People create websites for a variety of different reasons.  Whether people create them for business, personal, or just pure entertainment websites are swiftly becoming on of the #1 forms of entertainment. In order to make a great website people need to realize that choosing a reliable web hosting provider is very essential to their websites existence.  A reliable webhosting company will provide you with the space you need to create your website. In order for you to design your site, store pictures, and even set up a chat room you will need a place to do that, and you will have to go to a webhosting provider for that place. Luckily, web hosting is very affordable and can be easy to use, for even the beginners.

The first thing that you need to do is find the perfect domain name that matches your website.  After you purchase a domain name, the next thing that you need to do is find a good hosting company that will host your website for you. But before you go and find just any old webhosting company you need to think about what purpose you are creating the website for.  Is it simply for personal use to make pages for fun or is it to create a website for your company?  Regardless of all your different reasons for creating a webpage, companies offer tons of different web hosting packages based around your needs.

If you are looking to create a smaller site and post pictures or create something for fun, a shared webhosting provider is the best choice for you. There are many different providers to choose from but JustHost.com and StartLogic.com have some of the best shared hosting packages available.  These companies also are great for the beginner user because they come with website creators which make it easy for people with no HTML or CSS knowlege able to create websites quickly and easily.  While these hosts give you a large amount of space and freedom, there are downsides.  Many webhosting companies tend to put pop up ads on your space so they they can market their own company. 

The nice part about these two companies is that you can easily create and host your website without having to empty out your wallet.  JustHost.com and StartLogic.com are two companies that offer extremely cheap website hosting. This means that you can easily pay $4.00 per month for tons of disk space and bandwidth. If you are serious about your venture, these are places to go to.

When are choosing your webhosting company you need to look for 7 key elements:

1. Platform: The first and most important step in choosing a web host is determining the platform the web server should run, typically you will be choosing between Unix/Linux and Windows.  Click Here to see the difference.
2. Features: Some of the key features that you need to compare are Disk Space ,Bandwidth, Uptime, Guarantee, Domains Allowed, Databases (Number & type), and Email accounts.
3. Cost: Make sure that you do not get ripped off!  Find the best package for the best deal.
4. Customer Service: If you have a webhosting company then you need a great hosting provider who will be there for your needs 24/7/365. 
   
5. Support:  This also relates to the customer service but always look for companies that offer email, telephone, and live chat support.
6. Website Uptime: Unfortunatly with as much as the company say they can not be online 100% of the time.  Web servers do need to be rebooted for security and software updates from time to time.  They need to do this in order to update everything that that they can't get hacked into.  The industry standard is usually 99% guranteed uptime but many companies do offer an incentive that if they do go down that you will recieve a full month of free webhosting.  Research the companies and find out what they offer if there is downtime.
   
7. Longevity: try to find a hosting company that has been around for longer than a year because there are some many of them out there, you don't want to risk going with a company that will go out of business.