Finding a Web Hosting Provider

A Web hosting provider is like an ISP, except that it doesn’t give you access to the Internet; it gives the Internet access to you. Specifically, the Web hosting provider makes your Web site available and visible to the public. Web hosting providers fall into three categories:

- Virtual hosts

- Dedicated servers

- Co-located servers

These providers generally offer different amounts of Web space, allowable bandwidth use, customer support, and technological expertise. The server itself might run on a variety of software and hardware, some of which vary in reliability and ease of use. Naturally, more choices mean more prices; as you choose a Web hosting provider, be sure to pay attention to how much the service costs, compared to how much you’re getting.

Picking the right Web server

A Web server is the combination of hardware and software that holds and displays your Web site to the Internet. Many people will try to connect to your server all at the same time, so the machine itself should have a powerful processor and lots of random access memory (RAM). Your server should also use a strong server software program to deliver your Web pages quickly and with few errors. For the same reason, your Web server should have a very fast connection to the Internet, at least a T1 line, or better a T3. You should put as much thought into your Web server as you do into your domain name. It’s a key part of your Web site without it, there’s no site at all.

Finally, the Web server software should be secure enough that you don’t have to worry about hackers getting in and changing your pages or hijacking your site without your permission. If you’re going to be accepting or storing financial information (including credit card data), your server should use a high level of encryption. If you’re inside the United States, use 128-bit for domestic connections and 40-bit for international connections (the higher the bit rate for encryption, the better the encoding is).

Although a Web server can generally run on almost any computer, most commercial Web servers will have a sufficient amount of RAM, hard drive space, and processor speed for a small

- to medium-scale Web site. Any site holding more than 100MB of data or transferring more than 500MB a day should have its own dedicated server, either onsite or in a co-location facility. Dedicated servers and co-location are discussed later in this section.

Web servers run a variety of server software programs on all operating systems (OS). Some of the most common and reliable server combinations are the following:

- Sun Solaris OS with Apache as the Web server

- Linux (any flavor) with Apache as the Web server

- Windows Server with Internet Information Server (IIS) as the Web server

Other combinations include Macintosh with Netscape or another Mac OS Web server, BeOS, and even DOS. There are even tiny Web server programs available for the PDAs! If you’re shopping for a Web server combination, and you’d like to know what your competitors or partners use, go to the Netcraft Web site at http://www.netcraft.com and enter the Web site’s domain name in the field. Click ‘‘What’s that site running?’’ to see the results. You’ll be given a short description of what OS, server, and extensions are installed on the server.

One other thing you should look for are server extensions, APIs, and installed languages that enable you to install scripts to automate your site. An example of a Web server API is Microsoft API for Windows (MSAPI). Programmers can write scripts and programs to use MSAPI features and automate the site. The free, open source options include Perl, a scripting language that has been used extensively on the Internet. In addition, PHP is a server-side HTML scripting language. It’s probably the most effective way to create browser-independent dynamic Web pages, and it is an open source project, so no single company has control over its development.

Determining your space needs

The next question you’ll probably be asking is ‘‘How much space do I need?’’ Well, that depends on a few things. First, are you just hosting a couple of HTML pages with a few graphics? Will you have a downloadable program on your site? Are you including audio files? Are you planning to serve Napster audio and video files? The more complicated your media, the larger the files. The larger the files, the more space you’ll need. As you know, HTML is just plain text, the simplest type of file. Compressed graphics such as GIFs and JPEGs are the next simplest type of file, followed by PDF files, audio files, and finally FLASH video. Executable programs can take up a little bit of space or a lot, depending on the size of the program. In general, however, you should plan for a lot of hard drive space if you want your users to be able to download programs and audio/video files from your site. Most Web hosting providers will provide much more than you need since storage is so cheap these days. Take the size of your site and multiply times five.

There is one other reason you might need more storage space. If you plan to run a database on your Web site, or to deliver database-driven content, you’ll need to have a database available on your server. A database can be a simple Perl script and take up very little room on your hard drive, or it can be a full-blown relational database such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or Oracle, in which case you’d better invest in a multigigabyte dedicated drive. If you’re doing database work (the discussion of which is out of the scope of this article), keep in mind that database space is not nearly as cheap when provided by the hosting service. However, it’s usually much cheaper to pay for space from the host’s database server, since you don’t have to pay any of the database server licensing fees (which can be tremendous for an individual or small business).