How to Make Money Online
Web Hosting
A web host is a service that you usually have to pay a monthly fee to access, which allows you to store and manage the files associated with your website (images, html, css, js, etc..) A web hosting company has many "servers", which are computers that are modified to help store and serve your website to visitors.
There are several things to consider when choosing your web hosting company:
- Should I use a free web host?
Absolutely not! A free web host will ultimately be very slow, and there's always a catch, like advertising to your visitors.
- Hard Drive Space
Unless you're running a website based around videos that are stored on your server, the amount of space you need is not entirely important. At 1and1 webhosting service, for a plan that costs $9.99 per month, you can get 300GB (GigaBytes) of space which is way more than the average person will ever need running multiple websites.
- Bandwidth (Monthly Data Transfer)
First I will discuss what bandwidth is as it relates to web hosting. Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer from the server to your visitors (traffic). For example, let's say your website's home page has 5 images that total in at 100KB (KiloBytes). Every time a visitor visits your website, the server has to "serve" (or transfer) the data of each image to the visitor. So through those 5 images alone, 100kb has been transferred. And bandwidth is not just limited to images, it also includes video and various website files like html, css, js, php, etc..
Because bandwidth is not free, you have to pay for a certain fixed amount per month. The amount of bandwidth you run up, depends on 2 things. (1) How much traffic you have (the more you have, the more bandwidth you need) and (2) How content-rich your website is (how much data has to be transferred every time someone visits your website).
Going back to the example of the 1and1 $9.99 web hosting package above, you get 3,000GB (or 3TB, Terabytes) of transfer per month. Unless you're allowing people to stream and watch a lot of videos and you have a lot of traffic, then 3,000GB is way more than enough.
- Server Capabilities
Your server (which is simply another computer) needs certain features and applications. There are only a couple things I would suggest to make sure your server has, which is PHP and MySQL support. PHP is a frontend scripting language that allows you to develop dynamic websites. MySQL is a database system. Together you can use PHP and MySQL to do many things, like build members areas with exclusive content, order forms, shopping carts, etc.. Fortunately nearly every web hosting package provides PHP and MySQL support, including the 1and1 example.
- Dedicated or Virtual
In web hosting, your server will either be a dedicated server or a virtual server. A dedicated server means for that one server, you are the only hosting client. You have full control over the server. A virtual server (or shared server) is one server which is shared by other hosting clients. A dedicated server is always more expensive, but if you have a lot of traffic you might need one. But to start out, a virtual server is perfect because it's cheaper and you don't need one because you don't have enough traffic to justify purchasing one.
- Support
Things will always go wrong when it comes to web hosting. Whether it be something on your end, or the web host's end, something will go wrong. Therefore it's very important that the web host you choose to use, offers good support. 1and1 offers 24/7 support via telephone, and online chat. Never settle for a web hosting company that doesn't explicitely state that they offer 24/7 support (particularly technical support).
Once you know which hosting package you need and can afford, then you're ready to order! After you order a web hosting package, most will grant you immediate access to your hosting account. You will receive an email with login instructions. Most web hosting companies have a backend administration area where you can access and control different aspects of your web hosting package.
When you have a domain name ordered as mentinoned in the previous chapter, you must login to your web hosting control panel and "add" the site. Different hosting companies have different ways of doing this, but you need to add a space on your server to store the files associated with the website you're starting. When you specify the Nameservers at the registrar, it points it to your web host, and when you add that specific domain information to your hosting account, it knows exactly which client to route that website to. If this sounds confusing, don't worry, your web host can help you with it.
You can also manage your email, databases, FTP's and other information through the web host's control panel. An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is what allows you to transfer files from your hard drive to your server. You need an FTP client (a desktop application) in order to transfer files. All FTP's offer the basic and required functionality to transfer files. There are also serveral free FTP clients, just visit google.com and type "Free FTP Client".
An FTP client works very simple. Using it requires knowing a few pieces of information.
- FTP Host
Most times you can simply specify the domain name, ie: mysite.com - But other times it is something entirely different. Your web host will provide you with the FTP Host name.
- FTP Username
You can have multiple FTP Accounts. Each account has a username, password and privaleges. Being the owner of your own hosting account, you can create and manage these accounts from within your web host's control panel. Sometimes you might want more than one account in order to allow other people to access the files of specific sites.
- FTP Password
Simple Enough!
- FTP Directory
Most FTP clients will ask you which directory on the server you want to use. Most of the time you can just leave this field blank and let the server choose where to place you.
Once you login to your FTP account, then it's a matter of transferring your website files from your computer to your server. You just need to know in which directory on the server those website files need to go. Usually you will see yoursite.com/public_html or something similar. If you have difficulty with this, you can always request support from your web host.
And that's it! Once you have your domain name and your web host, you're ready to begin developing your website!
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