Complete Guide To Hosting - Part 2

3. FTP Access

One other thing that is common amongst paid hosting accounts is FTP access. FTP programs allow you to upload files and to edit and delete your content on the server much more quickly than using a Web-based interface. If you are hosting on a *nix system, you'll also be able to change your file permission settings using FTP.

One of the better features I've seen offered with hosting is the ability for you to create your own FTP accounts. This is great when you have someone helping out on the site, or if you want to share your Web space while keeping your users' files separate from your own. How hosts go about this can vary.

Some hosts will let you act like a mini hosting company, where FTP accounts that you create take users to a special folder specifically for their files, which keeps them separate from your main files. Other hosts will allow you to create FTP accounts in which you can define exactly which folders the user has access to, and exactly what they can (and can't) do with them.

While having the ability to create multiple FTP accounts may seem trivial if you don't intend to host other sites on your Web space, it can be useful for allowing temporary or permanent access to anyone helping you with your site, without you ever needing to give out your own FTP account details. Now that is a feature worth having!

Unlimited Resources Hosting - seems too good to be true doesn't it? Well it is!

Email Management Options - more about the various email accounts you can get with hosting.

4. Data Transfer

Calculating your data transfer needs, the associated bandwidth and the effects it will have on hosting your site can be anything but easy, but it's one of those calculations that you will need to do if you want to avoid being stung with unexpected costs.

There are various problems associated with calculating your data transfer and bandwidth requirements. How do you account for cached pages and images? What size unit does the host use for their calculations, and how can your bandwidth limit affect the quality of your hosting?

Be Careful! Not all data transfer limits are created equal! Units of measurement can vary between hosts, and if they don't make it clear, be sure to ask them how many bytes per kilobyte they used when drawing up their comparison tables.

Caching and its Effects on Data Transfer

Many ISPs use proxy servers to help speed up Internet access for their customers. The idea is that these servers keep a copy of your page on the proxy server (for a certain amount of time), and update their copy as you change your page. The effect of this is that, while your page may have only been downloaded from your server once, it may have been seen by a number of people.

If you have static pages that rarely change, then caching can help reduce your hosting bill. Clever use of meta tags can tell the browser not to bother reloading the page from the server if it is available on the user's computer or a proxy server. Since these revisited pages do not have to be reloaded from your server, a single page request in your logs could equate to several-hundred page views for that page (particularly if you were paid a visit from a large proxy server used by some of the bigger ISPs).

Dynamic pages are not so well suited to caching, but if the dynamic elements of pages are not visitor- or time-sensitive, then caching can be used to some degree to keep that data transfer bill down. For example, a page using the date may only need to be built by the server once each day. In the case of building dynamic pages, caching can also be used to reduce the server load by storing results of database queries in the server cache.