Help - Looking for Hosting

[Sarahjovi]

Hi,

I'm sorry if I'm asking the same questions asked a million times before, however.

I've building a website in an old version of Dreamweaver, which I'm learning as I go... I have incorporated a email form, so need a Host which can handle this for me... (I believe this is pretty standard).

I've no idea what else I'll need, but other things will probably crop up.

I'm being drawn to Bluehost, mainly because they show an example of their control panel on their site. But this looks like it is in the US, Would a UK host be better?

I have hosted my other websites on freespace provided by my ISP. But they don't provide a CGI bin facillity (which I have been told is old hat, but I beleive its what I need for email forms). plus the site will be a business site, which is againt the rules, so I need some web hosting.

I would be grateful for some help in a non technical language (It all goes straight over my head!) although the glosseries on this forum are a big help...:thumbsup:

I did sign up with a free account at Brinkster, which was suggested to me to test the site, but as far as I can see I can't use the FTP facility as its not available with a free account???

Many thanks

Sarah

 

[ms2134]

You could take a look at my company which i resell for another comapny called Liquidnet.

We have some nice prices for what you get.

Our website address is : Corporate Internet Solutions - Website Hosting,Domain Registration and Server Hosting

Check it out if your interested,

and good luck with your search for a hosting provider.

~ Mike

 

[krystalpaul]

Hi Sarah,

In answer to your questions:

UK or US Hosting

This is a question of where your target market resides. If your target market is in the UK then I would certainly consider hosting the site in the UK for these reasons

i) It is likely that your web site will have lower latency for UK visitors if the server also resides in the UK (ie. pages will load up quicker if your server is local)

ii) Search engines have local variants. For example Google.com places enhanced emphasis on American hosted sites and the same is true Google.co.uk and the UK. If your target market is UK-based, it is likely that the majority of your potential visitors will search using the co.uk variant and therefore US Hosting would not be preferential.

It is worth noting that hosting isn't the only factor in rankings for local search engine variants and that is why you sometimes get UK based sites ranking high in the .com suffix - however it is a factor, and one worth considering.

CGI-bins

You're right, you can use these to hold web form data. These are fairly standard in the hosting industry and you should expect most shared hosting providers to offer them.

There are alternative (and probably better) ways of storing form information. For example, PHP and MySQL. This is also a common feature for shared hosting, so it really is up to you.

Control Panel

I have just had a look at the bluehost control panel. This looks very similar to the control panel that some web hosts use called Cpanel. Cpanel allows you to easily manage all aspects of your web hosting account and domain names meaning that you should never have to get your hands dirty.


I hope that has answered all your questions, Sarah. I am happy to discuss this with you over the phone or via email should you need any further information. I am a partner at a company called Krystal (hosting company) and we can take care of all the concerns you have listed should you not know where to turn.

Paul

 

[krystalpaul]

No problem, Sarah!

 

[ms2134]

That is fine, we are all here to help.

I hope that you find what you are looking for.

Best of luck,
~ Mike

 

[Rebentrost]

Word of warning about BlueHost. I strongly recommend you read their reviews over at WHT before you join. They are a classic example of overselling, the moment you start using lots of disk space & bandwidth they will terminate your account.

 

[paulgascoigne]

Try quellerdrive.com .
It's cheap.