Choosing the right webhost

Anyone looking for a webhosting company to host their website will quickly notice that many webhosting companies throw a lot of features at you. For the person who isn't familiar with the industry, this can either be very impressive or very intimidating. Well, I can tell you that most webhosts will try to impress you with all the features they offer. Without a doubt many of these features are great and are integral to a well performing, reliable website. Yet, there are many features that the majority of website owner's will never use. To help make your webhosting choice a bit easier, I will review a few aspects of webhosting that are most important for most website owners. If you are in a hurry, you can visit a webhosting review site that will quickly breakdown the features of the top internet webhosting companies. Plus, if you are on a tight budget, webhosting rebates are available at Consumerwebhostreview.com

One of the biggest feature webhosts will tout is how much bandwidth and how much diskspace they offer. Typically they will be displayed as how many Gigabytes they will give you. Some may display it in Megabytes. Regardless of how they show it, just remember that there is 1024 Megabytes (MB) for every 1 Gigabyte (GB). So, if a webhosts says they are offering 5,000MB of disk space, that's the same as saying they are giving you almost 5GB of disk space. Make sure you are comparing the same units of storage when comparing hosts.

Now let's define those two terms: Disk Space and Bandwidth. I don't think anyone will need me to define disk space. If you are reading this then you have already handled basic computer usage. How much disk space do you need? Well, this of course depends on what you are using your website for. If you are running a typical website then you will not need any atypical amont of space. If you are planning on serving up movies or large image files and plan on having a lot of them, then consider a webhost with higher disk space. Most webhosts offer plenty of space for the beginning webmaster or even the majority of sites. Its the major internet sites that need the extra space. When you get there, you will know it.

How about bandwidth? Bandwidth is the amount of data the webhost will allow you to transfer from the webhost's servers to all the user's who visit your site in one month. As it is for disk space, it is for bandwidth. Serving up large movies and images? If so, then you need more bandwidth. But don't necessarily go for the host with the most bandwidth. In order to use 750GB of bandwidth, you would need a busy site and be moving a lot of data. Most users never reach that mark.

SERVER OPERATING SYSTEMS

A very confusing aspect of webhosting for new webmasters is what kind of server should you buy? There are a few different operating systems but primarily you will see the Windows and Linux operating systems. What does that mean to you? Well, for the average webmaster the biggest difference is the types of scripting language and database systems that you can run.

On a Windows server you can use ASP or Active Server Pages and utilize the Microsoft Access database system. For Linux, you have access to the easy to learn, and powerful PHP language and the MySql database system. When in doubt, I would favor the Linux servers, unless of course you have some special script you plan on using that requires ASP support. Linux servers are typically cheaper too.

I mentioned MySql and Access database features. This is what drives many websites. If your site accepts input from visitors and stores that data, then a database is necessary. If your site is displaying static information only then you may never need a database.

Well, there is a lot more that we could cover, but the few items we did cover is enough to make a educated decision on a webhost.

About the Author

Aiden O'Neill is an editor for Consumerwebhostreview.com. Consumerwebhostreview offers consumer submitted webhosting reviews and the hassle-free webhosting rebates where users can save up to $50 on webhosting packages.