Anyone that wants to store their website or have a facility to offer products and services on the Internet will require a web hosting company to do this. If you want others to see your website you will need one of these and depending on whether it is a commercial site or not will dictate how much you pay but it is possible to have this at no charge (with restrictions).
Many types exist, some provide free hosting but with these types you pay the price of having restricted facilities that usually allow the likes of blogs, email and basic websites to be accessed. Free web hosting will not allow a huge amount of storage space so for those people that require sub-domains, upgraded email facilities and increased storage that a paid service is needed.
In the early days you may be quite happy to have your files on a server which is shared by many others while you try their hosting services. It is usually possible to upgrade to have a dedicated server for your files once you know the service provider is reliable; there is normally an additional charge for this facility. Before you can use your web hosting package you will need to register a domain otherwise it will be of no use, then once that is done your website and any other files can be uploaded to the server ready for viewing.
Web hosting also provides the facility to have your own email address unlike those supplied by Google and Yahoo for example, this means, your e-mail address is exclusive to your website. If you have a business presence online you cannot afford to have another company's name at the end of your own e.g. www.frontpage2002hosting.joesmoehost.com when it should really look like this: www.frontpage2002hosting.com. The next thing to consider with your hosting package is how much information will be stored on the server that can be downloaded from your website as it will use a facility called bandwidth; the greater amount of files stored that can be accessed, the greater amount of bandwidth will be required.
Remember, everything that is stored and can be accessed on your site has a bandwidth, even the website itself so if your site contains images, MP3 tracks and video clips for example, your bandwidth allocation will be used up even faster. Some people use their own home computers for web hosting but there can be serious security and reliability issues here so it is best to look for a professional company to supply this service.
