There are several sensitive areas, which a user should take into consideration while selecting a web host:

1. Disk space

2. Bandwidth

3. Scripts and utilities

4. Dedicated/Shared servers

5. Customers service/Support

6. Uptime/Reliability

7. Price

8. Free Hosting Providers

1. Disk Space: It denotes space provided by the host to the user in which he/she can locate his/her web site. It can ranges from 25MB to GBs to store all the essential requirements of the user. One can easily calculate storage space if his/her site is already constructed by considering all the aspects. This is the least requirement by the user. For sure success one should go for a plan having additional resources in comparison to user’s current requirement.

2. Bandwidth: One of the crucial parts to verify is regarding bandwidth. There are several sites, which loose their host due to excessive downloads causing budget going beyond their expectations. Occasionally, host even charges in hundreds of dollars for the additional bandwidth. One should confirm about this before dealing with any of the host. Usually, ideal-hosting providers deliver initial bandwidth of 25 to 50 GB to the users.

3. Scripts and Utilities: Does one’s priority is dynamic information related to his/her products and services? If the answer is yes! Then user’s plan should include a database tool. One cannot deny the fact that, Databases are extremely multitalented and will change according to the operating system, which the user chooses for his/her hosting server.

If one talks about further famous scripts it usually includes chat rooms, forums, blogs, and calendar programs and help desk software. Such scripts, which come along with user’s hosting plan, are pre-configured by the service host so that user can properly work on their server. There are several hosts which even propose the Fantastico script package known to be the combination of 36 different free scripts which a user can easily install to his/her website.

Next thing to consider is the 3rd party script. These are those scripts which are available on the net to purchase and one can easily install to his/her website. One should note that there are only few of the scripts, which one can run on both the operating systems i.e. Windows and Linux; however, others are meant for only one operating system to be used.

4. Dedicated or Shared Servers: If one talks about the key difference between a dedicated and shared server then it is that there are several sites present on a shared server, however, there is only one website in case of a dedicated server.

Through a shared server one can save a high amount. If one talks about the drawbacks then Spamming and blacklisting from different search engines are the key problems. Such problems arise due to the reason that several sites are assign to one particular IP address. One should demand for a separate IP address for his/her website (on additional monthly charges) to secure the user from such problems.

Dedicated servers are considered best for big, highly trafficked websites, which requires large amounts of server resources to run. One of the negative points of dedicated server is that the server’s resources are divided across all the sites it’s hosting and answering page requests for. Thus, if one is working in a dedicated environment he/she always has to keep an eye on his/her resources. Another disadvantage is that dedicated servers costs around $50 per month or even more whereas shared hosting can be purchased for mere 5$ a month.

5. Support system: Another important aspect to consider is support. What is host’s response time? Does their phone support is 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Additional features one should verify for:

Is there POP email account, if yes, then how many?

What no. Of database is there?

Is there Web based e-mail with the host?

Does they provide Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus filters?

Do they provide the facility of Password Protected to user’s directories?

Is their frequent backup if by chance crash in server takes place?

Does user get some money return back, if he/she is dissatisfied with services?

Does there is assistance for Perl, PHP, Crontab and Secure Server Layer?

There are several good hosting providers in the market, who known for their rapid response and numerous amounts of other excellent qualities for reasonable price.

Hence, one should before choosing should keep in mind the above-mentioned points, which can prevent the user from unexpected future problems.

6. Uptime and Dependability: Another influential factor. Is there any performance guarantee provided by the host? Can user expect a refund if he/she is suffering from downtime form a very long period? Is there any money back guarantee in the contract? There are several hosts in the market who refund full or partial amount of monthly fees (excluding spamming or other illegal activity) if user is dissatisfied with their service quality and want to quit their service option.

7. Price: In general one will get hosting service between the ranges of $5.00 – $10.00 dollars a month; it may very according to features provided. Service below $5.00 a month is quite awful in usual sense. Similarly, any service above $12.00 a month can provide not only a package of awesome features but probably can also include a complimentary domain name; a unique offer not provided by everyone.

