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Choosing web hosting

Counting on a quality hosting service is fundamental to ensure the correct functioning of a website.  We herewith reproduce the interesting article on web hosting which is published by Issel Guberna in www.info-hostings.com.

The main points to bear in mind when contracting a web hosting service are:

1. Disk space
2. Transfer capacity
3. Multi-domain
4. E-mail accounts
5. Available resources

1. Disk space:

Disc space is the "piece" of hard disk which you have available to upload files.  There are many hosting companies which also have included within their space their logs (files in which access to sites are saved) and their mail.
 
At times, the space available can be mistakenly considered to be one of the most important characteristics of a hosting service, but that is not the case, given that we must bear in mind many factors, such as for example transfer capacity.  Of what use is it if we can have a huge site if we will be unable to deliver the information to the users because we do not have sufficient transfer capacity?

2. Transfer capacity:

Transfer capacity is the amount of traffic that your site will be able to support.  It is one of the most important factors to consider when contracting a hosting service.  We must accurately calculate the current requirements of our website and what they might be within a few months time.

In order to calculate the capacity which your site might need, we can apply the following formula:

Number of pages seen per month * average page size = Transfer capacity per month

By means of this simple formula we can estimate the monthly transfer capacity of our website, and therefore contract an amount of transfer capacity that corresponds to real requirements.  I always recommend that you be particularly careful at the contracting stage, i.e., it is much better to have too much transfer capacity than too little, so be generous.
 
Normally, hosting companies allow you to increase capacity without a problem, however, the prices can be quite excessive and therefore I would recommend you make a good initial calculation and leave a good margin so that the site can grow without you having to worry about transfer capacity.

3. Multi-domain:

When we speak of multi-domain hosting, we refer to the ability to host more than one domain under the same contract, thereby avoiding having to take out a new contract for each of the websites we wish to create.
 
The "reseller" (multi-domain) contracts are very useful as they grant great flexibility when it comes to setting up another website, and they are normally much more advantageous than setting up a new contract for each website.

4. E-mail accounts:

This is another very important characteristic to bear in mind.  If you set up a site for a client that in turn has various clients, they will request that various email accounts be put at their disposal, and therefore you must allow for this and ensure the hosting company has included them in the plan you have contracted.
 
Normally the most basic contracts, and therefore those of lowest cost, provide very few email accounts to their clients and this could therefore become a decisive factor given the requirements of a website.

5. Available resources:

In this section we will include the resources that are most commonly required of a hosting service:

• PHP: To implement a dynamic web page we must use one of the languages available in the marketplace, amongst them PHP, ASP and JSP.  ASP is licensed software which means a cost to the hosting service which will obviously be reflected in the price charged to the user, so it is difficult to find "cheap" hosting services that offer this language.  JSP is not licensed, but the architecture associated with it (to execute sites via JSP) is fairly complicated to maintain on shared servers, and consequently nor will this language be available in the majority of hosting services.  Finally, PHP is an unlicensed language (costs nothing to the hosting service), and it is supported by an easy to maintain structure (normally Apache, also free code), and due to this, and the heavy demand it is currently experiencing, it is the language that the majority of hosting services will provide us with.
• MySQL: MySQL is an SQL database management system, in free code and therefore free.  Each year it is gaining strength and stability, which has led to it becoming one of the most used management systems in the world.  We can find other systems in the marketplace, such as Oracle or Postgres, but the use of Oracle is subject to license and therefore not often found in the majority of hosting companies.  Postgres is beginning to pick up considerable strength, due to which no doubt we will shortly begin to see it in the majority of contracts.

In broad strokes, these are the features we must bear in mind when contracting a hosting company.  Above all, I advise you to carry out an exhaustive analysis of the requirements of your website so that when it comes to making decisions you have the maximum information possible.