Finding a Host for your Website

Once you have chosen your domain name you'll need to find somewhere to host your website.

A web host is a computer that stores all the files that make up your website. It doesn't make sense to use your own computer as a web host as it would have to be connected to the internet all the time and potentially cope with hundreds or thousands of visitors per day. For this reason you need to find a web host to store these files for you.

It is possible to get a free hosting account, but although this is fine for a small personal website, I don't recommend going down this route for a business website. Free hosts normally have very little or no technical support and you'll usually have to display adverts on your site.

I only recommend products and services that I have actually used myself, so for this reason I am recommending three different web hosts. I currently have websites on all three of these web hosts and I am happy with their services.

I personally recommend Host4Profit. for high quality business web hosting. I currently host 5 of my websites with this company and I'm very happy with this for the following reasons:

• I get 800 Meg of space & 25 Gig of Traffic (Click Here for all the other technical details)
• I get a free Membership to the fantastic Internet Warriors
• My Hosting becomes free after I have referred 3 others
• I have found their customer support very fast and of excellent quality
• I can get additional Hosting Accounts for just $5 each

HostGator is another reliable web host that I have used for the last few years. I host some of my sites on HostGator and have been using this host for over a year. Their basic plans start at less than $10 per month and include a sufficient amount of disk space and bandwidth. You can also host up to 5 different domains on the one account with this plan, which is great value.

If you live in the UK like me, you may want to host your websites on a UK host, in particular if you are designing a UK specific website. I have hosted a few sites on 1&1 UK for a while now and have been very happy with their service. Their prices are very reasonable and start at £1.99 a month for a beginner's package with 3Gb of traffic per month and 250Mg of disk space.

Once you have your hosting up and running you can start to Build your Website