|
|
Know
What You Want
|
 Basic/Hobby
Site: Simple site
with 2 ~ 20 pages. Focus mainly on email traffic
- 20 ~ 50 MB, below S$ 20 per month. |
| Small
Business Site: Consists
of a few HTML pages. Usually it requires to update
fairly often. Basically, it requires CGI scripts and
password protected folders - S$ 24 ~ 45 per month.
It may cost more if you add additional features, e.g.
traffic analysis tools. |
| Online
store: It
requires e-commerce features, such as shopping cart,
inventory management, means to fulfill orders, credit
cards processors and so on - S$ 70 ~ 150 per month. |
| Media
Intensive: To
deliver multimedia contents such as MP3, streaming
video. As such it needs a lot of storage space and
bandwidth - more than S$ 200 per month. |
| Corporate: Mission
critical web site on which your customers, clients and
suppliers can rely on. You may needs dedicated server
or managed hosting services. Or, you may choose to maintain
the server in-house – quite expensive indeed. |
 |
What
should you look for in a host? |
| Extensibility:
They should offer a wide range of hosting plans, so that
you can upgrade your hosting plan easily as you grow. |
| Usage
Limitation: Most
hosting plan limit your data transfer per month. Here
is the guideline: For example, a busy site with 5,000
visitors viewing a total of 15,000 pages a month, used
only 166MB per month. We do not consider media rich
contents in the previous examples. Media sites consume
huge bandwidth. |
| File-transfer
options: Look
for a hosting that offers unlimited password-protected
FTP so that you can uploads your contents online. If
you prefer using FrontPage, make sure your service
provider supports it. Sometimes, you may need to ask
your service provider to turn on the FrontPage extension. |
| Mail
options: How
much e-mail will you need for your domain? You may
need to estimate the number of mailboxes you'll want.
You also require to take into account how you want
to access and receive the e-mail. If you are using
email software such as Microsoft Outlook, then you'll
need full POP3 access. In many instants, please ask
for Web-based e-mail because it give you convenience
of checking your messages from any computer when you're
on the road, at a library, or at home or work. These
days, please make sure you have both anti-virus and
anti-spam email protection. Also, look into e-mail-forwarding
and autoresponders options. And, make sure that you
can control and adjust the mail box allowable size.
Many hosts limit message sizes to less than 2 ~ 3 MB,
which may not be large enough for some messages, especially
image-heavy HTML newsletters. |
| Site
statistics: To
evaluate traffic and plan future site development,
it is always good to have good site statistics features
for you to monitor the popularity of your sites. For
examples, which pages on your site are the most popular,
how your visitors got to know your site and so on. |
| Technology
support: When
you are doing website development yourself, do consider
the technology support. Make sure your Web site has
database support. Looks for FREE database such as MYSQL
or PostgreSQL. For Windows Hosting, popular database
are MS Access and MS SQL. Most likely, you may need
to pay extra for using MS SQL. For server side scripting
and programming, look for script support that you familiar.
For example, CGI scripts using C/C++, Perl, PHP or
Active Server Pages. |
| Remote
Log-in: This is the
dedicated server features. Not many hosting companies
offer full access to the server via Telnet or SSH shell
access. |
| Bandwidth
Performance: This
is a very IMPORTANT consideration. Many web hosting
companies have slow backbone links to Internet. Thus,
find a hosting company with huge Internet pipe (i.e.
high speed/broadband Internet connection), this will
definitely increase your website performance tremendously. |
| Domain
Registration: If
possible, ask for domain registration service to be
included as part of the package. In this case, you
usually can obtain better deal and save money in domain
registration. You may also want to know if the hosting
company support multiple domain pointer. That is, many
domains point to the same website. |
| Secure
Server: If
you are running an e-commerce sites or sites that transmitting
or collecting sensitive information, in this case,
please check if the hosting comes with SSI and an extension
to opt for Certificate. |
| Technical
Support: Make
sure you have good technical support. |
| Service
reliability: Make
sure you check the service reliability before you purchase. |
| Contract
period: Before you sign up, opt to
pay shorter subscription period. |
