When starting an online business you must know how to host a website and where to get the best website hosting service. There are thousands of website hosting providers on the internet that will host your website for a fee. Choosing a web hosting service isn't easy with those high numbers of suppliers.
What kind of web hosting service you would sign up with depends on many things. What sort of business are you planning - selling tangible (physical) goods, or digital goods, or maybe it's an affiliate business or a pure informational site on which you sell ad space? Different needs require different solutions, so knowing how to host a website is crucial.
Different types of web hosting providers offer different types of hosting services. The really big online business companies, like Amazon.com, most likely have their own servers, while other big companies rent their own dedicated servers with a high quality hosting provider. For small online businesses however, shared hosting is more usual, making the hosting expenses affordable for almost any new or small internet business.
It also varies from supplier to supplier what services, tools and features are included in a hosting account. You have to figure out what your specific needs are; however there are a few essential things your web hosting should include if you are looking for ecommerce website hosting:
•Unlimited disc space (storage) on the server
•Unlimited bandwith (traffic volume)
•Host multiple domains on one account
•cPanel control panel
•Script installer (easy installation of shopping carts, blogs and more)
•Website builder with templates
•Large number of MySQL databases
•Email and autoresponders
•SSL (security sertificate) options *)
•Good support
*) If you will be selling goods from an online store you must have an SSL sertificate to accept credit card payments. You don't need it if you only are doing affiliate business or selling ad space etc. on your website.
Good hosting services give you the tools you need to build a website, but you will have to learn how to put them into practical use by yourself. However, the best hosting providers have excellent training videos and tutorials that lead you through the building process to a complete internet business site.
If you have little to no experience on the internet and only small technical skills, you should go for an all-in-one service that provides you with all you need to get a website up and get your online business started - without you having to know anything about the technical stuff working "backstage".
Free Hosting
Regarding how to host a website there is a number of free web hosts on the internet that offer 'free' hosting. That can be ok for a personal or hobby website, but do not use them for an online business! Most of the free hosting services put ads on your pages in return for their service, they lack many necessary facilities, and they are also not as reliable as paid hosting. Your internet business must have a quality hosting service!
How to Host a Website
You need a web hosting service that provides a place for your site to "stay", meaning that you rent a "room" (disk space, storage) on a web server for your site. When you have your website ready for publishing, it must be uploaded to a web server to "go live" (and be available to visitors) on the internet. There are literally thousands of web hosting providers on the Globe, offering their services.
We recommend HostGator and BlueHost - both good and affordable web hosting. For pricing, details and comparison of these two hosting providers, please refer to our Website Hosting Review.
Login Details and Publishing
When you sign up for an account with a web hosting provider, you will receive an email containing all the details you need to login to your account and upload your website to their web server. Keep this email in a safe place.
Tip: Both print out the email and copy the text onto Notepad or similar, and store it on your computer.
In order to publish your website, you will need an FTP Client (software) to transfer (upload) the website files from your computer to a web server. For details on getting an FTP client and how to use it, see our Publish Your Website tutorial.