There are many free website hosting packages that are enough to host personal sites and even some small business sites. However, just about all of these sites run on slow shared servers and lack any PHP support. The free hosts that do provide PHP support are often unreliable and have minimal database features. This is why you need to go for real commercial website hosting offerings that provide PHP.
PHP often works alongside MySQL in creating a very dynamic website. Both of these languages are open source too so you do not have to worry about costly licensing issues. It also integrates with HTML so you can apply any existing knowledge of HTML to your PHP content.
Fortunately, many providers offer this even in their cheapest packages. Overall reliability and extra features still vary though which is why you need to follow some of these tips to land you a good host.
Try to gather some links to popular website hosting packages that each have competitive prices. Then check each link and find out what databases are supported. If you are migrating from a previous host or you created your own database offline, you need to make sure the website host can support everything that you are planning to host.
The available disk space is also an important aspect depending on the type of content that you are hosting. Ordinary business blogs that rely on text and images won't need very high requirements but larger stores that have online shopping portals and other highly graphical sites that rely on Flash or HD video will need additional disk space beyond the gigabyte range.
The cost per gigabyte being reasonably low these days, multiple PHP website hosting providers should give you more than enough available space to fit loads of content but the bandwidth limitations is an entirely different story. Bandwidth refers to the amount of data being transferred to visitors and if you are expecting thousands of visitors every day, even minimal websites may suffer from bandwidth issues. Once you exceed your monthly bandwidth limits, your site will shut down for the remainder of the month and that could lead you to lose some potential customers. When looking at the different website hosting packages available, go with the one that provides at least 10 gigabytes of bandwidth. That should be enough to start a small business of any kind and you can probably stay under the bandwidth limitations for more than a year before you need to upgrade.
The last thing you need to look for in a website hosting package is the extra features being offered. A website builder is a good example for this and serves as a great add-on for those that do not have much experience in coding a PHP business site. Additional features may include spare email addresses, support for SSL certificates so you can add authenticity, and support for mailing lists so you do not have to sign up for a separate autoresponder service.
These are the most important elements that are included in any good website hosting package that offers PHP support. If you find yourself still choosing from a few available packages, do some final searches on these services and choose one that received positive reception from customers.
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