Question:

What is Web Hosting?

Answer:

Web hosting is the act of renting space and bandwidth through a company so that you may publish your web site online.

You can either opt for free hosting that is usually supported with banners and pop ups, or may opt to get paid web hosting, which gives you complete control over your site contents.

Question:

What is a Domain Name?

Answer:

A domain name is a word along with a TLD that uniquely identifies your website.

Question:

What exactly is diskspace and bandwidth/data transfer?

Answer:

Diskspace is the size your website can be. Every single letter on your website has to be stored somewhere on your web host's server. Each letter is one byte, and a megabyte is roughly one million bytes. HTML pages are usually very small, but it is the extra images, scripts, and even databases that can take up large amounts of disk space.

Bandwidth/Transfer is the amount of data the server will allow your site to send in a month. Transfer is usually measured in gigabytes - billions of bytes. Once you go over your monthly limit, a host may either shut your site down for the remainder of the month or it can charge you 'overage.' This overcharge is usually about $2.00-$5.00 per extra gigabyte of transfer.

Question:

What are PHP, ASP, perl, etc?

Answer:

These are all programming languages which are referred to by their acronyms.

PHP - PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
ASP - Active Server Pages
Perl - not an acronym

Each programming language has its own benefits and uses. It is best that you research on your own to find one that best fits your needs.

Question:

Do I have to change my domain if I get a new host?

Answer:

No. Provided that the domain is registered in your name (as it should be), you can simply update your namservers (from where you manage your domain names) to that of your new host.

Question:

Will there be forced advertising on my site - things like banner ads or popup ads?

Answer:

Not at all. You are paying for webspace that is only yours - no one may put ads on your site except you.

Question:

What is Domain Parking?

Answer:

Domain parking lets you buy a domain and then have a 'coming soon' page on it. This is not needed - if a domain is not parked it will simply be iinaccessible to anyone.

Most domain registrars provide this by default.

Question:

Why don't I just go with the cheapest hosting?

Answer:

A host has to make a profit to continue operating. Some hosts do not properly understand the market, and may be pricing themselves too cheap.

In addition, many hosting companies expect the webmaster to at a minimum understand html, dynamic scripting and database integration.

RGB Internet Systems, Inc. provides business class Internet hosting for everyone regardless of your technological skill level. Our staff of web designers, Internet marketeers and network engineers are available to you to answer any question you might have and to ensure your website exceeds your expectations.

Question:

I am using too much bandwidth! Is there anyway for me to make it less?

Answer:

In most cases, yes.

You should first try to optimize the graphics on your website. Many GIFs look just as good with fewer colors, and many JPEGs look just as good with a higher compression level. NetMechanic offers an image optimizer program online.

You should also analyze the HTML of your site. Make sure you use relative paths, so that images are not downloaded more than one time. Remove any extra spacing and when linking to other pages, use relative paths and not absolute links.

While many hosts already have it, you could also see if your host has mod_gzip installed. This can save you a lot of bandwidth.

Best of all, optimizing your page like this makes the user experience better as your site will load faster for them!

Question:

What is the difference between UNIX hosting and Windows hosting?

Answer:

Depending on which operating system to go with depends on your needs.

If you need to support Microsoft products such as ASP, MS Access, or VBScript, then Windows hosting would be better. Furthermore, if you are comfortable with IIS and do not have the time to understand how UNIX works, Windows hosting would again be a better choice.

There are some things to remember.

First of all, just because you use Windows at home does not mean you should use Windows hosting. The two are completely different, and having a Windows system at home will not affect your ability to communicate with a UNIX server.

Secondly, Linux is much more common with web hosts due to its superior stability and because it is free. Since it is free, Linux hosting is usually cheaper than Windows. Just because it's free does not mean it's not as good - Linux is an excellent product too.