8. Free Hosting Providers: In today’s market one can enjoy website hosting at quite nominal amount. Hence, there is nothing worthwhile in going for a free web hosting; as there is nothing free as it seems like.

Conclusion:

One can end the search on an ideal host by thinking ahead. One should purchase as much possible bandwidth and disk space at the most reasonable price he/she can. One should know that every website requires room to groom which user needs to deliver without any form of much risk.

Fantastico is a 3rd-party cPanel add-on and can be purchased and added to the standard cPanel interface. Fantastico allows you to quickly install a variety of open-source scripts. By selecting a script and providing some basic information for each, you can install a script within minutes. Fantastico is designed so that the script you install is always the newest available.

Below is some of the scripts available for installation in Fantastico:

Blogs

• b2Evolution: A blog script featuring multiple blogs, categories/sub-categories, skins, search function, multiple languages and search engines friendly URLs.

• Nucleus: A powerful blog script featuring multiple blogs, multiple authors, drafts, future posts and bookmarklets.

• WordPress: A personal publishing tool with focus on aesthetics and featuring cross-blog tool, password protected posts, importing, typographical niceties, multiple authors and bookmarklets.

Content Management

• Drupal: An advanced portal with collaborative book, search engines friendly URLs, online help, roles, full content search, site watching, threaded comments, version control, blogging and news aggregator.

• Mambo: A professional level yet easy to use CMS featuring inline WYSIWYG content editors, newsfeeds, syndicated news, banners, mailing users, links manager, statistics, content archiving, date based content, 20 languages, modules and components.

• Php-Nuke: One of the most popular community-based portals with a big choice of languages and modules.

• SiteFrame: A straightforward CMS designed for rapid deployment of community-based websites. Nice-looking templates, oriented toward document-sharing, clean interface.

Customer Relationships

• Crafty Syntax: A Live Help chat system featuring monitor your visitors, proactively open a chat session, multiple chat sessions, referrer tracking, page view tracking, multiple operators, canned responses/images/URLs, multiple departments each with different icons, leave a message.

• Help Center Live: Very powerful all-in-one help center including Live Help, Support Tickets and FAQ. Features include unlimited operators/departments, monitor visitors, initiate chat, collect visitor’s information, track visitor’s footprint, auto save chat transcripts, canned messages, leave a message, auto-assign tickets to operators, unlimited FAQ topics.

• osTicket: Featuring email piping, pop3 login, unlimited email addresses, admin/staff/user panels, avoid autoresponder loops, limit maximum tickets user can have opened, accept attachments and limit size, pager alerts for admin.

• Support Logic: A support tickets system featuring multiple email addresses, admin/staff/user panels, canned responses, HTML tags support, email limit on a per user/day basis, attachments.

Discussion Boards

• Invision Board: A widely-popular open-source bulletin-board package, works well, simple user interface and admin panel, clean look, scales well, and can be customized.

• SMF: Elegant. Effective. Powerful. Free. SMF is all of the above. SMF is a next-generation community software package and is jam-packed with features, while at the same time having a minimal impact on resources.

E-Commerce

• CubeCart: An easy to use yet powerful shopping cart featuring unlimited categories and products, multiple payment gateways, downloadable products. The design is very easy to modify.

• OS Commerce: A power-user shopping cart with a big variety of modules and support of almost every payment gateway.

• ZenCart: Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.

Image Galleries

• 4Images Gallery: Unlimited categories/subcategories, web-based and FTP images upload, auto-thumbnails, comments, send a picture and rate a picture.

• Coppermine: With categories and albums, thumbnails and intermediate size pics, search feature, new and random pictures, user management and user comments.

• Gallery: Featuring albums within albums, thumbnailing specific picture area, captions, rotate, reorder pictures and album mirroring.

Mailing List

• PHPlist: A powerful mailing list featuring multiple mailing lists and attachments.

Apart from the above scripts, Fantastico has a whole load of other scripts ranging from PHPAcution to WebCalendar.

