The CaymanHost Web Hosting Directory

Web hosting is a service you must subscribe to in order to get your website onto the internet. Paying for web hosting is like renting a small amount of space on a big commercial computer that "serves up" your website to web surfers. Hence, the name "web server" (which is the hardware part of web hosting). Lucky for you, web hosting has never been cheaper.

Domains and Hosting Together?

Many domain name companies will offer you hosting when you buy your domain through them. This is generally an expensive option, and a bad idea because you’ll be getting few features compared to what you’re paying for. Few people who are serious about web hosting get it from the same place they get their domains. There is one exception that I can think of, but you should generally avoid getting hosting and your domain name from the same source.

Where Should You Start?

Well, that all depends on what your website is going to need, based on your goals: How many visitors do you expect to have? Are you going to have lots of large graphics on the site? Do you have a lot of articles or products that you want to put in a database? Each host you look at will offer you different combinations of features at different price points, and finding the one that’s right for you can be very confusing. Here’s some things to consider:

Storage: The more Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB) of storage you have, the more you can put on your website. For most websites, this number can be very small without it being much of a concern. You only really need to worry if you’re planning to put very large files of data on your site, like a gallery of digital photos or if you want people to download ebooks from you, for example. In these cases you’d want more than the average storage.

Bandwidth per month (as expressed in Gigabytes) is a limit on how much data your website can transfer each month. For small websites, you don’t need to worry too much. But as you get more visitors that download pictures, ebooks, software, or other files, the amount of bandwidth you need will increase sharply. And you will be charged a premium amount for any bandwidth over what your original contract allowed. So it’s good to get more bandwidth than less if the price isn’t much more.

What about MySQL Databases?

MySQL is a program that comes on most servers that allows you to run any program that requires a database to operate. You will normally only need one MySQL database, so don’t pay more to get extra. (This may have been true at the time of writing but most hosts will now offer multiple MySQL databases - in actual fact you will often find yourself needing more than one, particularly if you intend to have several blogs for example, each will normally require a database to itself - so look for as many as possible if blogging or a CMS are a part of your future plans)

It’s worth noting that your host may offer some other kind of SQL instead of MySQL (for example, PostgreSQL). You should usually avoid anything other than MySQL, because MySQL has become the industry standard; all programs work flawlessly with it.

What about things like PHP, Perl, ASP, JSP, or ColdFusion?

These are all scripting languages, used to write your website. No need to know how they work, but you should make sure your host offers whichever ones that any software you plan to use requires. If you don’t have specific requirements, then you should be fine with just Perl and PHP.

How About Subdomains?

Subdomains allow you to split your website into more sections than just "www.yoursite.com." For example, if you wanted people to be able to go to ’shop.yourdomain.com’ and ’news.yourdomain.com.’ You don’t really need these, though, as doing the same thing with subfolders is usually just as effective. What are subfolders? Any extension after a forward slash– "/" following your main domain name. In the following URL, http://www.yoursite.com/subdomain-folder, "subdomain-folder" is a subdomain folder! (Of course, you can name it whatever you want.)

FTP accounts:

An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) account is what you’ll use to upload your website to your host. You’ll always get one of these, so don’t be concerned about that. It’s just a program designed to transfer your website files and graphics from your home computer to your web host’s web server.

POP3 accounts:

POP stands for ’Post Office Protocol’, which is just fancy-speak for "email." The more POP3 accounts you get, the more email addresses you can have. For example, if you want to have sales@yourdomain.com for new customers and support@yourdomain.com for existing ones, quotes@yourdomain.com for product price quotes, etc.

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