Choosing Web Hosting
It can be tricky to find the right web hosting for you. Do you need everything the web hosting company offer? This guide is manly targeted for persons who uses php, but there are useful information for everyone.
Web hosts prices range from 1 $/€/month to 20 $/€/month and even more. And hosting for 1 $/€/month could actually be better than one from 10 $/€/month.
The storage and bandwidth are very important parts. And storage are often a determining part of the price of the web hosting. Don't pay for more than you need.
The more bandwidth you get, the better. Let's say you have 1000 unique visitors a day, each one uses 1 MB of transfer, that is 1 GB transfer/day, and 30GB/month. Do your own calculations for this. And make sure what happens if you exceed the maximum transfer. If you have to pay extra for the exceeded bandwitdh, it can cost you alot. Try to get hosting with unlimited transfer allowed, some are very cheap, and still very good. But in reality nothing can be unlimited, and some web hosting companies actually shut down accounts that uses to much bandwidth.
The most determining part of the pricing of the web hosting is often the support! If you don't need any support, you can use a very cheap but good web host. And one for 1-3 $/€/month will do great for you. You can actually get unlimited transfer, 300mb storage, php, mysql and more for that. If you think you will need support, consider a higher price. Remember that expensive web hosts may not have good support at all, you should really avoid these!
Another part that may be important for you is the uptime and speed. Even if a web host has a 1gb/s connection, it may be slow, depending on slow servers or anything else. Ask other people that uses that host about what they think about the support, speed and uptime. Also read reviews about the web host.
Another important thing to know is if the hosting company registers the domain name on you, or on the web host itself. It should always be registered on you, else the web host may not be serious.
Here is a checklist of things that you may or may not need.
Storage
Transfer, do you have to pay extra for exceeded transfer?
Speed, connection and speed of servers
Uptime
Support, e-mail, phone etc
PHP, version, safemode etc.
MySql, storage and accounts
FTP upload
Control Panel
Pre-installed scripts
.htaccess and .htpaswd, can you use these, and all functions within?
Backup
Mail accounts
GD Graphics Library, this is a php module that allows you to handle images, create thumbnails, have photo albums etc.
Domain, registered on you or on the web host?
Server OS, a server with php should never be hosted on a windows machine!