Web Hosts

Your Web Host is the company that supplies the computer, known as a server, where your web site will reside.

There are free web hosts, and pay web hosts. Which you choose to use will be dependent on what your web site is about. Business sites should seriously consider paying for space on a server. If you have your own domain name (yourname.com) you have no choice but to pay for web space. Personal sites can usually get along fine by using one of the free web hosting companies.

If you are creating a business web site you should really consider getting your own domain name and your own server space. You have probably been to a site hosted at, let's say, geocities ... http://www.geocities.com/pineforest/ralph/ralphspage.shtml ... that really isn't very businesslike. Consider this one ... http://ralph.com ... hmmm ... I hope you see the difference. Your business will be perceived as much more professional if you have your own domain name.

It's really not that expensive. For $8.95 a year you can own a domain name. The service I use is GoDaddy (godaddy.com). As far as I know they are the cheapest place around. The original Internic, which used to be the only place around to register a domain name used to charge $50 a year. They've dropped the price to $35 now. $8.95 is much better!!! I have at this moment 23 domains registered, all through GoDaddy.

Please make note here that I'm steering you to the cheapest and best place here. I could easily tell you to go to a different link and sell you a domain for $12.95 or whatever price I chose and keep the difference. There are affiliate programs for that purpose. I just can't see bilking you for more money when the fact of the matter is I'm trying to teach you how to do this on your own.

Say a prayer for me.

You can do a search to find web hosts. Go to your favorite engine and search for "web hosts" or "web hosting". Shop around. There are hosts and there are HOSTS! It is hard to tell whether any of them will be reliable, i.e., they are up most of the time, and respond to support and maintenance requests.

Since I started online in 1997 I have been through several hosting companies. They all had problems of one sort or another, ranging from going out of business to increasing prices. Through one of the business failures I stumbled upon OLM (olm.net) and I have all of my sites hosted with them now. They are GREAT! I can't talk them up enough. They have bent over backwards to support me and never cease to amaze me as to how good their service is. They have many plans for you to choose from, depending on what you need. OLM is highly recommended by this webmaster. It's a real bummer when you have a site and all of the sudden you don't! Especially when you are trying to make a little money from it.

I am running quickly through this site today and trying to update a few things. One thing you can definitely bank on is everything online changing quickly. The above statement about OLM was absolutely true when I began all this some years back. Today, I have moved away from OLM. They have gone through some sort of change. Their support has become next to non-existant and their service which had been impeccable is now quite poor. I have experience a lot of downtime with them recently, and even had domains pointing to the wrong places sending my traffic away. Regrettably I had to move on. A little further down I recommend Host Gator and supply a link. I now recommend them whole heartedly.

There are many, many more cheap hosts. I haven't looked around recently, but I used to host a site for $25 a year. I had some also at $4.95 a month. That's cheap. Very cheap. Both of the ones I had used are now out of business. I'm sure there are more there. You'll find them when you search the web for hosts. You might try a search for "web hosts" +4.95 ... try other prices too. If there are any, they will show up with that search. I now have a dedicated server with OLM.net so I'm not in the market anymore for cheap hosting.

Something you will run into now is the type of server. Unix or Linux and Windows are the major players. Each is an Operating System. Linux is the freeware version of Unix and operates identically (for this discussion anyway) to Unix which was developed a long time ago for big main frame computers. Windows, or Windoze (chuckle) you are probably familiar with anyway.

I highly recommend using a Linux or Unix server. Everything ... let me say this again ... EVERYTHING is much, much easier. After you've developed some talent at writing pages and want to incorporate things like counters, guestbooks, databases etc., etc., you'll have a much easier time of it if you go this route from the start. I highly recommend using Linux with Apache for software on your server. All the good hosts use this software and everything will be set up for you.

I do not recommend Windows for hosting web pages. Just like with your home PC you'll always have problems. Also, as previously mentioned, the new Windows Platform is designed to steal your hard earned customers away from you by overlaying your links with theirs. Why would you want to support a company that has policies like that?

Free Web Hosts
Having talked about why you need to have your own domain name, and paid web hosting, let's talk about free hosting. The price is certainly right, and for many, many pages it is nothing less than perfect. I use these free hosts for gateway pages to my regular sites. It's a marketing strategy that is much less effective today, than it was in the past, but still a good idea.

If your site is about your family, dog, kids, just a Blog or not something that you intend to make money at, a free web host should suit you just fine. They all have one annoying thing in common though ... ads. Yes, in exchange for the free space on the Internet they will place ads on your site. They will either be banner ads at the top of your pages, or pop-ups, pop-unders, and who knows what else they will come up with. I think the least annoying of them all is PageBarn.com who places a banner ad at the top of all your pages. They accept business sites too. Not all free web hosts will allow you to run a business, or link to a money making site, from their free service.

Here are the biggies:

FreeYellow
Tripod
AngelFire

I have just taken two of these off of this list as it seems one has gone out of business, and the other stopped offering free space. I will not bother looking for more to repopulate this small list. Quite frankly it just isn't worth it. You can get hosting incredibly cheap today. It just isn't worth hasseling with a free host. I highly recommend web hosting with Host Gator.

Your ISP may well offer you web space too. Check into it. You probably can't host a domain name with them for free, but you never know.

I will also mention at this point, without a big sales pitch, that I could host your domain on my server. My normal charge is $19.95 per month, but since you have purchased access to this tutorial I will extend a very special offer. $10.00 even per month. There is no setup fee. If you want us to register your domain name for you (in your name not ours) we will for an extra one time $25 setup charge.

If you are interested please contact me at webhosting@ntwp.net and provide your name, email, domain name etc. This hosting is limited to five megs of space. This is adequate for most accounts, but not for everyone. More space can be provided on a limited basis, contact me about how much space you need and maybe we can work something out. The space comes with your own cgi-bin with several installed programs such as a counter, a message board, cgiemail and more. There is no support provided for HTML, cgi script setups or anything beyond the service we provide you ... you need to be able to run your own site. This means if you can't retrieve your email, can't figure out how to upload, can't configure a cgi script, you can't get your answers from me (at least not in a timely manner ... I just don't have the time for that). If you can get your answers elsewhere, this might be a good idea for you. I'm not in the web hosting business.

Lemme say this again. I'll host your site but I'm not going to provide you with much support. If you don't need the support you may find this to be a good deal. If you do need the support you probably should look elsewhere. I'm not in the hosting business. The only support I'll provide is server issues.