There are several different types of locations for Web sites, but most are not suitable for a "serious" site; that is, one being set up for a business or organization of some kind, one that's supposed to stay around for a while and actually achieve something. (If you're just posting pictures of the dog and the kids, it doesn't matter too much where you put your site. If you are setting up an online store, then remember the old real-estate maxim. What counts is Location, Location, Location!)

What are these possible locations for your site? For those who don’t know here’s a summary:

A Web-hosting account -- with your own domain name -- is what you really need. Note, by the way, that there's a lot of overlap in this business. Some, perhaps most, ISPs also sell hosting services. Some cybermalls do a very good job of hosting, too.

Now you have two problems. First, how do you find these companies? And then, how do you choose? Actually the first of these problems is minor, because there are over 10,000 companies that host Web sites, and it's easy to track down many of them at the following directories:

How, then, do you pick a hosting company? There are forty or more significant questions to consider, so don't expect to pick a hosting company in a few minutes. But, a few minutes of reading will yield a more informed selection later, so take a minutes now.

FrontPage
One of the first things to consider is whether you plan to use Microsoft FrontPage. If you do, then you'll want to go with a company that offers true FrontPage accounts. Don't be fooled, though; some companies will tell you that yes, you can use FrontPage with their company. That doesn't mean the FrontPage server extensions are installed, though, and if they're not, then the advanced features of FrontPage won't work!

Shopping Cart
Next, do you need a shopping-cart system -- a series of forms that visitors to your site can use to place orders for your products. If so, you may want to pick a hosting company that can provide you with a good shopping-cart system. On the other hand, perhaps not. Picking a shopping cart is another complicated subject, and it's often difficult to find a hosting company with all the services you need _including_ a really good shopping cart. That's okay, though, because there are many companies selling shopping-cart services alone. You can set up your Web site with one company, set up your shopping-cart with another, and link your Web site to the shopping cart.

Cost
Next consideration -- cost. Most companies will charge a setup fee and a monthly fee. But ask if they'll waive the setup fee, especially if you're transferring from another hosting company, because some companies will do so.

Cost is often related to the number of megabytes of disk space. Note, by the way, that disk space costs the hosting company next to nothing -- it's less than 5 cents a megabyte. But I guess the theory is the more space you're using, the more traffic you're likely to have and the more trouble you're likely to be. On the other hand, many companies also charge for the amount of data transferred.

If you're not sure how much disk space you need, here's a rule of thumb...probably not much. Unless you plan to store lots of sound files and graphics, you can get an awful lot of Web pages into 5MB. Make sure you find out how much it will cost to increase the amount of disk space you get, or the amount of data transferred each month.

Hit and Data-Transfer Charges
Let's consider hit and data-transfer charges in a bit more detail. Some companies charge you for the number of hits -- the number of times someone transfers something from your site (a page, a picture, and so on). This is a very imprecise way to measure traffic, of course. Most these days, however, charge by the amount of data transferred from your site.

The busier your site, the more you'll pay. Many companies have no limit; rather, they base cost on the amount of hard-disk space you rent. Again, the more disk space, they reckon, the busier your site is likely to be. It's not true, of course, except as an average. In other words, you may be very ambitious and create a huge site, and get no traffic ... but on average, a large site may well be busier than a small one. Anyway, that's how hosting companies have decided to charge.

Unlimited use is nice, because you'll never be hit by unexpected charges, and if you site gets busier -- but no bigger -- you'll still pay the same. On the other hand, unlimited use may not be so good if it means that the hosting company has a lot of very busy clients clogging up the server.

Oh, and one (sad) fact. You probably won't be transferring as much data as you imagine. Many companies grossly overestimate how much traffic they'll get to their sites -- a Web page is _not_ a billboard on the information superhighway, despite what you've heard. If you want traffic to your site, you'll have to work for it.

