Dewell Marketing

In order for your website to be visible on the internet 24/7/365, it has to reside on a server that is also working 24/7/365. That can be your own computer configured to be a server, but you will have to do all the configurations and really need to be somewhat of a programmer to do this well. And even then, it’s not really easy.

So what most people do, is use a web hosting service which is a company with tons of servers that they will put your website domain on and make it available on the web. There are many of them and there are many different prices.

Some of the better known ones are:

Hostgator
(This is the one that I have used for over 3 years and never had a hitch)

Bluehost
(I used this one for a couple of small sites, but only briefly)

GoDaddy
(They are one of the biggest places to find and register domain names. However, they often put small domains on servers with very bandwidth intensive domains like gaming sites or adult sites which can cause problems for smaller sites.)

InMotion Hosting
(Several review sites give this one very good marks. I have no personal experience with it.)

Yahoo Small Business
(No experience, but it is backed by Yahoo)

Web Hosting Hub
(Rated by a couple of review sites as a great host for blogs.)

Other than for Hostgator that I personally can recommend, I would suggest checking some “web hosting services” review sites before you make a choice. One thing to keep in mind is that price should not be the deciding factor; reliability should be. In other words, is the “downtime” to an absolute minimum and can they “serve” your site quickly and reliably, all the time. Bear in mind, some review sites have affiliations with some hosting comapnies so they aren’t always completely independent.

Slow load times on a website are almost always a problem with the server. If it takes a long time to load your site (for it to come up), visitors will go away and the search engines will penalize you.