If you think of your domain name as your web site’s address, then the server provided by your hosting company is the “home” the address points to. It’s where your completed site will reside so that it is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and a browser.
Reliable hosting is critical to your website’s success. Without it the world will never see the results of all your hard work. Fortunately, hosting is very affordable. Depending upon your needs you can expect to pay from $5 to $25 per month.
Note: While free hosting is available from a number of sources, these services usually litter your site with advertisements and are very restrictive in the services and support they offer. You’re better off investing a few bucks and going with a commercial hosting service.
Over the years I’ve used more hosting companies than I care to remember and I’ve learned two lessons the hard way:
- Cheapest isn’t always (or even very often) the best.
- Live customer support (via online chat or phone) is critical. If there is a problem with your server, you don’t want to wait around for an email from customer support, you want help Right Now!
Based upon my experience and recommendations from other web developers, I currently recommend Hostgator
for reasonably priced, reliable hosting.
1 Select your hosting plan
Go to Hostgator.com
.
Fig. B.1
You’ll notice HostGator offers several types of hosting. All of them offer 99.9% uptime guarantees and 24/7 live support. We’re interested in basic Hosting which starts at $4.95 a month. So click on the Learn More… link in the Hosting box.
Now we’ll compare Linux Web Hosting plans. Unless your website is technically demanding (unlikely, since this is an introductory tutorial) the Hatchling plan should be more than adequate. If you’ll be adding additional websites with their own domains later, move up to the Baby plan.
Fig. B.2
Once you’ve determined which plan is right for you, click the orange Order Now button in the corresponding column.
