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Easy Steps to a Great Site

Tips, tricks, and tools that will help you spruce up a dowdy home page--or build a brand-new one.

Dennis O'Reilly

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Hosting Tips: A Host of Hosts

Every site needs a good home. And the quality of your Web host can mean the difference between putting up with a slow, banner-laden site and enjoying a speedy, reliable home page. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you evaluate Web hosting options.

Reliability is key: Free hosting services rarely offer the level of reliability and technical support that fee-based services provide, and the ubiquitous pop-up ads, banners, and other detritus that free services place on your visitors' screens are a real nuisance. Many of the ads that they display are stickier than leather car seats in August, lingering on top of your site visitors' screens during scrolling.

Check with your ISP: Many ISPs offer limited Web hosting as part of their Internet-access packages. You may receive as much as 40MB of free storage space on the company's server, though some ISPs offer considerably less than that. But even as little as 5MB of storage could be sufficient. If you don't plan to run a large, image- or multimedia-intensive site, and you don't anticipate tons of traffic to and from your site, your ISP's limited hosting services may be just the ticket.

Find out about support: If you use Microsoft's FrontPage extensions (which are necessary for FrontPage's search, hit counter, and other Web components), you need to find a host that supports them. In addition, FrontPage may require that your site be located on the server's root directory, so make sure your hosting service can satisfy these prerequisites.

Consider using a free host: One of the most popular free hosting services, Yahoo's GeoCities, is also one of the most reviled for its unshakable ad box. But for small sites, a free host can be great. You can find a helpful listing at Free Web Hosting Top 20. And you should also consider checking out the Hypermart for a list of free hosts for businesses.

Paid hosting services from such companies as HostPro, Yahoo's SimpleNet, and IASA Internet Web Hosting cost as little as $18 a month (plus a setup fee of about $40). At that price level you can expect to get a package that includes up to 100MB of server space, a domain name, and several e-mail addresses.

Most hosting services also provide basic page-setup and traffic-tracking tools, as well as assistance registering your domain name. You'll likely have to pay the registration fee (usually around $35) yourself.

Two reliable places to shop for a Web hosting service are the Web Host Directory and TopHosts.com.

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