[Tut] Finding Your Host

[lpxxfaintxx]

The first step to creating a website (imo) is finding the right host. Will your website need PHP, MySQL, Root Access, Server-Side Plugins? How much traffic does your website recieve? Is your site PHP5 or PHP4 compatible? There are many many many things to consider when buying your host.

1. The first thing webmasters look at when buying a host is DISK SPACE and BANDWIDTH. Disk space is pretty obvious... it's how much space you have to put your files in. If you are starting a forum, anywhere from 200MB to 1GB should be enough. However, if you are starting a image/file hosting site, you'll need much more space, depending on your traffic. Bandwidth is a very important key in buying a host. It won't matter if you have 100 TerraBytes of diskspace, if you have 1MB of bandwidth.

In website hosting, bandwidth is the amount of information downloadable from the webserver over a prescribed period of time. In essence, it is the rate [data/time], but the time in this case is not seconds but rather a month or a week. Common connection rate terms such as 56K, broadband, etc. are also bandwidth, but are measured per second. Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 100 GB/month. If visitors to the website download a total greater than 100 GB in one month, the bandwidth limit will have been exceeded.

If your bandwidth exceeds, there could be 2 possible outcomes. Your site can be temporarily suspended until the next month, or you could be left with some hefty fees. Now you don't want that, do you?

How much bandwidth should I buy?

It really depends on what type of site you are running. Some type of sites that eats up A LOT OF BANDWIDTH are Proxy sites, Gaming Sites, and Image Hosting Sites. Sites that take up less bandwidth are stable plain html sites, forums (with some exceptions), and stuff of that sort.

A low traffic website (10-100 uniques a day) should require no more than 3GB of bandwidth. (For proxies, no more than 25GB).

A medium traffic website (100-500 uniques a day) should require no more than 6GB of bandwidth. (For proxies, no more than 60GB).

A high traffic website (500-2000) should require no more than 20GB of bandwidth. (For proxies, no more than 200GB).

For higher traffic websites (2000-1,000,000 uniques a day) should require... hell. If your site is that big, you shouldn't be here.

However, it is always good to buy extra bandwidth, just in case your site gets a sudden spike in hits (which DOES happen sometimes).

I have a medium-high traffic forum and it doesn't take up too much bandwidth (good thing about forums). To get the idea of how much it takes up, take a look at this:





Part 2 coming soon nukkas...

[exzapel]

Don't forget to mention that flash files and streaming video use a lot of bandwidth, regardless of whether or not you have a few or a lot of visitors.
And that if you want to host larger files, 3gbs of bandwidth will be insufficient.
You should base your chart on filesize AND hits, rather than just hits.

[lpxxfaintxx]

It really depends on what type of site you are running. Some type of sites that eats up A LOT OF BANDWIDTH are Proxy sites, Gaming Sites, and Image Hosting Sites. Sites that take up less bandwidth are stable plain html sites, forums (with some exceptions), and stuff of that sort.

Well, the flash files and streaming videos were kinda what I meant when I wrote "gaming sites."