Web Hosting - Look Before You Leap	Visited: 694 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Tom Stone June 10, 2004

Website hosting usually involves basically renting space on a "server" or another computer set up to publish the content of your website onto, providing fast and safe methods for your customers to retrieve the information from, for viewing on their computers. The numbers of available packages are staggering, and frankly overwhelming to try to sort through for the best choice. Prepare yourself for creative applications of the word "free", a lot of size-comparisons about bandwidth, hard drive space, page hits, etc. While the hosting specs definitely should matter, most basic hosting plans are going to be enough to support any basic website. The more imminent concern with choosing your host should be the fact that you're going to entrust them a lot more than you may realize up front. Of course, your information is important. But hey, you WANT people to see it, right? Then, there's your customers' information. And then there's little things like the fact that small business servers have opened up such a gaping security threat for user bad guys (hackers, terrorists, etc.) to "relay" anonymously across hundreds of these small business hosting servers. This is a real threat developing at an epidemic measure.

Further information can be seen at The United States Cyber Emergency Response Team's site. Then, of course, there's those other nagging issues like viruses, worms, SPAM, and online casinos to contend with, now layered with the new wave of intelligent spy and adware - ALL of these things run a pretty solid DEFINITE likelihood of interacting with your server. The integrity of whatever company you choose for your hosting services may easily be the determining factor of whether you CAN stay online. Check these guys out before getting stuck with a company that turns out to be the world's largest distributor of male enhancement products... targeting the valued customer list you unknowingly provided them. Do they just pass you on to another actual hosting company while they monitor your web traffic? What safeguards have they put in place to protect YOU?