DotNetNuke Tutorials and Articles

When your website begins to be authored, you will need a place to stow it. This will enable you to view the progress and creation of your site and enable visitors to access the site after completion. Truth is, setting up your own host--a dedicated computer that's permanently wired into the Net--is time-consuming and expensive and, for most small businesses, a bad idea. Better to outsource hosting to folks who specialize in it.

You could use the free space that comes with your ISP account--all providers, from AOL to EarthLink, offer users at least some space as part of the basic package of services. Frankly, though, this space is rarely suited to running a business. Servers are slow during peak traffic hours, and domain names can be cumbersome. This space may be great for putting up test pages and fiddling with a site before you are ready to go live, but when you want to get down to business, you will need a dedicated host.

Picking a host is tricky. Thousands of services charge countless fees, make all sorts of promises and raise seemingly endless questions. To help choose one that'll get the job done, here are key questions to ask, answers to insist on and information on how to get them.

• How reliable is your service? Surveys show reliability is e-businesses' main concern. Look for at least a 95 percent uptime guarantee, and find out what that guarantee means, advises Jon Landry, sales manager with TopHosts.com, a web-host rating service and directory in Toronto.
   
• What kind of performance do you offer? An ideal host has one or more T3 lines connected directly to the internet, not through someone else's network operations center, says Landry. Servers should be fast Pentium Pros or Sun SparcStations, running Windows NT, Linux or another mainstream, high-performance operating system. Let your host know if you use bandwidth-gobbling features like streaming audio and video.
  
  And know who you share space with, Silberman adds. If other businesses on your server experience large spikes in traffic, you could suffer.
   
• How good is your support? Look for 24/7 phone support available from a live person. Then check it. Call or e-mail the tech support line at 9 p.m. on a Sunday and expect it to be answered.
   
• What will it cost? Entry-level service with a single domain name, 20MB hard-drive space, e-mail service and up to 1GB of monthly data transfer (which may also be expressed as hits) should cost no more than $50.
   
• How do you handle security? Passwords should be required to control the host and manage or modify your site. All files should be backed up daily. Always look for a host that offers secure transactions.
   
• How much control do I have? You want to be able to use a variety of background applications, including custom CGI scripts and online forms tailored for your business, says Dave Murphy, president of Damar Group Ltd., a web hosting company in Elkridge, Maryland. "Otherwise," he warns, "you won't be able to design a site that really meets your needs."
   
• Can you handle the technology I'm using? If your site's software runs on Microsoft Internet Information Server under a Windows Server, look for a host that supports that configuration. Personal referrals help, too. Ask your software company if they know of any good hosts.

Actually comparing hosts can be difficult, so a good policy is to quietly set up an account and test the host--kick the tires, so to speak--for several weeks before announcing your presence to the world. Isn't that expensive? You bet, when setup fees are factored in. But more expensive--and embarrassing--is to make a big push for traffic, only to have your host drop the ball and leave you with cranky visitors who cannot quite make it in. Better to know your host is operating smoothly before inviting guests to the party.