Web Hosting

I've been looking into getting a real web site. This means two things. First, I will need a name. You have to register a domain name before you can have a web site. Places like GoDaddy will register your domain for $1.99 for the first year, but when you want to renew it the next year then the price goes way up. The second thing you need is to find someone to host the domain for you. A web hosting service is a place that has a lot of computers and your domain points to their servers (servers are the computers that your web pages are on). Once the domain name points to the right spot then you can log into the host's servers and upload your web pages, graphics, and other things like videos or documents. If everything is named correctly and the links all work then when someone types in the address to your domain name they should find a nice web site.

The problem is that there are many hosting services and deciding on which one is best can take a lot of time. There are web sites that do reviews for web hosting services. If you Google "Web Hosting" you should find these sites. I don't want to spend a lot of money, but I do not want to use any of the so-called free web hosting sites. These free sites are filled with advertisements and their services are usually unreliable. If you want a site that looks professional then you will have to pay for it.

It is possible to host your web site on your own computer in your house, but I wouldn't recommend this. First of all the domain has to point to a specific IP address. And IP address looks like a bunch of numbers like this: 74.125.65.99. If you type this number into the address bar of your web browser you should get Google. As you can see, it's easier to remember www.google.com than 74.125.65.99. But your computer at home probably does not have the same IP address all the time. Since your Internet service provider (such as Comcast) changes your IP address you can't host your own web site with a nice name like www.mywebsite.com. It is possible to get around this using a DNS forwarding service, but your name options are limited. I use one of these myself, but not for important stuff like a business web site since I turn my computer off every night when I got to bed. That means that my web site is down much of the time.

So I'm stuck paying for a web hosting service. From my own research I'm currently thinking about using InMotion Hosting or Blue Host or maybe iPage. iPage seems cheap at only $3.50 per month, but when you go to sign up with them they want to add on a lot of extra services and the price jumps up quite a bit. InMotion offers a range of options from $3.00/mo to $17.95/mo, but the service I'm considering costs $7.95/mo. But for that $7.95 you get some services that cost extra at iPage, so the difference in pricing isn't that much. Blue Host is $6.95/mo and is really similar to InMotion in terms of services and pricing. The problem comes when you look at the reviews. With every hosting service there are people who love it and people who hate it. And you can't always trust the review sites because when you click on the link and go sign up with the site you prefer the review site gets some money from the hosting service. That means that I'm a little suspicious of some of these reviewers. Who knows, maybe they are recommending one site over another because they make more money by recommending that site.

Well, I guess you'll know which hosting service I choose when you suddenly find my site somewhere else.