Get the Most from Your Host
Treat your website files like children going off to college—they need a nice clean place to live, where there’s a responsible person looking after them (24/7 technical staff). Having roommates (shared hosting) is a good solution until they become really popular and need a place of their own (dedicated hosting). Always look at amenities—number of email and ftp (file transfer protocol, i.e., how you load your files on to the computer [server]) accounts, storage space, transfers allowed (files moving on or away from the computer [server]), and if there is additional free software packages: Blogs, Calendars and so forth that are already installed on the server and easy to activate.
If someone you trust recommends a company, ask if they can show you the “control panel.” This is where you set up email accounts and other things such as databases (a place where you store and recall data). If it seems easy to find where you need to go, and how to get back to where you came from (user interface), then there’s less of a chance you’ll get frustrated and flustered when setting up your own information. Your website developer should be able to guide you.
