Website Hosting – A Brief Guide for Novice Netpreneurs

Let’s face it: we were all rookies once. There was a steep learning curve involved, having to learn some basic HTML, FTP, PHP, etc. to have a decent website up and running. And of course, most newbie online sellers are broke!

So, in order to practice essential website building skills, you’ll need some kind of free or low-cost hosting solution. For simple single sales letter type sites, you can use one of the many free hosting providers, although most display ads on their pages. Also, most free hosts don’t support scripting technologies like PHP and JavaScript. Therefore, I recommend purchasing a low-cost “basic” hosting plan at first, rather than a free one. A suitable option if you need a website only as a web presence, for example a local service type business. Such a site would have about three pages with a feedback form and business card type details on the home page. Make sure that the basic hosting plan you choose supports PHP, as most of the contact forms available use PHP technology. This type of hosting is also suitable for single page sales letter sites. You can get such a hosting plan for as low as $4 per month.

So let’s assume you’ve already experimented with website scripting and HTML. You will then find that the basic plan has bandwidth limitations and no MySQL databases. You want to have a highly successful internet business with lots of targeted traffic. A site with a discussion forum, autoresponders, and integrated email hosting. You also want a content-rich site with a content management system and a blog. For this type of operation, you will need a hosting plan that offers PHP, at least 5 MySQL databases, website statistics software, scheduled tasks system (CRON), 10,000 MB minimum bandwidth, 50 inboxes free email templates and have a minimum 99% uptime. .

Now many of you reading this have limited technical ability and would use a web designer to create and manage their website. Even if you don’t understand terms like PHP, Java etc, your designer will be the only one interested anyway. Also, the other thing is to use a Windows server instead of Linux that supports PHP. I prefer Linux because it’s the most popular, it has a good support base online, and most of the scripts are free.

Maybe you’ve created your first website, a simple sales letter type. You’re going to need some form of payment processing. The easiest and simplest way to integrate this into your website is through PayPal. They provide free PHP scripts that can be installed on your site such as shopping carts and automatic checkout systems. However, for those of you who aren’t too technically minded, PayPal has a nice facility on their site for creating simple payment buttons for individual items, as well as recurring subscription payment buttons. Simply enter your product name, price, currency, as well as the link to your product’s download page. PayPal will then generate a copy and paste code for your website.

So now you have your first site and are making some profit. Then your bandwidth consumption exceeds your monthly limit and the host starts charging you for the additional traffic. He also decides to build more of these profit machines in the near future. There is no other option but to upgrade your hosting. But for your next website venture, you’ll need another domain name. The problem is that all general hosting plans only allow one domain name per account. Instead of getting a new account for each website, I suggest you purchase what is known as a reseller package, which is a server that is hosted and maintained by the hosting provider. You can have as many accounts and domain names as you like, all for one monthly fee. This is the best option for the serious businessman. Most allow unlimited bandwidth usage, as well as many scripts and tools that can be installed with the click of a button from the control panel. Not only that, you can even create your own hosting packages and sell them to other companies and individuals.

I hope you found this article interesting and informative. Remember, before you sign up with any web host, check their credentials and do a little research first: do a Google search. There’s nothing worse than launching your first marketing campaign, only for your website to be down when visitors arrive. Also, customer support services must be top-notch and respond to any queries on time. Again, check them out: enter their URL on Alexa.com and read past customer reviews. This way you can avoid the cowboys.

Thanks for reading and caring.

Neil Harland – Author