A brief explanation of what is involved in getting hosting for your website and what all the jargon means (ex: bandwidth) means.

1. www.sixdegreeswebdesign.com
Websites 101: Hosting
This document is a followup to Websites 101: Domain Names.
When it comes to choosing a hosting plan there tends to be a bit of jargon thrown into the mix. I’m going to
try to explain some of this jargon in plain-English to try to make your choice a little easier, or at least help you
understand what your web designer is talking about. As with choosing your domain, I suggest going with a
larger hosting company with a good reputation of having good service and uptime (i.e. your site is down
because their servers are) who isn’t going to disappear and take your files with it. Even if you do use a larger
hosting provider, backup your files!!
Bandwidth (sometimes called Transfer Space)
The term bandwidth is jargon for how much space it takes on the server to load your website.Your bandwidth
usage adds up each time a page on your website is loaded by a visitor. Therefore, larger sites and those with
larger numbers of visitors, require more bandwidth.
Note if the hosting company’s free or lower cost hosting package places ads on your site as this can look
unprofessional if they aren’t the ads you want (assuming you want them).
Linux or Windows & Application Support
Some hosts give you an option of whether to have your site on a Linux or Windows server. This has nothing to
do with what type of computer (Mac, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, etc) or operating systems (Windows, OS X, etc) you
are running, but with what applications or services you want to run on your website.Your web designer should
be able to tell you which is best for you, or if it even matters which one you run as it may not matter since
many applications/services will run on both. Some Microsoft applications or programming languages however
will only run on Windows servers.
Another thing you might check with is if your host supports files from Dreamweaver, FrontPage, or your
favorite blogging platform such as WordPress.org, TypePad, or MoveableType or content management system
(Drupal, Joomla!, Mambo, etc) as not all of them do.
Note:WordPress.com is hosted by WordPress, you only need to check for WordPress if you are using .org which is
installed locally on your site’s domain.
SSL Certificate
Another option they may try to sell you is an SSL Certificate. An SSL Certificate is only necessary if you are
going to be taking credit card information through your website.
If I’ve left something out that you have a question about, please contact me and I’ll respond and perhaps add it to this
document.