Hi,

I'm trying to find a good webhost, but I'm just getting terribly confused and overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. I posted on the "web hosting requests" forum and got a bunch of offers that were very cheap- as low as $3.50 a month for web hosting, whereas I had previously been looking at prices closer to $50 set up fees and $30 a month after adding in SSL. So what's the difference??? People are offering me tons of things including 3 or 4 letter abbreviations I've never heard before (I'm new to this) and I really just need a host that can give me a small amount of webspace for a decent price and SSL so I can recieve personal information from forms... what is the most important, basic criteria for determining whether a web host is decent or not? What's the difference between a guy on the web request forum offering me web hosting for $3.50 a month and Verio offering it for $25.00?

(Please note if you have any suggestions that I do NOT need e-commerce, and if I need to process credit cards I can do it myself for free)

Thanks in advance!

Look for reliability and reputability, because the web hosting market is absolutely saturated, and almost ALL of us can give you great packages for low prices. What you DON'T want to do is to jump on the lowest offer and then watch the host go out of business and leave you stranded.
I can give you packages that are cost effective (5.95 a month) and you can use our server's SSL, or you could go straight to Ventures Online (the host we resell packages for)- it took me a long time to decide who would be my provider before I settled with VO and I have experienced many hosts in my day. V.O. is a great company. There are lots of other good ones too. Post this same message in the requests forum and you will be inundated with a lot of offers, pick the ones who are the closest match for your needs, and then ask for info on each one and a few people will step up and tell you who is who.

There would be quite a few differences from $3.50 to $20 per month accounts. There are several factors to consider when deciding on a host, but three of the most important factors would have to be speed, reliability and ofcourse support. Just remember, you basically get what you pay for.

Ther are literally gazillions of hosts out there. Dont fall for the cheap ones who seem to offer everything for an incredibly low price. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. I would reccomend you search these forums to find a good host, some hosts off the top of my head with a good rep. are tera-byte.com and Affordablehost.com, I suggest you check their websites out.

- Jubei...

Originally posted by mrambassador
Hi,

I'm trying to find a good webhost, but I'm just getting terribly confused and overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. I posted on the "web hosting requests" forum and got a bunch of offers that were very cheap- as low as $3.50 a month for web hosting, whereas I had previously been looking at prices closer to $50 set up fees and $30 a month after adding in SSL. So what's the difference??? People are offering me tons of things including 3 or 4 letter abbreviations I've never heard before (I'm new to this) and I really just need a host that can give me a small amount of webspace for a decent price and SSL so I can recieve personal information from forms... what is the most important, basic criteria for determining whether a web host is decent or not? What's the difference between a guy on the web request forum offering me web hosting for $3.50 a month and Verio offering it for $25.00?

(Please note if you have any suggestions that I do NOT need e-commerce, and if I need to process credit cards I can do it myself for free)

Thanks in advance!

One of the main things in price is reputation. Most of those $3 hosts are new (12 months or younger) and trying to drag in the clients to stay afloat. The older more mature hosts will usually have higher prices but thats how they became the older and more mature host. Bottom line is reputation does count and you do get what you pay for! I recommed you do your own research here on wht with at least 3-5 days of solid reviewing. Good luck in your search.

Yes, Greg is correct in this arena, we pride ourselves and most of the more reliable hosts on here on providing a superb service with great support, this cannot be provided for $1/month for 20GB, as the basic rules of business prove to be correct. In this arena, if you are looking for true reliability and support, the extra cost shows in the price charged by these hosts

Hi mrambassador,

If you need clarification on any of the hosting lingo that you've been offered, ask here, we'll all answer ;)

On a side note, getting an SSL cert to transmit Credit Card #'s to the server (of your webhost) will be securely encrypted. *BUT* if you simply have the form email to yourself it won't be protected at all. Email is sent as plain text and anyone who wanted to read it could, and will.

Dave

Originally posted by GH_Dave
Hi mrambassador,

If you need clarification on any of the hosting lingo that you've been offered, ask here, we'll all answer ;)

On a side note, getting an SSL cert to transmit Credit Card #'s to the server (of your webhost) will be securely encrypted. *BUT* if you simply have the form email to yourself it won't be protected at all. Email is sent as plain text and anyone who wanted to read it could, and will.

Dave

Unless you use SMTP over SSL as well...

Originally posted by lightnin


Unless you use SMTP over SSL as well...

And POP3 over SSL for when you pick up your email.

Of course :D


No need to confuse the person in question any further though...my bad...I started that

Oooh I see so all I have to do is use my FTP with my ASP on the SMTP for the URL of the EKG for the ABC....for SSL...right?

Hehe, well even though I have no idea what a POP3 or SMTP is, this clarifies things a bit. And I'll check out the suggestions that were made- basically I'm looking for something that I can afford (preferrably under $20 a month, with as small a setup fee as possible), which will also let me use SSL to transfer customer information....thanks for mentioning that I should NOT set my form to send me an e-mail, I will make sure to set my form to send information to whatever database I'm using...however that works...oh well, I'll figure it out.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated!! I'll search the forums extensively for a few days and see what I come up with. Thanks again!

Originally posted by mrambassador
Oooh I see so all I have to do is use my FTP with my ASP on the SMTP for the URL of the EKG for the ABC....for SSL...right?

Glad you have a sense of humor, it can be a little overwhelming :)

I'll give you a few definitions of some common terms:

PHP - ? - Programming/Scripting language like the C language,. Open source, usually running on linux, but can run on Microsoft servers
ASP - Active Server Pages - Programming/Scripting language like VB (Visual Basic). It started on microsoft servers but has been ported (copied) so it runs on linux servers
JSP - Java Server Pages - Programming/Scripting language like the C language but designed to be able to run on any machine that supports JSP with no code changes.
MySQL - SQL = Structured Query Launguage - It's a database program. MySQL is the open source version and can run on both linux and microsoft servers. Microsoft has their own version of it called MSSQL.
SMTP - Simple Mail Transport Protocol - Program that is responsible for sending mail to other servers.
POP3 - Post Office Protocol - To download your email using microsoft outlook or whatnot, you connect to the pop3 server.
CGI-BIN - Common Gateway Interface - Basically a directory on the webserver that programs are allowed to run. You can get CGI scripts for almost anything, and they can be written in perl, C, etc.
Subdomain - If your domain name was "savetherainforest.com" a subdomain would be "brazil.savetherainforest.com" and this can have totally different content than the main site.
SSI - Server Side Includes - Used for simplifying your website. For example, if you site uses the same header part for all the pages, you could put it into a seperate file and include it into all your pages so you don't have to rewrite it everytime.
FTP - File Transport Protocol - Used to upload (send) files to your webhosts server. As an alternative frontpage can sometimes be used if you host supports it.

I think those are the main ones - if I didn't get one you wanted to know, reply here!

Dave

Interesting- so does it matter whether a server is a "Linux" or "microsoft" server, or a different type? Is that just the manufacturer, or does it have to do with the server's operating system?

Originally posted by mrambassador
Interesting- so does it matter whether a server is a "Linux" or "microsoft" server, or a different type? Is that just the manufacturer, or does it have to do with the server's operating system?

Unless you have certain needs (such as .asp), Linux hosting/servers are usually much cheaper then Microsoft/Windows server.

Linux / Windows is what type of "Operating System" the server uses which reflects what features can be offered/used.

:)