Contract Conditions
Check the conditions of the contract. Is there a minimum time you have to stay -- I've seen companies asking for a year's contract, which is way too much. You may want to switch hosting companies if the one you pick doesn't work out, so make sure you can leave whenever you want. Some companies provide a guarantee, too -- you can work with them for 30 days, for instance, and leave without paying if they don't provide good service.

By the way, the hosting business has a very high "natural retention rate." Once you've signed up with a hosting company, you won't want to leave them unless they really screw up. The problem is that it's difficult to leave, especially if you use lots of complicated scripts and utilities. Setting up a new site and transferring everything can be a hassle. Despite this retention rate, many hosting companies screw up so badly they force people to leave!

Multiple Domain Names
If you are using more than one domain name, find out how much it will cost to have them all hosted. For instance, I have topfloor.com (for my publishing company), and poorrichard.com (for a particular book). Each of these points to a different page. I also have several old domains that I experimented with but no longer use: arundel.com for instance. These point to the same page as topfloor.com.

There are many different ways that hosting companies charge for these services. You may be allowed two domains for free, perhaps, with an additional fee for extra domains. Or maybe you'll have to pay an additional fee for all extra domains.

Email Accounts
You should get an email account with your Web site, especially if you are using your own domain name. In fact, if you are using your own domain name that domain can only point to one computer; you couldn't have a Web site with one company and an email account with another.

Owning your own email domain is great -- all of a sudden you can create as many email accounts as you wish: joe@TopFloor.com, fred@TopFloor.com, sales@TopFloor.com, admin@TopFloor.com, and so on.

What happens to mail sent to all these email addresses? Either they all go into one account -- one POP box, as it's known. Or you can set up separate POP boxes for each one. However, there may be a limit on the number of POP boxes you can have, and you may have to pay for additional boxes. For instance, perhaps you have five POP boxes. You could set them up for accounts called joe, fred, susi, sales, and admin. One of those boxes would be the default box -- let's say joe@TopFloor.com. Any mail addressed to other accounts -- andy@TopFloor.com or contest@TopFloor.com, for instance -- would be sent to the default account. Then you can use your mail program's filtering tools to sort the mail into different folders.

Mail Forwarding Accounts
You'll probably also be able to forward mail. For instance, you might forward joe@TopFloor.com to joe317@aol.com. Ask how many forwarding accounts you get, and, if you'll need more, how much additional ones cost. Oh, and find out how hard it is to set up a forward -- the hosting company really should have some kind of simple-to-use form ... but some don't.

Email Responders
Another tool you may get is an email responder -- a program that automatically responds to incoming mail, returning a pre-written message. For instance, I've used these with newspaper articles. I distributed an article that was printed in scores of newspapers around the country. In the article I offered a free subscription to my email newsletter, plus several free reports, to anyone who emailed me. I set up an autoresponder, which automatically sent the reports to those people. The autoresponder then saved the person's email address in a log file, so I could add the person to the newsletter subscription list.

Here's a problem with autoresponders, though. Few hosting companies understand what an autoresponder should be able to do. In addition to saving the incoming email address in a log file, something most autoresponders don't do, they should also be able to quote part of the incoming message in the return message, and save the incoming message. (You'll have trouble finding one that does all three things, unfortunately.)

Mailing-List Programs
A mailing-list program can be used for two things; to set up a discussion group, or to distribute an email newsletter or bulletin. Some hosting companies will provide you with a mailing-list program, perhaps even for free. However, it may not be very good, so don't be surprised if, when you finally get into email publishing, you end up renting a system elsewhere. For instance, I found that the system provided by my hosting company was too inconvenient, and lacked the features I needed; I ended up renting a very sophisticated system from Lyris for $50 a month ( http://www.Lyris.com).

Shell Accounts
A shell account allows you to log into the Web server using a Telnet program and modify files and directories. You'll find this useful if you are working with CGI scripts. Most, though not all, hosting companies will provide shell accounts.

FTP Access
You really need FTP access, even if you plan to use Microsoft FrontPage (FrontPage has its own built-in method for transferring files to a Web server.) Most companies provide FTP access -- but some don't. You'll need to use FTP to make quick changes to files on your Web site.

