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Websites need somewhere to live. In this challenge you are going to arrange suitable accommodation (hosting) for your website and make your webspace available on your domain name. The hosting requirements for Webmaking101 are very basic and you do not need any special technologies. You just need a plain and simple hosting account with no added fancy stuff. This challenge should take about 45 minutes to complete and by the end of it your web space will be ready to use with your domain name.
In this task you're going to seek the advice of your peers about which hosting company they do business with and why. It should take about 20 minutes. You're going to use that information as the basis for your own decision on who you're going to do business with.
So, basically, I don't have much of a motivation to look around other people's posts. For one, there's only so few of them. Another would be, mostly they talked about paid hosting. There are a bunch of free webhosts out there and I know they're not the best but I do intend to look around and get a host from one of them.
I was about using the ISP I've used some other times in my country (good service, by the way), but, as I had created this course's blog with a free wordpress.com, I took a glimp at its ISP features. Domain (1 year) and mapping/redirection to the existing blog for les than 20 dollars. I would say it's not expensive, but I'm not aware of average prices out there. Plus i guess it can change a lot depending on the country.
I personally use Dreamhost. The service is quite good if you are wanting to host a personal website of even a corporate one. Although, it is not as fast as the a3 (Amazon Services). If you do need a hosting space, I can get you a discount since I am already a user.
A lot of web hosting companies are offering unlimited storage space, databases, email addresses, domains, and bandwidth for <= $10 per month. This includes:
WebHostingGeeks has comparisons and awards for many different hosting companies.
Other items to take note of:
Do they offset 100% of their carbon footprint? 150% of their carbon footprint? 300%?
Do they have 24/7/365 support? Do they have phone support? Can you, as a non-customer, call their support and get a person on the phone within 5 minutes? Do they have a comprehensive online documentation system (wiki is usually effective here)?
Do they offer a free domain registration (this is usually ~ $10/year additional to the cost of hosting)? Can you have multiple domains registered simultaneously? How many sub-domains can you create?
How much is the hosting per month when paying monthly, yearly, etc? Does the price change after an introductory period?
If you need a public encryption key (e.g. for an online store), how much is an annual SSL certificate?
Do they provide SecureShell access (SSH)? What about Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)? Both of these tools make site administration efficient and secure. I use SSH on a daily basis and find it indespensible.
Can you configure Cronjobs? This is usually possible using SSH or from your hosting configuration page.
Do they offer free backup services for your files and/or databases?
Do they offer easy installation/upgrade tools for common website software such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, ZenPhoto, MediaWiki, etc?
What version of PHP is installed ? What version of MySQL is installed? Do they support Python, Perl, Ruby on Rails, etc (depending on your interests)?
Do they support alternative databases such as PostgreSQL, PostGIS, etc?
Can you have long-running processes (this is important for software such as Django, Rails, etc)?
Basically, make sure that the hosting company supports up-to-date versions of common server side technologies. Check the respective websites for each server side technology for up-to-date version numbers. If this is confusing, ask the sales or support representative how up-to-date the servers are.
Excellent post! This would make a good checklist for those host-hunters out there.
Nice Checklist. I found this on your website too! 
Fantastic post! Very generous of you - cheers!
I had one through Microsoft for a while (jofriday.com) but let it lapse as I didn't need a fully hosted web presence at that time. I get web hosting through my employer (it's part of my job) and through Google Sites. If I were to buy one now, I'd probably pick something like https://ssl.jumpline.com/order/?c=9NRMPBPM because of the 10GB space allotment.
