PAGE HOSTING OPTIONS

OK. I've decided I want to put information on the WWW. How do I go about doing it? What are my options and what factors should I be considering? And, what is it going to COST me?

How is surprisingly easy. In fact, there are even sites that allow you to enter information on a simple form and they arrange the information you enter into a simple web page for you. Yes, that gives you a web page, but don't expect much! Remember the saying about free lunches.

Note: If you're spending more than $30/month on internet services and you don't already use an Internet Service Provider (ISP), I strongly recommend that you consider doing so. They don't provide a lot of frills, but they typically give you unlimited (or at least 200 hrs/month) access time for a flat rate of $17-20. Generally, they provide all the basic connection software, an e-mail account, file transfer software that you'll need, plus a temporary browser to use until you download or acquire the one you want.

Basic Hosting Options?

Employ someone to host pages. Typically this can be done by putting your pages in a public directory of someone or some business that already has an account with an ISP or that has a web site. A web site is a computer with an internet domain name and access to the internet that allows it to "serve" pages when they are requested over the WWW.

Host my pages on my own account with an ISP. This requires that you get an account with an ISP that includes sufficient storage on the service providers machine to hold your web pages. Another option is for someone else to get a separate account for you. In particular, whoever you have maintaining your web pages is probably the best place for this account to be. In either case, you can expect the cost to be around $7/month for 5 Meg and about $1/Meg per month for storage in excess of 5 Meg.

If you are a business. You may want to go a step further and apply for a domain name of your own. Most ISPs can give you information on what is involved and what costs can be expected. The chief benefit is having a stronger and more portable WWW presence. Your URL becomes your own, and is not tied to your service provider even though all of your pages may still be hosted on the service providers machines. For instance, the URL for my Beyond Imagination site is http://redshift.com/~beyond/beyond.html. If I were to get a domain name that was uniquely mine, it would replace "redshift.com/~beyond".
Further, if I were then to move and wanted to shift my pages to a different service provider, the change of location occurs in the WWW infrastructure for domain name locations. As things are now, my Beyond Imagination pages are tied to "redshift.com". In particular, any search engines that know where these pages are would end up with invalid links if they pages were moved. These would not be fixed until the search engine "rediscovers" where the pages have been relocated to. This is also true for any people who have established hotlinks or bookmarks to my pages.

Set up my own website. For this you'll have to look elsewhere. I don't know what is involved in doing this and I'm not sure I care to find out. If you think such is what you need, there is probably a lot of information about this available on the web. Search and ye shall find.

So, we have (1) let someone else host my pages, (2a) let someone else host my pages on a separate account for me, (2b) I host my pages on my own account with an ISP, (3) I host my pages on own account with my own domain name with an ISP, (4) I create my own web site and host my pages.

?????????? Considerations ??????????

Who needs access to the place where the pages are hosted? Typically the manager/maintainer of your site is the one who needs the most access. Anything in your .public directories can be accessed over the web. What is important is to control who has the authority to replace, delete, rename, etc ... files on your account. If you want this to be transparent to you, options (1) or (2a) might be best. If you want to control this, then option (2b), (3), or (4) are best.

Who has the responsibility for ensuring that my pages are correct and working? The person or company with this responsibility will either need access to your account or will need to establish a means for getting their work to you for you to transfer to your account.
One simple means of doing this is via the internet itself. Pages that are changed can be posted. An e-mail can be sent to identify where they are. The new/changed pages can be accessed via a browser and saved to files. These files can then be moved via FTP to the appropriate subdirectories under the .public directory in your account.

How much will it cost me?

For option (1), hosting is generally combined with some small amount of monthly maintenance. My charges for this are $9 per month for simple home pages up to 50k total size, and $18 per month for larger home pages up to 200k total size.

For option(2a) and (2b), your own account will run $7-10 per month for the first 5 Meg and approximately $1/Meg per month for anything over that. This is strictly for the account. It includes no maintenance and very limited support from the ISP.

For option (3), there is an application to fill out requesting the domain name and a fee that goes to InterNic? I believe it is on the order of $100-150 with recurring cost of $50/year. In addition the ISP typically charges a setup fee for this plus an extra recurring montly charge. Check with your ISP for the specifics on this. The bottom line is a few hundred up front plus $50/year plus an extra $10 or so per month at least.

For option (4), you can probably expect $1000 plus per year depending on how you handle the machine that serves as your Web Server.

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