To have full control over your site, you’ll need a web hosting account. This is a place where your files will live 24/7 so everyone can view your site. There’s typically a monthly fee with a discount for paying yearly. Fees can range from entry level $4.95 a month to $150 a month for sites with high traffic. The majority of blogs pay less than $10 a month. When you pay to host your account then you own all of your content. No one can take it from you.
Here are some terms you’ll see when looking for a web host:
Disk Space: This is like a hard drive in your computer. The amount of space that each file takes up uses disk space. All web hosts offer plenty of disk space nowadays. The only thing to be really careful with is uploading high resolution pictures (like right off your fancy camera). We’ll go over how best to save pictures for showing them on your blog later in the series.
Bandwidth: Imagine your content as water and a pipe between your web host and others that want to access your information. If the pipe is small, a smaller number of people will be able to access the water. The bigger the pipe, the more people can access your content at one time. That’s bandwidth. This is measured by the file size of every part of your site (images, code, content). Some hosts limit bandwidth based how much you use per month.
Control Panel: Most hosts use cPanel software for their control panel. Some use their own control panel software, but all of them allow you to setup and change certain things on your hosting account. What if you wanted to add an email address? You could do that in your control panel. Want to add another domain name (site)? You can do that as well in your control panel.
1-click script installs: Most hosts also have 1-click script installs that will install WordPress.org for you and setup the other necessary parts so you don’t have to. They also provide installs for other software that you could use on your site if you wanted to be adventurous. One of the benefits of having your own hosting!
I recommend Host Gator*. They have a Hatchling Plan that gives you a single domain, unlimited disk space, and unlimited bandwidth for $6.95/month (if you pre-pay for a year). The next plan up is the Baby Plan that gives you unlimited domains, unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for $9.95/month (if you pre-pay for a year).
I (Lisa) also do hosting for some of my clients who don’t want to mess with their own hosting account. You can contact me for more information.
* This is an affiliate link. If you prefer, go straight to http://www.hostgator.com/
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