Websavvy.org Webmaster Guide
 

Getting Some Web Space

Paid Web Space - Reliable and Powerful

While it is nice to get something for free, the restrictions that accompany "free" web space often end up frustrating novice web designers. The problems? Free web space is often very slow, restrictive and comes with ads that often distract the viewer from your site's content.

The speed problem comes from the fact that free web providers must stretch their resources in order to break even. "Your" web server might host dozens or even hundreds of sites. Some of them might be attracting lots of attention, keeping the server so busy that your page comes up quite slowly. Paid web hosts don't need to cram so many sites onto one server, and sites hosted on commercial web servers will often come up much more quickly.

Free web space usually comes with a small portion of disk space, with very restrictive guidelines regarding site content, and without the ability to add fancy bells and whistles like cgi scripts and database access, which are crucial for the "shopping cart" section of commercial sites, as well as for providing access counters, site search boxes, and lots of other interesting gizmos. Commercially-provided webspace is a must for businesses that want to take themselves on-line.

Free web space isn't really free. It's actually paid for by advertising that these providers place above your page. If it's possible to make money by putting ads above your page's content, then why not put up your own ads and use the revenue to pay your hosting fees?

Paid Web Hosts:

  • 500 Meg Storage, 20 Gig transfer/month
  • supports PHP, JSP and Perl
  • cgi-bin and mailing list support
  • Frequently recommended by their customers
  • Offer a 60 day money-back guarantee
ThinkHost
  • Plans start at $14.99 per month
  • mySQL, Perl 5, PHP 4 included
  • 5 GB per month traffic allowance
  • At least 40 separate mailboxes per plan

The above hosts have been highly recommended to me in various discussions with other webmasters.

Once you've got your hosting settled, you will want
to get some Tools for building your web page

Return to websavvy.org home page

 

 

Site Building

Cheap Internet Access
Free Web Space
Paid Web Space
Design Your Page
Free Site Content

Site Promotion

Choosing Your Audience
Search Engines
Engines vs Indexes

Making Money

Affiliate Programs
About Ad Networks
Recommended Networks

Jumpline.com VDS Web Hosting