With awards from magazines such as ‘Start Your Business’ and ‘Computer Shopper’, 1&1 are clearly a web hosting provider on top of their game!

They are the perfect choice for building a powerful, professional and secure website. And don’t worry if you don’t have the skills to design and build a good
looking website. As part of your web hosing package 1&1 will give you access to the MyBusiness Site which lets you create a stunning web presence with just a few clicks!

Using professionally designed templates and carefully thought out pre-filled (customisable) content a professional looking site can be uploaded to the web in no time at all. MyBusiness Site offers limitless possibilities for text, pictures and design, and best of all no software is required.

The MyBusiness Site editor is as easy to use as any word processor package. Uploading content such as your own pictures is elementary too, pictures are automatically re-sized for you. And there are no limits to the amount of pages or content that can be uploaded, so you will have no worries about any extra costs.

So check out 1&1 and get yourself online with a beautiful website to promote your business idea.

P.S. Currently, you can get 6 months FREE hosting on all 1&1 web hosting packages.

Web hosting is a way of uploading your website to the Internet. This is done by looking for a web hosting company and having your website uploaded to their web server.

You could set up your own computer to host your website but getting another company to host it for you is usually the most practical way to do it.

A web hosting company allows you to rent space on a web server. Your web pages are then stored on their server and other people connected to the Internet can view them.

Across the planet, there are literally hundreds of web hosting companies so how do you choose the right one? As with trying out any new product or service, you won’t really know how good a web hosting company is until you try it. Therefore, ask around and see whether you can get any good recommendations from those who already use a web hosting company. Another good idea is to search the Internet for reviews of hosting companies.

When you finally narrow down your list of prospective hosting companies you should consider how long each company has been in business, how reliable it is known to be, and how expensive it would be if you wanted to upgrade your plan at sometime in the future.

Other key areas to consider are:

How much disk space do you need?

If your website has less than 10 pages you’ll only need a small amount of hosting space and this is often very cheap to buy. If you have a large site that has hundreds or thousands of pages you’ll be needing a lot of disk space. Most web hosting plans limit how much space you will have, so make sure the web hosting plan you choose meets your initial and future needs.

How many email accounts do you need?

You’ll probably need at least one email account for each employee and one for each department (sales, accounts, marketing, support etc). Even each member of a family may want a separate email account. So make sure you purchase a hosting plan that has enough of these. Also, do you want full POP3 or IMAP access, Web-based email, or both? Fortunately, the number of email accounts offered by the big hosting providers are generally in the hundreds, so this requirement is usually well covered.

How much data do you need to transfer?

Most hosting plans limit how much data transfer you are allotted each month. If you expect a lot of people to visit your site and you host stuff that can be downloaded or you have online video’s people can watch, you’ll need a plan that allows for plenty of data transfer.

Do your need E-commerce Options?

Will you be selling goods or services through your site? If not, there’s no need to sign up for an e-commerce web hosting service. If you are, e-commerce web hosting services such as shopping cart software, SSL support and a payment system will be vital. Virtually all the hosting companies will be able to supply these e-commerce tools.

Database, script and extension support

Some hosts will try to blind you with all the features they provide: MySQL, MS Access, MS SQL, Perl, PHP, ASP.NET and SSI support. Do you really need all these features? If not, make sure you are not paying for extras that you’ll never use.

Operating systems

Do you want a Linux hosting plan or a Windows hosting plan? Linux is the most commonly used operating system among Web servers. It is known for its flexibility, reliability and stability. It is the only choice for sites that use PHP, MySQL and the Apache Server. Windows hosting plans are often used for sites utilising ASP, MS Access databases, MS SQL Servers and other Microsoft applications.

Customer Support

Is customer and technical support available 24/7? Can you easily get through on the customer support hotline or are you kept on hold for hours? Is there a good technical help section as part of the hosting providers website? These are important considerations as you never know when you might need the help of a good tech support area.

Hosting Awards

See if the hosting company have industry awards or special mentions in web design or pc based magazines.

Reliability

Check the reliability promises of each web hosting company you check out, and look for 99.9% uptime promises. This more or less guarantees that your website will be viewable all the time.

Web Hosting Control Panel

Look for a simple, user-friendly interface which makes web hosting simple for you. It should be as easy as possible to set up domains, e-mail addresses, design your own website, or access a database – all with a few mouse clicks. So ask if you can have a demo.

One of our website’s, www.inputyouth.co.uk, had to be moved from one host to another. The move was to accomplish three main objectives.

These were:

• To lower the yearly cost by at least £30.
• To swap from a Windows to a Linux server.
• And to find 1st class customer and technical support by reading independent reviews.

After much deliberation we finally decided to try one of the hosts recommended by PC Pro in their Reliability & Service Awards of 2009 – Fast2host.com.

Fast2Host is a British company focused on providing web hosting with top support. And it shows in its results, with 95.8% of its customers happy to recommend Fast2Host to friends and colleagues.

The Input Youth account with Fast2Host was set up on Friday 2 October 2009. We selected the Linux Enterprise package which has 100 sub domains, 50 email accounts and a LAMP configuration (Linux, Apache,MySql and PHP). The whole set up can be managed using CPanel V11.

Changing the TAG

The TAG change from the old host to Fast2Host was complete on Saturday evening and the whole site was uploaded and working on Sunday 4th October. A pretty stella performance. There were no hitches along the way even though the Input Youth site has a WordPress blog and several film shows to slightly complicate matters.

Our Final Thoughts

This superb hosting company have been trading since 1999 and seem to go over and above what other hosting companies typically do for their clients. Their service and support are exceptional, which is borne out by the many positive reviews that litter the Internet.

So far we are extremely happy with Fast2Host. The Input Youth website has experienced no downtime and even loads a bit faster than it used to.

Fast2host are a superb web hosting company who offer loads of useful features as standard. Other hosting companies may well charge extra for these goodies.
So, if you are looking for a good quality hosting solution providing the latest technology at the best possible price, look no further than Fast2hosts.