There are a couple of things that you will need to consider before choosing web hosting for your business.

1. Choosing a domain name

First of all you will need to choose a domain name for your company’s website. The name you choose should relate to your business or be the name of your company. Obscure domain names will make it harder for potential customers to recognise and find your website. Check if the domain name that you want is available here > Domain name checker!

2. Hosting Requirements

You need to consider the basic requirements for your website.

For a small business site it would be best to choose a shared Linux web hosting package. Linux hosting is commonly cheaper than Windows web hosting so unless you require services such as ASP and .NET Linux hosting is preferred. The type of hosting that you choose does not reflect the operating system that you have on your computer.

Up-time- Check the up-time guarantee stated on the hosting companies website. You will want to find a host that offers 99.9% + up-time to ensure that your customers can find your site at any time.

Disk Space – Most websites use less than 50mb of disk space so to be safe its best to look for packages that offer around 100mb. If you have lots of large files on your website then you will need to find a larger hosting plan however try not to be lured into web hosts that oversell their services.

E-mail Accounts -  A handful of e-mail accounts is usually enough to satisfy most businesses so just check the web hosts site to ensure that there will be enough for your needs.

E-commerce Support – If you have intentions to sell products online you need to ensure that your web host supports features such as SSL certificates and e-commerce software.

Server Location- As your website grows so will your customer base so you need to look at where they are located. If you have 70% of your customers in the UK, it is recommended that you select a UK hosting plan so that the majority of your clients have a slightly faster connect to your website.

Hosting Support – As a business if you have any website problems you will want to have these fixed as soon as possible. Plan for errors to occur and check that your web host has fast technical support to resolve any issues that you may have as not to affect your day to day sales.

The Internet is a large collection of computers all connected together in one very bignetwork. A diagram of the Internet looks similar to a spiders web. A website is a place on that web, and website hosting means providing the physical location, the connection and, usually, the computer that “serves” the web site’s content to the PC that requests it. Web servers or computers are installed with special software designed to handle many users and services simultaneously.

The Internet is a global network, which means that communication can occur at any time. This means that a website should be ready to receive visitors at any moment. For this to be achieved there should be a constant connection to the web and a server that is always powered on running a stable environment.

The physical environment where the server is located, often called a Network Operations Center, or NOC is also very important. Data Centres have temperature controls, backup generators, earthquake-resistant architecture, and more, all designed to ensure your site is available at every moment.

When you are creating your website at your home computer, to upload it you need to send the files to your web server. FTP (File Transfer Protocal) is a service that allows you to do this. Once the file is on the server, whenever someone requests that file from the Internet either by typing in the web address or clicking a link, the server gives them the file they requested. Changing the content is as easy as changing the file and re-transferring it to the server.

In addition to web and FTP services, web site hosting almost always includes an email server that will receive email sent to your domain. This enables you to control mail delivery, create your own addresses, and present a professional image to your customers, clients, or constituents.

Shared Hosting or Shared Web Hosting is one of the most common types of web hosting available. It is a basic form of hosting where many websites share the resources on one server. This is the ideal hosting to get your first website started. If your website simply consists of html pages and has no scripting then shared hosting is ideal. Shared web hosting is currently the cheapest hosting solution.

Shared hosting is ideal for small websites that receive a small amount of traffic. This is because if you have a small website you are unlikely to need large amounts of disk space or bandwidth. There is no reason why you should pay for resources that you do not need.

See iUKHost shared web hosting plans here.

Robots.txt file is used to tell search engines what they are allowed to access on your website. The purpose of this is to stop search engines listing private and sensitive data such as admin login areas.

If you are happy to let search engines visit all files and folders that exist with your website then you do not need to use a robots.txt file. If you do not need to block any content then do not have a robots.txt file on your website.

If the file is incorrectly coded then you run the risk of blocking important content that you may want search engines to list.

If you want a robots.txt file to allow all the content and you really want to have one on your website then create a txt file called robots.txt and enter the following:

User-agent: *

Disallow:

For more information about robots.txt see here!

Anonymous FTP is used to allow a user to access files from anywhere on the Internet without the requirement of a user name and password. Using the user name “anonymous” the user will bypass local network security settings and be able to access publicly available files on a remote host. If you are running your own FTP server you can grant access to users to allow them to download files.

