Website Hosting Types

Squidoo: You're looking at a free website right now, as a matter of fact. Squidoo allows you to build any number of pages (lenses) about any topics you find interesting. Right now, there are about 500,000 lenses and this number is growing daily!

Squidoo shares revenue from ads with the publisher, and you're able to put in links to other websites or affiliate sales pages. Its a great place to publish free online if you want to focus on a few key concepts and update existing pages rather than constantly creating new ones.

Sign up for Squidoo by clicking here~!

BlogsSpot: BlogSpot.com is the home of Google's blogger platform and one of the largest free webhosts on the web. With just a few clicks, you could set up your own blog and customize the visual design, layout, and link-roll. Blogs make it really easy to create new pages and add them to the existing site, and they're also great for starting a conversation online thanks to the easy comment system. Then again, Blogger's comment system isn't really the best ;)

Blogspot will allow you to put your google ads on your blog's pages and of course you can link back to other sites you own.

Click here to sign up at Blogspot

Wordpress: Is one of the classic blogging platforms - one of the easiest to use and still one of the most powerful. Now, you don't get much flexibility with it if you're using the free hosting provided by Wordpress, and your commercial options are extremely limited, but its great software. I would really recommend using the software on a shared hosting server to maximize its potential.

You can sign up for Wordpress here

What is shared hosting?

Shared hosting refers to paid hosting services that hold more than one account on a single computer (server). The price is typically a few dollars a month, and about $10 a year to lease your own personalized domain name.

Shared hosts can typically handle a few terabytes of bandwith per month, so if you're expecting a few hundred thousand visitors a month or the site is intensive on server CPU time or bandwith (ie: audio, video) you might have to shell out the big bucks (or re-think the website's plan).

Shared Hosts I Use & Recommend (even if they didn't pay me to do so)

Bluehost - This was a great web host for me to get started with. They offer Fantastico scripts that install server-side software for content management systems, blogs, forums, and they give you all the tools you need to evaluate your site's traffic performance. The servers are shared, but they're powerful. When one of my stories hit the front page of Digg, I was able to keep my site online with over 17,000 visitors in a single day. If I had that many visitors everyday, I could retire on a Bluehost hosted website!

Click here for Bluehost or here to read a Bluehost review

DreamHost - Is another solid shared host that I've been using. They've been around a while and had their ups & downs, but they've got a few key features that keep them near the top of the game. Dreamhost is excellent if you want to start a social bookmarking website, because they offer auto-install scripts for certain types of beta software that other web hosts won't even allow. Besides beta software, Dreamhost also has almost no limits on content - as long as it is legal (hint, hint).

Of course, the price is right too. With a dreamhost discount coupon like Saves50, you can get $50 off the price of any hosting plan, bringing an annual plan down to about $5 a month. Click here for more Dreamhost coupon code options.

Click here to learn more about Dreamhost or sign up

Honestly if you're looking for a private server or dedicated server, you might need to ask someone with more experience than me. This can get expensive, but it can be necessary based on the business model of your website. Database-driven sites with thousands of daily users might need a dedicated server, or high media websites with lots of traffic may use up bandwidth limits of cheaper solutions.

Cnet has a good review of dedicated hosts here.

No matter what type of paid hosting you use, you can still benefit from free webhosts as well. Free websites can be a great place to experiment, practice your development, or even build backlinks to some of your more commercialized or more in-depth or more interactive sites.

Paid hosting is something you can move up to over time as your plans and resource needs expand. The big benefit is being able to use your own website software that offers more options and functionality for your visitors.

Once you've got website hosting, it doesn't take much more to get your own website online. Add a few advertisements related to your favorite topics, build up some links and traffic, and you'll have your own online money-making business.

Times are tough for most businesses, but every day people are logging on and buying online for the first time. Overall, the internet is growing and more advertising is shifting to the internet - if you're in business, its time to get in the online game.