Hosting your website files and making them accessible to other people can cost money. As with many of these considerations, a wide range of pricing is available, from close to free to more than a mortgage payment a month. Don’t think that any web hosting is completely free, though. Even if you host your own web server out of your home, you still need to buy the equipment and pay your electric bill, rent, and yourself.

Try to decide on a budget you can spend on an ongoing basis to have your website hosted. For my money, a little bit of monthly fee solves so many problems and offers so many opportunities it is well worth it.

Some hosting options require you to have a higher level of technical skills than others. Honestly assess your technical skills and the time you’re willing to spend using these skills before choosing a hosting option.

It’s important to know who is maintaining your web server. If you are doing it, you need to perform several regular maintenance tasks yourself. This includes making sure the server is running and accessible to other people. If you are using a hosting service, someone else might do this for you, but they probably expect to be paid. You need to evaluate how much time you can give to maintaining a web server or how much you are willing to spend.

Your web files take up digital space. You need to know the amount of space you have available to store your files. Unless you are the only website on the web server, you need to find out how much space you have available on that server and keep that in mind while planning your website.

How easy is it to upload and access your files on the web server? Do you have remote access to the server (you can connect to it from any other computer) or do you need to have physical access to it? This can make a huge difference if your access is limited or restricted in any way. Also, you should know what security requirements (such as personal information) you have to give the web hosting service for security reasons.

Bandwidth determines how much information can be transmitted over a period of time. Every time your website is downloaded it uses up some of the bandwidth allotted to you by the web server. One way to think of it is how many times your website files can be downloaded. Some web hosting services put a limit on the amount of bandwidth your website requires.

With some hosting options, bandwidth is nearly unlimited, and with others it is restricted. If you expect a lot of people to come to your website, pay careful attention to the web hosting bandwidth restrictions.

A domain name is an address on the Internet that is owned and stored at a particular place. See the Geek Speak sidebar for further explanation of domain names.

You need to know whether your hosting option will take care of domain name services and, if so, at what cost. Domain name services include registering and hosting your domain name so that other computers on the Internet know to come to your web host when they type in your URL.

It’s possible to host your own web server at home. At the very least you would need a dedicated web server machine, a dedicated always-on high-speed Internet connection, server software, and the technical know-how and time to install, configure, and maintain your own server, not to mention secure it. Tired yet? This option is usually for hard-core geeks, but yes, it is possible to host your web server from your own home.

Some website hosting sites, such as Google Sites and Yahoo’s Geocities, allow free hosting for websites. They can offer this because they limit the storage, pages, and files you can put on their sites. Google Sites, for example, takes care of all the hosting for free but does not allow you any domain name service and allows a very limited amount of content. If you don’t want any web hosting hassles and have low technology needs, this might be the option for you.

Several companies offer web hosting for a reasonable cost ($10 to $20 U.S. a month, plus setup fees). These services look after the servers and allow you a wide range of website possibilities. They usually have a number of different hosting plans, based on what you need in terms of domain and other technical services (things like physically maintaining the web server and installing new software versions).

This is the kind of hosting I use for my websites.

If you are expecting a huge amount of hosting and high technical customization needs, you might want to consider professional hosting. For a large sum of money, a hosting company rents you your own server and maintains it for you. This gives you a huge range of possibilities, but it is expensive.

If you are creating a website for your company, there might be people within your company who can host and maintain your web server. If your boss asks you to create a website, try to find out whether a system is already in place for site hosting.

Several free hosting services exist on the Internet. I profile a couple of them here, but this is by no means a complete list, and new site hosts show up every day. Before signing up, review the features of the site and the terms of service and use, read reviews of the service, and if possible, look at sites that use the free hosting service. Remember that although all these sites will host your website for free, they do come with limitations. The following sections describe a few of the best free services for web hosting.

I have given the websites letter grades for ease of use and features. A grade of A is excellent. A grade of B is good. A grade of C is satisfactory, and D is unsatisfactory.

Google Sites (sites.google.com)

Ease of Use: A

Features: B

A relative newcomer to the free web page hosting business, Google again makes things as free and easy as its search engine is. Google’s emphasis with Google Sites is connecting people in groups as easily as possible. If you are interested in Google Sites make sure to watch the introduction tutorial.

Google Sites (see Figure 2.2) allows easy text editing, attachments, and comments. The page creation tool allows easy linking, addition of images, and creation of new pages. It has page templates for commonly created pages with programming already added. Google also allows you to let other people change your site if you are working on the website as a team.

Figure 2.2 Google Sites makes the creation of websites fast, easy, and cheap.

You can easily customize your pages and no HTML is required. If you like Google Sites they also offer expanded services for a monthly fee.

    For more on Google Sites, see Chapter 9, “Web Page Services.”

Yahoo! GeoCities (http://geocities.yahoo.com/)

Ease of Use: A

Features: B

GeoCities (see Figure 2.3) began as its own website, but in 1998 it was bought by the Internet search company, Yahoo!. The goal of GeoCities has always been offering free web pages for people with free tools and no technical knowledge required. The site offers several design templates and layouts to fit your needs. It also has an extensive list of add-ons to give your page extra personality. There are also page wizards and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder.

Figure 2.3 Yahoo!’s free website service is called GeoCities.

To keep running for free, Yahoo! GeoCities places ads on your page. If you are not interested in ads on your site, Yahoo! also offers site hosting with more features and no ads for a fee.

Windows Live Spaces (www.spaces.live.com)

Ease of Use: A

Features: D

Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces (see Figure 2.4) offers a space for MSN or Microsoft Live users to store photos, lists, and blog entries. It is very limited in its features but is simple to use. In essence, it is not really hosting any kind of website, but it does give you a web presence if you want a very simple one.

Figure 2.4 Microsoft’s free pages include applications it calls gadgets.

If you are doing anything more than the basics, you probably should spend some money on a low-cost commercial web hosting company. If you are going to spend any money on your website, I would make this the first place you go. A good hosting company can give you so much in terms of features, space, and peace of mind it makes the low monthly fee well worth it. Here are a few of the better-known low-cost commercial sites. They all have tons of features and make setting up an excellent website much easier.

One thing I keep coming back to in this book is that people are using the Web to give out and collect information like never before. When trying to decide which web hosting service to go with, take the time to read what people are saying about it. Substantiate the claims each service makes by researching the service.

You might find a web service that sounds too good to be true and adds virus or other harmful software to your computer or website. In addition, new web hosting services appear constantly on the Internet. Keeping track of them all would be an impossibility, so let someone else do it for you. Web hosting sites are always being reviewed, and here are some of the websites that review those services: