All web hosting companies are different, so asking how long it would take to get setup can be a difficult question to ask. However, most web hosting companies use their own administration panels (a bit like cPanel) in order to get your account active quickly, so your setup time usually isn’t long.

However, if you have asked for a specific server specification, or a non-managed dedicated server, then your setup times may be slightly longer. You might be faced with some additional setup fees in order to physically build your server if your requirements are specialist.

Here’s a brief list of things to look out for when choosing your web hosting provider

• Make sure they provide you with enough bandwidth, data transfer and disk space. If they are offering more than most, then find out why – its an obvious thing to suggest, but check the small print.
• Double check that the features they are offering are right for you – Do they support PHP? cPanel? Email forwarders? Databases? and more.
• What kind of guarantees do they offer? If they’re offering 99.9% guaranteed uptime, then you can be fairly confident that their servers really will be functional and online 99.9% of the time, otherwise you can ask for your money back and they won’t make their money!
• Make sure you’re choosing the right hosting plan, whether its shared hosting, reseller hosting, a dedicated server or simply free hosting.
• Finally, don’t be pressurized into getting something you don’t need. If they’re offering a bigger, better server for more money ask yourself – do you really need this?

A domain name is a like a sign post within the internet, it simply points to a server and asks the server to return the information the user or visitor is looking for. A domain is, quite simple, www.google.com or www.example.com

All domain names are unique throughout the internet, although there are several parts to them. The www. part to the domain name is, effectively, a sub-domain of the domain itself. It is often not required, and sometimes website owners prefer not to include the www. part of their web address.

Domain name can end in a multitude of letters too, to indentify what the site is about, or what country it is from. You are probably familiar with 4 or 5 “endings”, often known as TLD’s, but there are hundreds.

A few, for example, the obvious ones – .com, .co.uk, .net, .info, but there are many others such as .tel, .gov, .edu, .to, .me, .ms and many others.

As said in a number of our other articles, almost all web hosting companies provide with at least a few email addresses which can be setup. This means that, for example, you owned the domain example.com, then you could have the email address [email protected] making your online presence much more professional.

If you like the sound of this concept, then it is important to think about how many email accounts you will need and want to have setup.

As well as email accounts, you can also setup an email forwarder which will forward emails sent from one address to another. Email forwarding is probably best explained with an example, so again, you own the domain example.com and you have an account setup called [email protected], just as before. A forwarder with the address [email protected] will mean that any emails sent to [email protected] will now be forwarded onto john’s inbox, whereas the [email protected] address does not have an inbox as such.

This could be a very difficult question to ask if you are just starting out at web hosting – Windows hosting and Unix hosting offer two distinct routes in which to take.

If you are planning your website to be based around the Microsoft / ASP programming lanugage framework, or if you use Frontpage for example, Windows hosting would be the one of choice.

On the other hand, if you’re going to use PHP, Ruby or any other Open Source technologies, then Unix would be the preferred preference.

The question of Windows web hosting and Unix web hosting would be one that the web host themselves would have to answer to you for your specific needs, so it probably would be best to contact your preferred hosting company if you are questioning this.

This question is all down to your budget and your websites needs. If you are thinking of running a blog for yourself, or a small website with perhaps just a couple of pages and images, then free hosting maybe the solutions you’re looking for.

If, however, you are hoping to make more out of your website, then you should look into paid hosting almost certainly.

Free hosting is very limited, often with only 2 or less email accounts available, sometimes no database support and no guarantees of server uptime.

On the other hand, paid web hosting can be cheap whilst still retaining a number of features that free hosting may not offer. Paid hosting comes in a number of different types and packages, and prices, so its important to know what you’re paying for and what you’ll need.

As explained in some of our other articles, all aspects and features of web hosting is important when choosing your new web host. It is important to make sure that your new host has enough disk space that you will be using on your site, as well as enough bandwidth / disk space to allow for expansion for more visitors to your site.

Also, you must double check that your new web host has all the features that you require. Ask yourself; Do they provide enough email accounts? If you’re using MySQL databases, do they support them? Do they use cPanel? Are they Windows or Unix based, and which is best for you?

There are a lot of potential questions you must ask yourself, whilst bearing in mind other peoples reviews, their reputation, and ultimately – the price.