You must have heard this expression a million times before…. “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is”
Free website and web hosting companies are a classic example of this. They only appear free on the surface but their prime motivation is to make money from you. You cannot blame them for this, they have to make a living like everyone else.

So now you’re wondering “how can they make money out of me? - I’m not giving them any!”. This is how it works -

1. They sell advertising on the site you create. Once you publish your site they have banner advertising on your site that they get paid for from advertisers. You may think that is not a problem for you, but what about your visitors?. People aren’t patient enough to scroll through a load of banner adverts to get to your nicely designed content, they will just click elsewhere. Many of these free companies also put ‘pop up adverts’ on your site which are distracting for you and your visitors, as they continuously open up new windows in your browser.

2. The freewebsite company also hopes that you will get so fed up with the adverts that you pay them for ‘advert free hosting’. The price is often very expensive compared to better, more professional web hosting companies. Also, if you have lovingly created a website with their software, you will not be able to transfer your site to a cheaper hosting company anyway, so if you want advert free hosting you have zero options.

3. As part of their free hosting you will get a free domain name, usually a long ugly one eg. www.yoursite274589.freewebhostingcompany.com - who’s going to want to type that in??. This encourages you to buy a new domain name of your choice from them. The catch is they will probably charge you around $30-$40 for this. This is very expensive compared to other domain companies such as 1&1 Web Hosting who only charge around $6.

4. If you need any extras such as more web space or more bandwidth (the amount of information your visitors can download in a month), you will pay a premium for it, compared to other hosting companies. You will also find that many free companies are run on a shoe string and they don’t have enough servers to deal with all the traffic that is been generated from hosting free sites. This causes their servers to crash, which may mean that your site is not available for long periods of time. If this happens don’t even think about contacting their support, as they don’t usually have any!. If the site is being hosted for free it usually means you are not eligible for any type of support. However, if you sign up for their paid hosting (which again is very expensive!), you will get support, - are you getting the idea yet?. Its not really free is it?

The cheaper alternative to a freewebsite is to pay for it!. This may be a confusing concept but in the long run you will save money and receive more benefits by purchasing web hosting. The cost of hosting has dropped dramatically over the last few years, you can now get excellent hosting for your site for less than the price of two cups of coffee a month. Two companies - Yahoo! Web Hosting & 1&1 UK Web Hosting I actually use myself and can highly recommend them.

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Google’s got quite a job on its hands.
Every day the web gets bigger. Storing the world’s information ain’t as easy as it used to be….

Pictures filtered through last week of Google’s new Data Center and its huge! Its almost a town in itself. Can you imagine the number of servers that must be installed in that place, not to mention the cooling systems needed to keep those servers at optimum temperature. Now I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be picking up the tab for that electricity bill.

Now I’m only guessing…but I would have thought Google will need a few more of these data centers in the next few years. Like I said the web isn’t getting any smaller and neither is Google’s quest for world domination. Wouldn’t it be great if the World’s supplier of information could be powered by the Sun. Impossible you say? Maybe not.

According to an article at Computerworld, a web hosting company -AISO is already achieving it with their data center which hosts 15,000 web sites from around the world. Their 2000sq. ft premises is powered by 120 solar panels which produce 12 kilowatts of power which is then converted from DC to AC and stored in batteries. They are also in the process of creating a dirt roof which will cut air conditioning costs by 50%.

Admittedly, a 2000sq. ft data center is a bit different to the small towns Google are constructing, but I’m sure a few of the Geeks in the Google Labs could put together a few ideas!

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Choosing a good hosting company is critical to your online success. There are hundreds if not thousands of hosting companies out there, so make sure you take your time choosing and do your research. Here are a few of the main points to look for when deciding:-

Reliability
If you are setting up a hobby or personal site then this may not be that important, if you are a large ecommerce site then this factor is critical. Visitors to your site have a very short attention span so if your site isn’t available the first time they visit, they will not return. If the hosting company’s servers are slow your visitors will just click through to your competition, never to be seen again. That’s why its so important to ensure that your hosting company has the infrastructure and technology to keep your site online 99.9% of the time. Failure to do this could cost your business thousands of pounds a year in lost custom. Therefore its important that you take this into consideration when deciding on a host - don’t just pick the cheapest - do your homework.

Capacity
If you have a large dynamic web site ensure that you have plenty of web space. Certain companies will charge heavily for extra space above what is allocated to the package you purchased. Also ensure that you allow plenty of room for future expansion of your site or sites. It may be difficult to upgrade your package in the future or there may be a limit to what your hosting company can provide. At the other end of scale don’t waste money buying web space you will never use, you could use these savings for promoting your site instead.

Bandwidth
Be careful with this. Make sure that you have enough bandwidth to cover your current or future traffic requirements. Bandwidth can be used up very quickly if your site offers multimedia elements such as mp3 download or streaming video. Your hosting company will either shut down your site if you go over your limit or slap on a hefty charge for every MB you are over your limit. These costs can escalate very quickly, so the best rule of thumb is to ensure that you have enough bandwidth in the first place.

Application Support
Many people are now using dynamic elements such as databases or forums on their sites. Ensure that your host supports these dynamic elements as part of the package - not as paid extras. Look for things such as ASP, MySQL, PHP support. As a side note if you are using Microsoft FrontPage for building web sites, make sure your hosting company offer FrontPage extensions as standard, otherwise this will be another annoying additional charge.

Security
It is extremely important that your hosting company has adequate measures put in place for protecting your web site. They should have various firewall’s put in place to prevent your site been hacked or suffer denial of service attacks (this is when your web site is inundated with requests, which causes your server to crash and your site to become disabled). They should also back up your data at regular intervals and allow you to make copies of everything contained on your server, for your own personal records.

Support
24/7 365 support should be standard with most hosting companies these days. However, make sure this support is not just email based. If your site goes down you will want to speak to a support engineer right away over the phone. Most of the decent hosting companies will provide this facility, and the better ones will even provide a toll-free number. Don’t underestimate the benefits of this kind of service, there is nothing more panic inducing than having your web site offline over a weekend or holiday period and knowing that you are losing 1000s in lost sales.

Do Your Homework
Ask other webmasters on internet forums who they use. This is probably the best way to go as they will be using these hosting companies on a regular basis and will be able to give you their experience of using them. A good forum to visit to research your options is sitepoint.

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