If your hosting company uses cPanel with Fantastico, you will be able to add attractive features to your website free of charge by installing one or more of the scripts mentioned above. Without Fantastico, it is still possible to add these features but you will have to manually install and configure the scripts yourself. To make life easier for yourself, make sure you choose a hosting company, which offers Fantastico

Fantastico is a 3rd-party cPanel add-on and can be purchased and added to the standard cPanel interface. Fantastico allows you to quickly install a variety of open-source scripts. By selecting a script and providing some basic information for each, you can install a script within minutes. Fantastico is designed so that the script you install is always the newest available.

Below is some of the scripts available for installation in Fantastico:

Blogs

· b2Evolution: A blog script featuring multiple blogs, categories/sub-categories, skins, search function, multiple languages and search engines friendly URLs.

· Nucleus: A powerful blog script featuring multiple blogs, multiple authors, drafts, future posts and bookmarklets.

· WordPress: A personal publishing tool with focus on aesthetics and featuring cross-blog tool, password protected posts, importing, typographical niceties, multiple authors and bookmarklets.

Content Management

· Drupal: An advanced portal with collaborative book, search engines friendly URLs, online help, roles, full content search, site watching, threaded comments, version control, blogging and news aggregator.

· Mambo: A professional level yet easy to use CMS featuring inline WYSIWYG content editors, newsfeeds, syndicated news, banners, mailing users, links manager, statistics, content archiving, date based content, 20 languages, modules and components.

· Php-Nuke: One of the most popular community-based portals with a big choice of languages and modules.

· SiteFrame: A straightforward CMS designed for rapid deployment of community-based websites. Nice-looking templates, oriented toward document-sharing, clean interface.

Customer Relationships

· Crafty Syntax: A Live Help chat system featuring monitor your visitors, proactively open a chat session, multiple chat sessions, referrer tracking, page view tracking, multiple operators, canned responses/images/URLs, multiple departments each with different icons, leave a message.

· Help Center Live: Very powerful all-in-one help center including Live Help, Support Tickets and FAQ. Features include unlimited operators/departments, monitor visitors, initiate chat, collect visitor’s information, track visitor’s footprint, auto save chat transcripts, canned messages, leave a message, auto-assign tickets to operators, unlimited FAQ topics.

· osTicket: Featuring email piping, pop3 login, unlimited email addresses, admin/staff/user panels, avoid autoresponder loops, limit maximum tickets user can have opened, accept attachments and limit size, pager alerts for admin.

· Support Logic: A support tickets system featuring multiple email addresses, admin/staff/user panels, canned responses, HTML tags support, email limit on a per user/day basis, attachments.

Discussion Boards

· Invision Board: A widely-popular open-source bulletin-board package, works well, simple user interface and admin panel, clean look, scales well, and can be customized.

· SMF: Elegant. Effective. Powerful. Free. SMF is all of the above. SMF is a next-generation community software package and is jam-packed with features, while at the same time having a minimal impact on resources.

E-Commerce

· CubeCart: An easy to use yet powerful shopping cart featuring unlimited categories and products, multiple payment gateways, downloadable products. The design is very easy to modify.

· OS Commerce: A power-user shopping cart with a big variety of modules and support of almost every payment gateway.

· ZenCart: Zen Cart is a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently.

Image Galleries

· 4Images Gallery: Unlimited categories/subcategories, web-based and FTP images upload, auto-thumbnails, comments, send a picture and rate a picture.

· Coppermine: With categories and albums, thumbnails and intermediate size pics, search feature, new and random pictures, user management and user comments.

· Gallery: Featuring albums within albums, thumbnailing specific picture area, captions, rotate, reorder pictures and album mirroring.

Mailing List

· PHPlist: A powerful mailing list featuring multiple mailing lists and attachments.

Apart from the above scripts, Fantastico has a whole load of other scripts ranging from PHPAcution to WebCalendar.

If your hosting company uses cPanel with Fantastico, you will be able to add attractive features to your website free of charge by installing one or more of the scripts mentioned above. Without Fantastico, it is still possible to add these features but you will have to manually install and configure the scripts yourself. To make life easier for yourself, make sure you choose a hosting company, which offers Fantastico