+
Jumpline.com - Ranking A+
Apollo.com - Ranking A
LunarPages.com - Ranking A