The Basics of Web Hosting Explained, Part One: Key Features

If you are looking to purchase cheap web hosting in the near future, you'll need to brush up on the commonly used terms in the business. This article is part one in a series that discusses the most commonly required and offered services for web hosting companies.

If you are new to the web hosting world, and aren't sure exactly what basic features to look for in a provider, the key features are the first place to take a closer look. Our key feature focus on what someone new to the idea of web hosting should primarily look for, explain why and give two examples of cheap web hosting companies for you to compare.

Web Hosting Basics: Disk Space
The term disk space refers to how much information you are allowed to store on the server of the web hosting company. Similar to your own computer, your disk space is finite on someone else's as well.

To understand how much disk space you may need, you'll need to think a bit about the web site you plan on hosting. How many HTML pages are you looking to have, approximately? Each basic HTML page is approximately 30K in size, so you could, essentially, have over 30,000 pages if you have a server that allows you up to 1000M in disk space.

However, your disk space isn't comprised just of your HTML pages. All of your graphics, special features, email, databases and web logs are normally included in this space allocation. Ask other website users that have pages similar to what you are looking at, or speak to your webmaster. How much space are they using on a monthly basis?

Since most new web hosting users won't be using music, MP3, video or other space-hogging features, 1000MB (or 1GB) of space should be more than adequate for your needs. However, if your research tells you that you may go over, check out the web hosting companies' costs for extra storage, just in case.

For comparison's sake, two of the more popular cheap web hosting companies are BlueHost($6.95/month) and AN Hosting ($7.95/month). BlueHost offers 10GB of storage while AN Hosting offers 15GB, both on a monthly basis.

Web Hosting Basics: Bandwidth
The term bandwidth refers to how much data is allowed to be transferred from your web host to any Internet user that stops by for a visit. Bandwidth is a term also used some Internet service providers (ISPs), who limit the amount of data downloaded or uploaded on a monthly basis.

This means that the more people that visit your website, the more your bandwidth requirements will be. It only makes sense, then, that you would go with a web hosting company that provides unlimited bandwidth, right?

Read the fine print on any web host that states they offer unlimited bandwidth. Some have limits as to what you can have on your website (no audio or video for instance) and others actually do have a limitation, but it is so high that rarely do users exceed it.

Most web hosts offer anywhere from 20 GB (1 gigabyte = 1024 megabites, or MB) to 100GB a month. Every website is drastically different, but if you'd like to estimate your specific situation:

10,000 users/month * 10 pages * 30K/page = 3,000,000 KB or 3 GB/month

So if you think you'll have 10,000 people (or individual users) who come and take a peek at your site, with each one looking at approximately 10 pages, you'll be using approximately 3 GB of bandwidth a month, provided your web pages aren't video, audio or graphically enhanced.

Once again, read the fine print with any web hosting company before singing on the dotted line. It is quite common for websites to be shut down or inaccessible if they use more than their allocated bandwidth.

Again, for comparison, both BlueHost and AN Hosting offer 250GB a month of bandwidth.

Web Hosting Basics: Password Protected Directory
Ask if your web hosting company offers password protected directories for your website. This may not seem very important, but for the new web hosting user, it is. A few web hosting companies don't offer a password protected Control Panel, which then forces you, the relative newbie, to learn how to create and edit files that you normally wouldn't - increasing your learning curve that much more. Both AN Hosting and BlueHost offer password protected directories.

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Frances Dern is a freelance writer with over fifteen years experience specializing in the cheap web hosting field.

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