You have just built or had built that perfect web site for your business. It was completed just the other day and it looks great when you demonstrate it on your laptop computer. But your web site cannot help to sell your product or service parked on your laptop and at some point it will need to be installed on the World Wide Web. This is where you are going to need to buy a hosting account to park your domain and web pages for presentation.

But there are so many different choices when it comes to web hosting. There are dedicated, shared, and reseller accounts. There are web hosting services that service only PHP pages and those that service Microsoft-type web pages written in either ASP or ASP.NET. There are those that provide MySQL databases and those that allow one to have SQL Server or Microsoft Access databases. So many choices and it can be very intimidating for the new web user who has traveled beyond the realm of just email and browsing.

To put it in simple terms, a web hosting account is a server space where you put your pages for serving to the World Wide Web. Usually, what happens is your web site is built on your local server (running on your laptop for instance). You then purchase a domain name, and then purchase the web hosting space and park your domain name with the web hosting company. The domain name is the www."something".com name that everyone will know your web site by. You could for example purchase the name www.yourcompany.com from a domain name seller like Register.com and then purchase web space at GoDaddy.com and park your domain name there. Then, when the general global population types in www.yourcompany.com, domain name servers and forwarders will find your pages located on GoDaddy.com because you parked www.yourcompany.com there.

But how do you go about choosing the web hosting that you need? There is a standard answer among information technology geeks and it goes like this: "It depends..." What does that mean? It means it depends on what you want to do. If your web pages were written in PHP with a MySQL database then you will need a web hoster that supports those types of web sites. If your web pages were written in ASP.NET then you will need a web hoster that supports ASP.NET. Also, be aware that there are two ASP.NET versions: 1.1 and 2.0 and the pages are not interchangeable. A good web hoster will give you the option of both. For example, www.omnis.com allows you to switch from the web hosting control panel whether your pages are written in ASP.NET 1.1 or 2.0.

Your decision on web hosting needs to consider whether you want shared or dedicated hosting. Dedicated hosting basically means you get your own server and you do not share the bandwidth of your connection or system resources with anyone else. There is also another twist to dedicated hosting and that is managed versus unmanaged dedicated hosting. Managed hosting means the hosting company will act as a web master and handle any issues arising with your service. Unmanaged is just the opposite and you are basically on your own in managing the server. One thing you had better be prepared for is if you are prepared to do all of the functions of a webmaster on your server.

There is also a revenue-generating type of web hosting and it is a reseller account. This is where you purchase a web space and resell it to your own customers (or even your friends for free) dividing up the space. You act as the web hosting company and bill your customers just as if you owned the servers. There are even some reseller account hosting companies that offer all management services to include billing for a small fee to you the customer. In fact, in some cases they do everything with the exception of marketing your hosting service. To the end user it looks like it all came from you. They have no idea you are the middle guy unless you tell them.

Some issues you need to consider is can you handle billing and collecting fees from customers and if you can handle the technical support issues. If you value your time off, make sure that you have the technical support area covered well. Also, make sure your reseller hosting company provides you with a powerful yet easy-to-use control panel so that you can set up the accounts for your customers. If you manage your reseller account well it can be a good source of residual income.

And finally, there is the shared hosting account where you purchase a "slice of the pie" so to speak when it comes to overall hosting space. You have your area shared with many other users who have their small areas as well. For most websites this is more than sufficient. Their big advantage is low cost because you are sharing. However keep in mind that you are sharing disk space, system resources, and bandwidth with who knows how many other users. If you need a high performance site with lots of space then this might not be the option for you. Of course the domain name you purchased points to your space in the shared realm and no one will be writing their files from their sites into your folder in the shared area.

It pays to educate yourself on all aspects of web hosting accounts as this will be critical to the effective presentation of your web site.

About the Author

Joe Cohen is an information technology professional. He loves to do research and write articles about computers. He has a dog. Joe Cohen recommends http://www.downloads32.com