So you have fantasies about setting up the next Ebay or Amazon and buying out Microsoft. Or maybe you’re just looking to create a web site and earn some money online.

Either way, you’ll need to find a good web hosting company that will serve up your site to the general public. Before I show you how to find the perfect company, let’s quickly talk about what web hosting companies actually do:

Web hosting companies DO…

… store your site on their computers, and serve it up to the general browsing public. This is basically the definition of web hosting.

Web hosting companies DON’T…

… (usually) design your site, create your graphics, write your articles, promote your site, sell your products for you, or make the tea.

Of course, you may get hosting companies that will design your site for you or provide additional services beyond basic hosting, but you’ll probably have to pay quite a lot more.

So let’s look at the main things to consider when deciding who should be your web hosting company:

Are you “dedicated” or just “virtual”?

Your web site will be stored on one of your web hosting company’s computers. These computers are called servers, because they’re basically dedicated to serving up your web site to other people.

Most web hosting companies offer a basic package which may be referred to as a virtual server. This means your web site is stored along with other sites, on the same computer - which is usually fine for small to medium sized sites.

If you’re planning to be the next Google or Amazon, you may want your hosting company to dedicate a whole computer to your site - this is known, surprisingly enough, as a dedicated server.

Dedicated servers are much more expensive (usually $100+ p/month), than virtual servers because you’re using up a whole computer in the web hosting company’s office. However, if your site gets high volumes of traffic, dedicated servers can usually handle this traffic, whereas virtual servers may not.

For most sites, I’d suggest starting off with a virtual server, but upgrading it to a dedicated server once the site is making money and you’re getting tons of traffic.

In web space, no one can hear you scream…

When you put a program onto your computer, it takes up some of that computer’s memory. That’s why a computer game might say on the back, “This game requires 500Mb [megabytes] of free space on your hard drive” or something like that.

The memory space on a computer’s hard drive is measured in bytes (the smallest), kilobytes (Kb), megabytes (Mb), gigabytes (Gb, or “gig”) and terabytes (Tb).

Exactly the same is true on the Web. Every page, every image and every video that you put directly onto your site takes up memory space on your web hosting company’s server, again measured in kilobytes (Kb), megabytes (Mb) etc.

Web hosting companies will usually specify how much web space you can have. So “10 gig of web space” means that you potentially have 10 gigabytes of space to play with, which is a lot.

In reality, hosting companies rely on the fact that most of their customers won’t use anywhere near the amount of space they’ve been allocated. So despite their advertising “100 gigabytes of web space”, if you actually intend to use that much web space, you will be very strongly encouraged by your web hosting company to switch to a dedicated server - and for that kind of data, it’s probably a good idea anyway.

Big bad bandwidth

On the Internet, the term bandwidth basically refers to the amount of data that your web hosting company transfers to your visitor’s browser.

So if one of your web pages is 1 megabyte (Mb) in size, then 1,000 visitors to that page will take up 1,000 megabytes (approximately 1Gb) of bandwidth.

Just as with web space, web hosting companies usually place limits on how much bandwidth is available on your hosting account, and will usually charge you extra if you go over - or they may encourage you to switch to a dedicated server. As with web space, they rely on their customers not using anywhere near as much as advertised - so if you do find yourself needing that much bandwidth, a dedicated server may be the best way to go.

Other things I’d suggest you look out for…

(1) Good customer support

Occasionally, things go wrong. When they do, you’ll want your web hosting company to be there for you.

(2) Fantastico

Some web hosting companies give you access to a great program called Fantastico which, just as its name suggests, is fantastic!

Fantastico enables you to install popular programs such as WordPress (for blogs) on your site in just a few minutes, without having to get all technical. I’ll show you how to use Fantastico to install Wordpress another time, but it makes installing popular scripts an absolute breeze!

(3) MySQL databases

A MySQL Database is a place where some programs (such as WordPress) store their data. Some web hosting companies don’t have these available, which makes it difficult or impossible to use programs such as WordPress.

Most major programs require their own MySQL database, so it’s a good idea to go with a hosting company that allow you to use several databases.

(4) PHP support

PHP is a programming language for the Web, and the most useful programs (such as WordPress) are written in PHP, so to use them you’ll need a web hosting company that supports PHP - fortunately, most do.

(5) cPanel

cPanel is the name of a popular program used by several web hosting companies to enable customers to manage their own hosting accounts. With cPanel, you can easily upload and download files to your site from the Web, and do lots of other handy things which I won’t go into here.

While there are other programs out there used by web hosting companies, having cPanel is a big plus, in my opinion. Many of the screenshots for future “How To” articles on this blog will be screenshots from cPanel, so if you have that with your web hosting company, it would make life just that little bit easier!

(6) Unix/Linux Servers

There are a couple of different server types that are used by web hosting companies - particularly Windows IIS, Unix and Linux. While I won’t bore you with the technical details, I’d recommend Linux. (Remember, this is not about the operating system on your computer, but the one your web hosting company uses on their server.)

“So, do you have a recommendation for a web hosting company?”

Yes, I do. Personally, I have been using and recommend Bluehost for virtual servers. You can have an unlimited number of domain names on the same hosting account, and they offer you tons of web space and bandwidth, and plenty of MySQL databases, along with Fantastico, PHP support, cPanel, Linux servers and other good stuff. Plus, they’ve always been pretty quick in addressing any customer support issues I’ve had.