Hosting your own website can be a lot more complicated and expensive than letting a hosting company do it for you. This is why it is not recommended for most small and medium-scale websites. But yes, it can be done even at your home-office’s comfort.

To get started, you will need a considerable amount of money, special arrangements with your ISP and some hosting tools. A fast and dependable internet connection is a basic requirement. Forget about dial ups because DSL should be the lowest connection to keep your site viewable all the time. The most acceptable is a T1 line but this is quite costly.

Next, you’ll need an IP address or the set of unique numbers that specifically points to your computer.  This is available from your internet service provider. You can get additional IP addresses if you need more but these usually come with extra charges. Furthermore, to make your site easily searchable, you have to register a unique domain name or the text name a user types in the address bar. Always go for a short and easy to recall domain name.

Another requirement is a web server, the software that runs your website. You can get free web servers such as Apache or purchase one from software vendors. Microsoft usually bundles this with their other products. You may need to hire a skilled webmaster to efficiently run your web server. Finally, get a host computer that has a sizeable memory and hard disk as this will be the base of your web hosting service.

If this process is too much for you or your company to handle, I suggest you concentrate on making your website more appealing and let another company worry about your web hosting.

Posted in: Internet