Website Hosting for Beginners

One of the most commonly misunderstood concepts when a beginner asks about setting up a website is the issue of website hosting. To the non technical novice looking for an online business solution, all this talk of servers and domains and dynamic features can be very confusing. But website hosting, or domain hosting, is crucial in supporting your website and the wrong web hosting decision can create problems for your website later on.

What is Website Hosting?

The pages of your website need to live somewhere within the webspace, that is accessible at all times by the internet. A web hosting provider has various servers solely designed to store your website information, attach it to your registered domain name in the webspace, and serve it up to the internet users who type in your domain name.

Of course, there are many different types of domain or website hosting, intended for different website scenarios.

Should I Choose Free Website Hosting?

With website hosting costs now able to meet most budgets, free website hosting plans are becoming less popular. Many individuals use free website hosting plans for their own personal websites, but if you are an online business, a free website hosting plan will create the wrong impression for your customers. A free website hosting plan relies on advertising to cover the costs, serving up adverts on the webpage you carefully crafted whilst often distorting your own positioning and layout as a result. Some websites set up for fun don’t have much of a problem with this, but your customers could be put off by additional pop-ups and flashing adverts if they are plastered all over your otherwise professional business.

Standard Website Hosting or Dynamic Website Hosting?

If your website is going to include interactive features such as forms, blogs and search functions, you will need a dynamic hosting package such as NetRegistry’s BusinessSite. Dynamic hosting uses database technology directly on the server to process the changing information and present the freshly generated webpage to the visitor. Most basic websites don’t require dynamic hosting, but it is worth considering whether your own website will evolve and may require dynamic website hosting in the future.

As with most things when planning your online strategy, it is important to consider not only your current expectations for your website but also your future needs and budget. NetRegistry can provide all your web hosting needs with a variety of professional packages.