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What you should know about Website Hosting

Once your website is designed, it will need to reside on a "host" computer or "server".
There are some important considerations when determining who you are going to have host your website.

Connection to the Internet
One of the most important is the connection that the website host has to the internet. Optimum are direct, multiple, redundant connections to the backbone of the internet. The reasons for this are:

Speed - a direct connection to the backbone of the internet will serve up your website to your visitors at the fastest speed technology can offer.

Reliability -if a host has only one connection to the internet , when it becomes busy it can slow delivery speed of your website. With multiple redundant connections there are additional carriers to back up the main connection.

Data Backup
Professional hosting companies back up their data daily so that if a server should have a problem, all the data that is stored on it can be restored immediately.

IP Address
Your website should have it's own IP address. Each website has not only a domain name but an IP address. The domain name is like your name in the phone book and the IP address is like your phone number. Some hosting companies, in order to save money, will put several websites under one IP address. Since search engines index websites by their IP address and not their domain name, this can adversely affect the position of a website in the search engines for two reasons:

If one of the other websites under this IP address has spammed the search engines, all the websites under that IP address will be banned from the search engines.
Your website may be invisible to the search engines without it's own IP address.
The IP address should be a static IP address and not a dynamically generated one. A static IP address is always the same whereas a dynamically generated one changes each time the website is requested.

Storage Space
The amount of storage space you are allowed is another consideration. Make sure that you have enough MB of storage space on the server to accommodate future growth of your website.

Statistics Analysis Program
A good statistics program is important so that you can track not only how many visitors you had to your website, but how they found your website, if they are return visitors, what pages they are visiting, and more.

Tech Support
A responsive technical support system is vital. A system that is email only may have you waiting for days before you get an answer to your problem. Optimum is a toll free number that connects you directly to tech support.

Contract or Annual Fee
Don't commit to a year contract or pay for a year's hosting until you've tried the hosting company out for at least 6 months. Look for a month to month option with a money back guarantee.

Email Options
Most hosting companies offer email services such as:

POP3 accounts -incoming mail only
email forwarding - forwarding incoming email that uses your domain name to another email address. An example of this is you@yourdomain.com forwarding to you@hotmail.com.
email aliases - email accounts that all go to the same POP3 account, such as sales@domain.com, info@domain.com, and me@domain.com all of which are set up under the main POP3 account of admin@domain.com. web based email system so that you can send and receive mail from any computer in the world.

Money
Money of course is an important consideration. Compare features between at least three website hosting companies and see if you will be paying for services you don't need or if you won't be getting services you do need. Note the monthly hosting fee and also note if there is a set up fee. A reputable company has confidence in their product and their service and doesn't expect to make their profits on collecting set up fees from new customers. They expect that their customers are going to be satisfied enough with their service and their products to stay with them for a long time.