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HOSTING GUIDE
1.Your first decision will have to be whether you need a paid or a free web host. With the price of plans offered by quality hosts falling down to very affordable levels, only the simplest and less popular sites should consider being hosted by Geocities, Tripod, or other free hosts. Major differences are the number of features offered by paid hosts, such as more disk space, access to multiple programming languages, databases, SSL servers, FTP, regular backup, guaranteed uptime, access to server configuration files and to raw logs and statistics, no forced ads and pop-up, and availability of technical support.

2.Your next decision should be whether to choose an NT or Unix-based host. Which operating system you decide to e should depend on what features you need. For example, if you are already using IIS, ASP, VBScript, Microsoft SQL Server, or Visual InterDev, and you don't have the time to learn Unix-based solutions, you should choose a Windows NT or Windows 2000-based host.

3.Calculate how much disk space your site will need. Vast majority of sites that don't have tons of graphics, sound and video clips or downloadable files easily fit in 50 MB of disk space. You should always leave yourself some room for growth or check if the host has a bigger plan in case you need to upgrade. Some web hosts advertise unlimited accounts. This is usually just a gimmick and you should know that you can't expect them to host your site if they would lose money on it. Most web hosts pay from $1 to $5 per GB of transfer. Almost all hosts that have "unlimited" plans, specify in their Acceptable Use Policies that no site e an "excessive" amount of resources. If you e too much disk space, bandwidth, or CPU time, these "unlimited" hosts will ask you to upgrade or leave. So be careful with them and ask them before you get an account, if the transfer age you expect to have is acceptable.

4.If your site will store a lot of data that should be dynamically accessible (like user accounts, stock prices, maps), you'll probably need to look for an account that offers a database. Most NT-based plans will offer Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL Server. All of them are relational databases.

5.Extra features that may be important to you are: SSL servers for secure over-the-Web transactions (you'll also need a digital certificate), shell (telusnet or SSH) access to your account, access to raw logs and stats for figuring out who the visitors to your site are, streaming media support for letting your users listen to audio or watch video without having to fully download it, email accounts so your users can contact, mailing lists for creating an email community around your site, whether the host uses a static IP, anonymous FTP to allow users to download files through FTP, and the guaranteed uptime.