Best Web Host

joey

Hi there,

I am a noob in web development and recently I decided to start my own web site as a motivation of exploring the area an finding new opportunities.

I am skilled in C#.net and familiar with windows technologies (ASP.NET, SQL Server, WPF, ....) so I prefer to use what I know in web development.

What are the good options as a web host for me?

Definitely my web page will not have huge audience so there is no need to aim high in features of the host

Thanks in advance

fduraibi · Post edited by fduraibi at 2011-07-11 22:57:45

Hi Joey and nice to see you here.

If your plan is to have a website for yourself like a CMS, blog or a forum ...etc that you will use to publish something then I will not recommend that you make your own, even if you are good at programming and using the tools that you mentioned. And I say that for a number of reasons:

1- It is complicated and time consuming to make your own blog, forum or any kind of web application. And you utilize that time into making and creating the content of your site.

2- In addition to programming you need a nice design to make a beautiful theme.

3- IT WILL NOT BE SECURE and will be hacked in few minutes.

4- Why reinvent the wheel when there are many free web application that has many features, plugins to extend their functionality and also many themes that you can select from. In addition to the updates and security patches from their developers.

Ok, so take the time and decide what you want to do exactly, design your own applications or use other applications and use your skills to make useful content like tutorials and helping others with their programming issues.

Assuming that you made up your mind and know what you want to do I would like to give you some information about web hosting before we go to which one is better.

Things to consider:

1- Platform (Windows or Linux)

Based on what you want you can select the platform, prices are usually the same, sometimes Windows hosting is more expensive.

2- Features (Bandwidth, Storage...etc)

These might not be important as a started but always good to consider since you might not know as your site might grow fast and you will need storage and bandwidth. Also how many domains do they allow you to have, FTP accounts, email accounts, number of databases.

3- Services (PHP, SSH, MySQL, SSL,... etc)

This is very important to make sure that they have the servers and services that you will need and use for your web applications, like the supported programming languages, databases, web server. And keep in mind that asking them to install something for you or to upgrade to a newer version is almost impossible since almost all of the cheap plans are on shared servers so any change will affect all the users. Also make sure they have SSH, since you don't wanna transfer your files and password over an insecure connection like FTP or HTTP.

4- Allocated resources. (CPU Time, Memory)

This is also important and unfortunately many web hosting site don't mention these details for shared server plans. Since even if they gave you unlimited bandwidth CPU time and memory might limit the number of transactions done for the users and might cause a noticeable delay while browsing your site. And keep in mind that most web applications (or what is called WEB 2.0) are dynamic, so for almost every user request the server will do some processing to make the data ready for the user who requested them. And if you get many requests at the same time the server might throttle your CPU access which will make your site slow. The other problem is that some cheap hosting company don't have such limiting features and will have thousands of websites on a single server, so if you end up in a server with some busy websites your site will suffer even if you are not really using these resources.

So that is what came to my mind now about what to consider when selecting a hosting company and plan.

fduraibi

Now i will take about the common types of hosting:

1- Shared server

This is the cheapest, and it is basically a single physical server (or could be more than one in a redundant setup) it runs one operating system (usually Windows or Linux) and all users will have accounts on that server with dedicated space and folder for each user, but they all share the same web server (Apache or IIS), database server (MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL,...) and of course the same hardware resources (CPU, memory, HDD...). All users can share the bandwidth and a single public IP, where each user has a unique name (domain name) that is used to access the user website, also some plans offer dedicated IPs. The service provider is responsible for the security and updates of the server OS and services.

2- Dedicated server

This is the best option and the most expensive as well, you will have your own server, public IP and nothing is shared with other except the bandwidth which can be in more expensive plans. Some plans give the user all control over what is installed but also the responsibly of maintaining and securing the server while other plans will still maintain the software and OS.

3- VPS

Virtual Private Server, is a mixed of both and the price is usually in between. So it is still one shared physical server but each user has his own virtual machine running the user's OS of choice (or what the provider allows), and the user will be responsible about securing the OS and application.

For most users the shared server is the ideal solution since it is not expensive and also you don't need to worry about the server's downtime, patching, securing. Just try to find a nice web hosting provider that does not abuse the server and bandwidth by having many users on a single machine and behind a limited internet link. Also make sure that their customer support is good and they response to server downtime and issues in a reasonable time.

joey

Hi Fahad,
Thank you for nice and informative reply. I am considering all your inputs and will update you about my decision :)
Have a good one

Negalbut

Hello,

Use free web hosting service.

Register here: http://www.000webhost.com/507806.html

They give 1500 MB of disk space and 100 GB data transfer. You can use wordpress, joomla, php or any other script to make your website or blog in few minutes.

Howdy, Stranger!

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