[Prince]

Hey guys,

We there's tons of websites out there, and one thing they all need is a web host. A web host is the server which your domain is pointed towards. In short, its where your files for your website is hosted and it's were the name(domain) of your website goes when you type it in the address bar of your browser.

So I'm here to tell you how to pick the host to suit your needs, well first of all, there's tons of web hosts our there so If you see one you don't feel comfortable purchasing simply make a search and look for another.

In this thread I will run down most control panels, and then features of webhosts, I will also explain why you would need linux/windows hosting.

Operating Systems

Linux – If you have a website coded in PHP then you choose linux.

Windows – If you website is in ASP, or ASP.net then find a host which supports windows.

This is very important as different websites are coded in different languages. Anyway so far so simple.

Control Panels

cPanel – The dominatrix, this panel has everything you would ever need in it, its simple easy to use and just plain brilliant.

DirectAdmin – DirectAdmin isn't used much anymore, as it's been outdated by cPanel, anyway, I'm not even going to explain this as cPanel would abosolutely annihilate it.

Both of the above I would say are the most user friendly control panels, and cPanel would have to be the favourite.

Features

Disk Space - This is the storage of your website, so if your going to be hosting large files etc, your going to need a lot of this. However most websites barely even use 2GB.

Bandwidth – This is normally one of the main factors, the amount of bandwidth you have limits the amount of people you can have visiting your site. If you have small amount of bandwidth, only a small amount of users will be able to access your site. So if your running a blog etc, I would say look below 100GB. Once you start to expand and get 100 + members/users/clients then I would say expand to 500GB + Bandwidth. The dictionary definition of bandwidth is how much data you can consume, e.g. a large web page would take up more bandwidth then a smaller one. So keep in mind the size of your pages.

Parked Domains – A parked domain is a domain which is literally parked on top of another so say you were to park yahoo.com on google.com. Yahoo.com would have every single page google.com has.

MySQL Databases – Pretty simple, just a database.
FTP – File transfer protocol, a lot of people don't even use FTP much anymore since a lot of file managers have become more efficient then they were in the past.

Anyway, that's a run down on everything, now here's some features you would look for in a good host.

- A host that offers unlimited normally oversells and this means your site may be slow, and it would be straight up shit.
- Some hosts allow a certain amount of concurrent connections to a database, check with the host beforehand. Sometimes because of this you may only be allowed 3 users online on your forum, that would be a total fail.
- Look for reviews, search on google etc. for reviews of the host your looking at, check what panel they use etc.
- Never go for the first host you find, as sometimes they could be absolute crap.
- Some things are too good to be true in the hosting industry, be careful!

Hopefully with this guide you can find the best host possible to suit your needs, anyway don't hate It's not a perfect thread, there will be some edits made etc.

Thanks a lot for reading and getting to the end.

NOTE: THIS THREAD IS MINE, I POSTED IT ON ANOTHER FORUM BEFORE THIS SO DON'T CALL ME A LEECHER.

[Rain]

Thanks for the useful information dude.

[Wonders]

Quite a nice thread, thanks for sharing.

[Gogeta]

Nice thread. This helped me on decide who will be hosting my forums soon

[Spire_CnC]

Awesome explanation. Seems you know a lot about web development and hosting. I needa talk to you, msg me on Skype.

[Faked]

Awesome thread, tells me a little more about hosting.

Thanks,
Derpec