After you have designed your website, the next thing is always to find ways of uploading it to the internet so that it can be viewed by the whole world. It will not serve you any purpose to have it in your computer.
You will need to know some of the requirements that will enable your website to run without any hitches. These requirements vary and will generally include space which allows you to have email accounts as well as to download or publish on your website. The requirements are explained in detail in the following paragraphs.
- Space
- In normal times, most websites take up very little space. It is not uncommon to find that 100 pages in a website take less than 5MB of space.
For the purposes of email accounts, you are advised to allocate an extra 10 or 20 MB of disk space. Also note that email attachments normally take 20% more space than the email. So if you are just setting up the website and you think you will be receiving or sending a lot of attachments, you need to make provisions for such by adding an extra space.
The rule of thumb is that you allocate at least double your initial space requirements so as to accommodate future needs in case of growth.
- Bandwidth
- Bandwidth is also commonly referred to data transfer and it means the usage o the web site in a month. All downloads from a website be it a music file or a single web page means data transfer. Other activities such as checking and downloading or even uploading contents on your web site are also data transfer.
It is not usually easy to predict bandwidth when you are just starting up a new website. New sites are likely to have fewer visitors but those with a lot of pictures and music files mean a lot of bandwidth that you will need. Having known the requirements of your web site, you can ten go for a web hosting package that will meet your specific needs.
- Bandwidth overage
- The question is always that in case you use more space than you were initially allocated by your webhost, then what happens? Using more than your space allocation is what is known in technical terms as overage. Some webhosts will disconnect you from the internet immediately when you use more than your allocation while others will charge for the extra space you have used so that your monthly bill is just higher. You therefore need to be more careful not to overuse the space allocated to you because it could prove catastrophic to you.
After you have known the requirements for your web site, you can therefore go for a web hosting package that has all of these. This knowledge will be of vital importance to you so that you make a decision that is informed by your needs for the type of website that you are uploading.
