Webhosting options.......ugh I am so lost

I am in the process of starting up my own internet business, so that I can be a WAHM. I am just so lost as to what kind of webhosting options I should be looking at and what kind of providers offer the best deal. I dont know how many gb per month I should get for info transfer(cant remember the name sorry), what is the best pymt system to get re price etc? and what is the best way to build my website-frontpage or dreamweaver, or if I should get someone to do it for me.

I am so all over the place sorry, just wondering if there is anyone out there who has set up their own website?
How did you sift through all the information? and are there things you wish you had done differently?

Basically any and all suggestions please.

Many Thanks

love

We use Koala Hosting & they are based in Sydney. When they set up the site for us there were pre-installed scripts for shopping cart, forums, photo galleries & lots of other bits & pieces, so check with the providers what is included when you ring around. That said, we use a completely different gallery & front page made on iweb (Mac).

Helen,

Some quick answers:
GB per month - this is the traffic that travels in and out of the hosting server, such as people viewing your site, emails going back and forth, and you uploading your web pages. It's worth noting that the MAJORITY of your traffic will be outbound. For example, you upload a picture to your site - that's inbound of say 50kb, but then when people view that picture on your site, that's 50kb outbound each time it's viewed. So unless you're expecting to receive lots of big emails yourself, then look mainly at outbound traffic allowances.

Payments - Some places offer discounts if you pay a years worth of hosting up front, but usually it's non-refundable, and you can be locked in for that year. We find most of our clients like to pay monthly, and they can leave any time they want.

Building your website - depends on what you want really. You can do really easy template based sites (we provide SiteBuilder for free with all our accounts), or if you need a shopping cart, there's plenty of those around too. We install osCommerce for free, but this usually requires a bit of work customising it to how you want it to look, but it's an easy shop to operate. There are plenty of shopping carts out there tho. X-cart is meant to be really good.

If you are setting up shop, you need a database included in your hosting, and you'll need to look into SSL certificates etc to secure the site.

Basically, work out what is going to be on your site and go from there. We usually start people off on our lowest plan, and then just monitor traffic etc as we go to see what their needs really are.

If you want any more info, I'm happy to help out. My email is in my profile :)

Liz

Sarah-H- I checked out your website, there is some pretty cool stuff there.

Liz-Thank-you so much, I am sure by the end of this you may be sick of my questions. Just about to check out your website now.

Thanks Love

Nah - I'm used to questions. LOL. We've helped out a few BB girls now with lots of questions! :)

I either get DH to do it for me.... or my work, we are a webhosting company :)

Thanks Helen :)