Anonymous FTP provides access to any folder that has the permissions set to public whether these are read or write. Users will have access to upload and download files from the server if they have the correct permissions. It is advisable to configure the folders that you want them to access with public permissions. Other folders you do not want to allow anonymousaccess to should be configured to private. It is possible not only to configure directories but individual files too. If there was one file in a directory that you want to stop access to then you can by editing the permissions. Correct setup of permissions will ensure that anonymous FTP users only access data that you want them to.

Link popularity is based upon the quantity of high quality back links from similar websites. If an incoming link to your website has relevant keywords in the anchor text on the external website, this may well help your web page gain a higher ranking. Link popularity is a very important part of search engine optimization which can really improve your websites ranking in SERPs.

Link building is an Off page SEO technique used to increase the number of websites linking to your web pages. The link popularity of a website is dependent on a few factors. These are listed below:

• The number of websites that are linking to your website
• The Link popularity and the PageRank of the external website linking to you
• The page from which you are getting the link should not have too many outgoing links
• The content and niche of the website link to you should be similar to yours
• The link to your website should be one way which means there is no link back to the external website from your web page (no reciprocal link).
• The external web page should have a higher rank than your website
• The website linking to you should not be blacklisted
• The IP addresses of the website linking to you
• The anchor text in the link to you should contain one of your websites top keywords
• The link coming to you should be a simple link with no scripting

There are other factors too that affect link popularity however the ones listed above should give you a basis on which to gain back links.

If you have a website or an online business then it is very important that you have a secure web hosting service. There are many different types of security threats on the Internet such as hackers. A hacker may try to gain access to secure information that is hosted on your website. Viruses and spyware are another kind of threat to your website so it is important that you have secure web hosting. This is especially the case if you have confidential information hosted on your server such as that of your customers.

If you have chosen shared web hosting then security is very important. As a shared hosting customer you would be sharing a server with many other users which means you need to be protected. It is advisable to check what types of security your web host has in place to ensure your data and account is safe. There are many ways a server could be attacked, so check that your web host has security rules in place that detail the types of scripts and services that can be run on the server.

Different methods of overcoming security measures are constantly being developed by hackers all the time which is why it is important to ensure that you web hosting company update your server regularly with the latest operating system and security patches.

There are steps you can take yourself to ensure that you website is secure. The first thing you can do is use strong passwords that use characters, letters and numbers. You should then use different passwords for different parts of your website to increase security.

Cheap web hosting has become very common but it can still be hard to find the right cheap web hosting package that meets your requirements. With so many different web hosting providers to choose from it would not take very long to find a large number of different cheap web hosting plans. If you have a small budget but want to get your website online as fast as possible for testing then finding the cheapest web hosting package may suit you. If your website is promoting your business you may be prepared to invest more money in hosting to provide a more stable environment.

This is not to suggest that the cheapest web hosting available is unreliable and slow, however it is a popular concept that in web hosting you get what you pay for. You are more likely to find web hosting packages cheaper in the US than in the UK. This is mainly due to cheaper bandwidth and server hardware in the US. This means UK hosting companies have higher costs and therefore cannot pass on the savings the US companies make to consumers. If you are based in the UK and choose to have your website hosted in the US there are a few things you should be aware of. The first thing to check is if the support is available from the hosting company in your timezone. The second thing you need to be aware of is your websites audience. If you have 80% of your visitors from the UK then it is best to choose web hosting in the UK to ensure the majority of visitors receive good connection speed.

The cheapest web hosting is usually from a web host that is running a Linux web server. Unlike the Windows operating system, Linux is free which means the host can provide cheaper web hosting to the consumer and they do not have to pass on the licensing cost. With Linux as the operating system many hosts will also include a control panel that will allow you to manage your website. This is normally in the form of cPanel control panel.

If a web hosting company specialises in the cheapest web hosting this will result in reduced profits which may affect other services such as support. If you require support 24/7 is it unlikely this will be provided with the cheapest web hosting package that you find. This will mean you should have the correct knowledge to manage your website without the need for round the clock support.