Hosting - STEP 2 to start a website

What is hosting?
If you have a furniture store you are probably paying a landlord a monthly rent to keep the physical store space. Your website is also going to occupy some space. The space will be on a special powerful computer called a server. The landlord who owns these servers are called a hosting company or simply hosts.
So just like you would pay a landlord a monthly rent to occupy a space for your brick and mortar store, you would pay a monthly fee to a hosting company to rent a space for your website.

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How do I get a hosting for my website?
Just like getting a domain, you would go online (go on the internet) to visit a hosting company. There are many, many, many hosting companies. Here is a list of few well known ones.
www.hostgator.com
www.iPower.com
www.BlueFish.com
www.MidPhase.com
www.ApolloHosting.com

You will make the payment online using your credit card.
It's a good idea to have a web designer next to you or on the phone when you get your hosting.

TIP: Try not to give this work to your web designer to handle. Try to do it yourself. If you are serious about your business, you owe it to your business to at least try and learn something by doing it yourself. I say this because getting a hosting account is not that complicated for a layman but the process of getting one will educate you a lot.

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So how do I decide which hosting company to go with?
Different hosting companies provide different amounts of facilities for different prices. So the best thing for you to do will be to determine what functionalities you need on your website and what you are willing to pay for it. Then you can start searching for hosting companies on the web and decide for yourself.
If you are new to the whole hosting idea, I would suggest you to consult a web designer. In fact consult a few different web designers. Most of them will give you free consultation....and this may be a good way for you to decide on a web designers also.

I will write some more details on figuring out a suitable host based on your site needs in my next post.