This web hosting guide provides everything necessary to make an informed decision about your web hosting requirements.   Here we will list the key components of a website hosting package, and what they mean to you and your site.

Hard Disk Storage

This is the space you have to store your site (sometines known as "Webspace").  Every website is stored on a webserver which is the computer that supplies your site to your visitors on request.  Your hard disk storage is how much space you are allocated on that computer's hard disk drive.  Even the most complex websites don't require more than 5MB of space, but having more gives you the freedom to grow.

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Monthly Transfer (also called bandwidth)

This is the total amount of data (including graphics and HTML web pages) which can be uploaded and downloaded from your site each month.  It is a rough estimator of how many visitors your hosting plan can accommodate.  For example, on an average size website with a moderate amount of graphics, it has been our experience that 500 megs of transfer can accommodate well over 3,000 visitors per month.

Some web hosts claim  to offer "unlimited bandwidth" which is generally a bad thing.  Not only are they likely to pack your site on an overloaded server and connection (bandwidth costs us money), but if you read the fine print there are always "excessive use penalties" which are arbitrary and costly.  In contrast, we monitor bandwidth and insure your site is always fast and reliable with no hidden charges.

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POP3 Email Accounts

These are email accounts which can be used with your domain name.  They allow you to receive and read email.   This is incoming mail only, and you should use the server of your dialup account for sending mail (although it can still appear to come from your domain name).   Please visit our support page for more information on configuring your email.

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Updates via FTP

We allow you to update your site 24/7 using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Client.  This is a program which allows you to connect to our server and upload your files. 

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Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions

Microsoft FrontPage is a very popular web development tool.  You can create your site and upload it to our servers using this extremely powerful product. 

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Active Server Pages

With ASP, you can add interactive content to your Web pages or build entire Web applications that use HTML pages as the interface to your visitors.  Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server-side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic Web pages or build powerful Web applications.  ASP pages are files that contain HTML tags, text, and script commands.   ASP pages can call ActiveX components to perform tasks, such as connecting to a database or performing a business calculation. 

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