Introducing Web hosting and Bandwidth
OK, you’ve decided on your domain name and have registered it and you’ve spent hours with Dreamweaver designing your website or maybe you threw caution to the wind and had a site built for you, what next? Well, the old adage, “Build it and they will come” is true to a certain extent but having built it, they can only come if it’s hosted somewhere! A lot of people looking to start a business online are not aware of some of the basics like how people are able to view or visit your website.
So what is web hosting? Right now, if you have already built your website, all of those files are on your computer. People who are surfing the web don’t have access to your computer, so they can’t find your website, sure they might find your domain but it probably has a generic “Under Construction” page their or worse, a page of advertisement links that the company you registered it with are making money from. Advanced users know they can turn their computer into a server where people are actually coming to their computer to view their website; however this is not perfect and certainly not recommended for someone who is not very advanced as a computer technician.
Thankfully there are hosting companies who rent out space on their servers which makes it much easier for novices and experts alike. You upload your website files from your computer to the hosting server so they can make them available for others to view on the web. This is the service referred to as web hosting.
Will any web host do? No. This is a common misconception about web hosting. All web hosts are not created equal. There are many different levels of web hosting and many different plans and packages to consider. There are also many other things you have to consider when choosing a web hosting company. In much the same way as you’d shop around before buying a car, a house or a new computer you need to do the same when considering a web hosting company. Let’s go over one of the most important issues when choosing a web hosting plan to help you understand better.
A lot depends on your individual needs. Will your website have a lot of graphics and images? Will it have movies? Music downloads? Software or other downloads? Or is it a very simple and compact website that is mostly text? Do you expect a lot of traffic to your website?
The reason for all those questions is something you’ll see mentioned all over the net, “bandwidth” Unless you intend having a site of many thousands of pages with lots of images and downloads, the amount of storage space a plan offers is usually far less important than the amount of bandwidth you get. Why is that?
Well, every time someone visits your webpage, every file included on that page is downloaded from the web host’s server to the visitor’s computer. This includes each graphic or image on the page, every icon, even the html page itself is downloaded by a user just visiting your webpage. The size of each of those files being transferred to the visitor’s computer is the amount of “bandwidth” you are using.
Let’s say you get 100 visitors per day to your 10 page website. Now, an average html page is around 15k and for this example we’ll imagine you have 5 small images about 15k each in size on that webpage. That means each visitor to your website is using up 90k in bandwidth every time they visit that page. Now, if every page is a similar size and your average visitor opens just 5 of your 10 pages within your website your main page that means each visitor uses 450k minimum and that is if they don’t keep going back to your main page.
Multiply that 450k times the 100 visitors per day you get and you are using 45,000k or 45Mb (megabytes) of transfer per day. Multiply that by 30 days and you get 1,350,000k or 1,350Mb or 1.35 GB (gigabytes) of bandwidth each month. It soon adds up!
Now if your web hosting plan allows for more bandwidth than you think you will need, then you are okay. However, make sure you know upfront what the cost of going over your allotted bandwidth is as some webhosts charge a lot for every megabyte you use over the limit the plan you chose offers. If you can afford it, select a webhosting plan that is just one step above the one you think you need to allow for growth.
If you are looking for reasonably priced, quality UK hosting visit Selfless Mind Hosting who have a variety of packages available and they also allow you to tailor a package to suit your needs.
For some practical suggestions on how to reduce your bandwidth, have a look at my post entitled 6 Top Tips on Reducing Bandwidth
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