Cost Effective Web Hosting Solutions
What Is Web Hosting ?
A web host is a service provider that places your web site on a computer which is connected to the internet. This then gives people who surf the internet a way to access your website. The computer that the web hosting company uses is typically just like the computer you have at home, the only difference being that it is set up to serve up web sites and is therefore called a "server".
A web host will typically have a very fast connection to the Internet and they may host thousands of web sites on many servers. The web host essentially rents out space to you so that you can get your website up on the world wide web.
Some web hosts own their own datacenter (collection of servers), some rent a server from a larger web hosting company and then resell the space under their own company name. In this case the web host will manage your account on the server, but they will be renting the actual web space from another much larger company.
Determining Your Needs
1. DiskSpace
Web pages (html) are normally very small - on average 40 - 50KB. This means you can store a lot of web pages in a small amount of diskspace. But as your website grows you can start to eat up webspace very quickly. Images take up more space, video even more and databases more still. Below is terminology used to describe disk space. If you have a computer at home or the office, then you will be already very familiar with this.
UNLIMITED DISK SPACE with RuMa IT - All our plans offer Unlimited Disk Space
2. Bandwidth
Bandwidth is always stated as a monthly limit in either MB or GB. This is the amount of actual data that can be transferred from the web server that holds your website, to the browser of the person who is looking at your website. With most web hosting companies, if you go over the limit, then either you will have to pay an extra fee, or your website will be shut down. The amount of bandwidth you use is obviously related to the amount of traffic (visitors) that you receive. Seeing as most websites aim to have an increasing number of visitors, it would mean the more successful your site becomes, the more likely you are to accrue additional fees or a greater likelihood that your site will be shut down.
UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH with RuMa IT - All our plans offer Unlimited Bandwidth
3. Email Accounts
How many email accounts will you need? Normally 10 is enough but some may need more.
UNLIMITED EMAIL ACCOUNTS with RuMa IT - All our plans offer Unlimited Email Accounts
4. Support
You need to ask yourself questions like do you want phone support, or will email support be ok? Do you want support 24 hours a day? If you have a small website that is not critical (i.e you don't pay your mortgage with website earnings) then you probably don't need phone support or 24/7 support. It costs web hosting companies to provide this type of support, don't pay more for a plan that offers this if you don't need it.
RuMa IT offers FREE SUPPORT
5. Server Type
If you have a small website, then it is unlikely that you will need to select a particular type of server for your website. Windows server web hosting tends to be a little bit more expensive than Linux. If you need to run a Microsoft SQL server database, or use Microsoft Active Server pages then you should choose Windows server hosting. If you have no clue what these things even are - then you don't need Windows server hosting - you will almost certainly be fine with Linux server hosting.
RuMa IT offers both WINDOWS and LINUX server hosting
6. Other Features like Databases, Server Side Scripting
Web hosting plans can offer a myriad of confusing features. For the small website it is unlikely that you will ever need to know about any of them. If you are a web designer creating complex database driven sites then you will already know what you need. If after creating your site you have never heard of ASP, ColdFusion, SQL Server, mySQL - then chances are that you don't need to worry about any of these things. If you plan to add a message board to your website then you will need a mySQL database. This is the most common database used with discussion boards. These come as standard for free with our Linux server hosting plans.
