Sillybean

Hosting and domains

As I mentioned yesterday, you should pay no more than $10/month to host a typical, modestly successful site. Start with a basic package; you can always upgrade if you need more disk space than you anticipated or your site draws an unexpected amount of traffic.

Basic packages, because they are cheap, often come with a setup fee. This should not exceed $25.

Hosting and domain registration together can easily be done for about $100/year, plus the initial setup fee. If you are paying two or three times that, stop! Check to see how much disk space and bandwidth your site currently uses, and then see if your host has a cheaper plan you can change to. If not, consider moving your site to another host. If your host can’t tell you how much disk space and bandwidth you’re using, it’s definitely time to switch.

Some hosts will charge additional setup fees for features they consider “advanced,â€? such as databases, programming language support, statistics analyzers, etc. Figure out which of these features you’re likely to want in the next year or so and add those fees to the basic package price. The total should still fall within the $10/month + $25 setup guideline. Ideally, it’ll be included even in the basic plans.

Features

Any self-respecting commercial host should offer:

• At least 50 MB of disk space
• More than one POP email account per domain (preferably unlimited)
• Email forwarding & aliasing
• Databases, preferably MySQL
• Programming languages: PHP, Perl
• FTP accounts
• Shell (command line) access (may be restricted)
• Web-based email
• Spam protection
• Your own CGI-BIN directory, for scripts
• Backups, performed weekly if not daily
• Access logs with referrer data
• Server-side includes (SSI)

A very good host should also offer:

• Free transfer of your existing domain (that is, a domain that was registered through another company)
• 24-hour tech support by phone as well as by email or chat
• Cron jobs (automated task scheduling)
• Mailing lists
• Password-protected directories
• Guestbook, forum or bulletin board software
• Statistics analyzers with graphs, preferably Webalizer, AWStats, Analog (with Report Magic), Urchin, NetTracker, WebTrends, or ClickTracks. Of those, I prefer Urchin. This is NOT a counter that displays a hit count on every page; those are wildly inaccurate and are among the hallmarks of an amateur.
• phpMyAdmin (for use with PHP and MySQL)
• Other scripting and programming languages: C, C++, Java, Python, etc.

Do you need all that stuff?

You might not. Then again, you might want some things later, and it’ll be handy to have them available. Consider what some of those advanced features are used for.

• Databases and programming languages power forums, bulletin boards, blogs, mailing list managers, and any number of other applications.
• Shell access makes it easier to install those things.
• Site stats give you something besides Amazon rankings to obsess over, but also measure the effectiveness of promotional efforts. (ClickTracks is designed specifically to measure the return on investment of online ad campaigns.)
• Web-based email allows you check in at conventions, during book tours, on your cell phone.
• You need backups, period. In case the server fails, the host will be able to restore your files, sometimes before you even notice they were missing.

Recommended hosts

Gleaned from a number of webmaster mailing lists, forums, and convention chats. Personally, I can recommend TextDrive (although they cater to power users and no longer offer small plans suitable for a single domain) and WestHost. FatCow is often recommended but I’ve found that they charge extra for setting up things like databases that other hosts include in similarly priced plans.

textdrive.com
webmasters.com
westhost.com
pair.com
webcorelabs.com
rackspace.com
mediatemple.net
insiderhosting.com
ipowerweb.com
flockhosting.com
wiredhub.net
powweb.com
hostforweb.com

Tophosts.com’s Top 25 list

Not recommended:
Dreamhost
Dot5Hosting

If you prefer, go to webhostingratings.com (which looks awful but is really useful) and type in how much disk space and bandwidth you need and how much you’d like to spend. When it returns a list of possible hosts, check their customers’ comments on the webhostingtalk.com forum.

For Comparison

Web hosting rates and services ca. 1995

Further Reading

The Frugal Host, by Carrie Bickner
The FAQ and other articles (under Education) at webhostingratings.com

Domains

While many hosts offer domain registry alongside their hosting packages, some don’t… and you might be able to register your domain at a cheaper rate with another company anyway. Try godaddy.com or gkg.net. (I’ve used both.)

DO NOT use Network Solutions/Verisign. While they are the original registrar and many people trust them for that reason, there are numerous reports of domains being resold before they expired, domains transferred without the owner’s permission (or even notification), and domains held hostage when owners tried to switch registrars. Need more info? Check Google.

Registering a domain is easy: pick the one you want, the length of time you want it (you can renew later), and just say no to every other silly offer that’s advertised between there and the checkout screen. (The only service you might consider is the proxy, which allows you to hide your address and phone number from the public. Without this service, it’ll be public info as soon as you register the domain. If you have a P.O. Box, use that and skip the proxy.) You’ll be asked to supply a name and contact info for the registrant, administrative contact, technical contact, and a fourth kind that escapes me just now. Unless you are a corporation, all four of those are you.

Whew. That was long. Any questions?