Understanding Web Hosting
When choosing a web hosting provider, you need to make sure you get the right email option, as well as support for existing domain names.
Whether you want to promote a local karate club, flaunt your photography skills or raise the profile of your business, you’ll need a place to store your website online so visitors can access it. A web-hosting provider can give you this,plus email facilities and a unique domain name. It doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult to set up an account, either.
Opting for a package that includes a domain name means that you can get your own personalised email address,such as jim@jimmartin.com.This is often preferable to the generic email addresses that you get from your internet service provider( ISP) and it also means that,if you change your provider, your email address won’t change.
One option for email is to buy just the domain name with no web hosting. You’ll usually get free email forwarding where, for example, you could have all email that’s sent to jim@jimmartin.com forwarded to jim@myisp.com. Should you swap ISPs,you can change the email address to which mail is forwarded, such as to jim@mynewisp.com. This way, all your contacts email the same address regardless of your internet provider. However, it will look as though the email you send is coming from your ISP email address.You can change this by altering the settings in your email program, but this doesn’t always work, and some ISPs block email sent through them that isn’t from one of their email addresses.
Another option is to upgrade your domain name to a web-hosting package that provides email but no web-hosting. For a small annual fee,you’ll get enough email addresses for you and your family, and storage space for emails. If you change ISP, you won’t have to make any changes to your email account. You’ll also get these more advanced email services when you sign up for a paid-for web-hosting account.
If this sounds a little too confusing for you or you need help sorting through the jargon then have a read of this hosting review from The Blogging Buddha, it should hopefully answer any questions you may have regarding hosting and anything relating to it.