FTP Site
Some hosting companies also allow you to set up an FTP site -- that is, to allow visitors to your site to enter an FTP site to upload or download files. (This is _not_ the same as FTP access to your Web site, which you need even if you are not allowed to set up an FTP site for your visitors.)

Relatively few Web sites have associated FTP sites -- but they can be very useful if you plan to distribute large files such as software, music, image, or document files.

An FTP site allows people without good Web access to get to the information (though admittedly that is a rapidly shrinking population). But, perhaps more importantly, FTP provides faster and more efficient file downloads. For instance, some FTP sites can resume interrupted downloads. If someone is transferring a file and his ISP or phone company drops the line, he can start again and just the missing part of the file will be transferred. (The visitor has to be using an FTP program that has this feature, of course -- not all do.)

CGI Scripts
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) provides a way to create interactivity in a Web page. HTML doesn't actually _do_ anything; you can use HTML to create a form, for instance, but the form won't "work." You have to have some kind of program running on the server that takes the form information and manipulates it in some way. In most cases, this is done with CGI.

For instance, a CGI script could take information from a Web form and save it in a text file, or send you an email message -- or both. Shopping-cart systems often use CGI, too, as do guest books and surveys.

So CGI access can be very useful. Most, but not all, hosting companies allow you to use CGI scripts; many even provide a library of scripts you can borrow. Warning: working with CGI scripts is _not_ easy; in fact, it's beyond the skills of most Web-site owners. And if you're using FrontPage, you'll find that some of these tools are built in so you don't need to fool around with CGIs. Nonetheless, you may need to use CGIs -- if you pay someone to install a shopping-cart system, for example, you'll probably need to be able to run CGIs at your site.

Secure Server
If you want to take orders or transfer sensitive information, you'll need a secure server. There seem to be four ways that hosting companies handle this:

1.They don't have a secure server

2.They have a secure server, and they'll let you use it for free.

3.They have a secure server, but you'll have to pay to use it.

4.You can buy your own certificate and they'll set up the secure server for you (the certificate alone will probably cost $300, then they'll probably charge setup fees).

You may see the term SSL, which means Secure Sockets Layer -- it's the same thing, it means the hosting company has a secure server or provides some kind of secure-server service.

Access Reports
Most hosting companies will provide access reports, which show information about visits to your site. These can be very useful, though some people go overboard and spend more time looking at access reports than encouraging people to access their sites.

Reports show how many people visit your site, what areas of the site they visit -- what directories and pages -- where visitors are coming from, when they arrive, and so on. Access reports are particularly useful when tracking special promotions; you can set up a Web page that you mention in an ad, for instance, then see how many people visit that particular page.

Password-Protected Pages
Some people want private areas on their Web sites, perhaps so friends, employees, or associates can view private information. Some hosting companies make it easy to set up such areas ... most don't. (Again, if you're using FrontPage, it's relatively easy to do this.)

Technical Support
Web hosting has very high customer-support requirements. Many hosting companies handle them by email only, and respond very slowly. You need fast responses -- some claim they respond in 3 - 4 hours -- and you also need, as a last resort, telephone support. Preferably toll-free or local-call support.

Most hosting companies don't have toll-free support, so you may end up using a long-distance number, but at least you'll be able to get through to someone somehow.

Oh, and just in case, ask if the hosting company bills you for telephone support -- some do.

Lots More

There are many other things to consider, as you'll soon discover. (I spent 31 pages on this subject in my book, "Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building a Low-Cost Web Site.")

Some you'll discover as you compare Web sites. Can you use image-maps?, can you use Java applets?, do they have a RealAudio server?, can you resell Web Space?, and so on. But perhaps the most important thing is to ask for a list of other clients, and contact them to see what they have to say. Visit their sites, too, and get a feel for how quickly the server is working at different times of the day.

(c) 1998 by Top Floor Press & Peter Kent. All Rights Reserved.
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