Website Hosting Comparison Chart – What Are You Paying For?

The last few years has seen the emergence of hundreds of hosting companies with massively varying costs and inclusions. Companies are offering hosting charged per year, per month, per megabyte, with free emails, free websites, free blogs...  

So what do you really need?

It's entirely up to you, but here are some guidelines:

• Get a hosting package that comes with emails. If you're running a small business you need email with your hosting. Don't keep using your.name@hotmail.com or company@bigpond.com because it just looks unprofessional. If you're going to register www.example.com.au then also get your.name@example.com.au, it's better for business.

• Get at least 200MB site hosting space. Yes you want your site to load as fast as possible and yes you will keep your file sizes small, but by the time you add a few images on each page you're going to be surprised how quickly it adds up.

• Host locally. It's going to be much better for you if you can contact someone in your own timezone with hosting queries.  

• Check your data transfer allowance. If your site becomes a high traffic web destination you may need to upgrade your plan. Be aware of additional fees for exceded limits.

You may need other add-ons such as secure servers, anti-virus solutions, or if you're a web developer you may need any number of application installations, but in these instances you should contact the hosting company for details. Usually they will be happy to add whatever you need.

Here is a quick-reference to just a few of the available hosting companies in Australia, sorted by location. Their prices vary, as do their services, so check out their website for full details before making your final decision. Better still, get on the phone and see what you think of the person on the other end because chances are you will speak to the same person when you need a problem solved later on.

Hosting Provider	Disk Space	Traffic p/month	Emails	Servers	Location	Cost
www.coasthost.net.au	500Mb	20Gb	50	Unknown	Gold Coast	24.90p/month
www.websitehostingaustralia.com	10Mb	2Gb	1	Linux	Gold Coast	$145p/year
www.aussiewebhost.com.au	200Mb	3Gb	20	Linux	Melbourne	$14.95p/month
www.webhostingaustralia.com.au	250Mb	10Gb	1000	Windows 2000, Linux or .net	Melbourne	$299p/year
www.anchor.com.au	250Mb	10Gb	30	Linux, Windows	Sydney	$363p/year
www.netvantage.com.au	100Mb	2Gb	100	Linux	Sydney	$29p/month
www.redalto.com.au	250Mb	5Gb	25	Windows	Sydney	$19.95p/month
www.netregistry.com.au	200Mb	10Gb	100	Unknown	Sydney	$29.95p/month
www.digitalpacific.com.au	10Gb	25Gb	Unlimited	Unknown	Sydney	$249p/year
www.ausweb.com.au	4Gb	10Gb	15	Linux, Windows 2003	Sydney	$29.50p/month
www.redrook.com	500Mb	Unlimited	30	Linux	Tasmania	$33p/month
www.ezihosting.com	500Mb	20Gb	Unlimited	Linux	Tasmania	$274.45p/year

Visit Melbourne Online for more. 

Web Design – Basic mistakes and simple fixes

I was recently asked to critique a friend's business website and was surprised to find the basic errors made by her business' web designer. I hope you can learn from their mistakes:

Colours:
The first thing that stands out visually about a website is use of colour. This can set the mood of the site before anything else.  

• Avoid using washed out colours. From a mood perspective it's boring and from a fashion perspective pastels went out two years ago. 

• Choose colours that best set the mood you want for the site. Sometimes you are limited by a client's specs if they request company colours, but even then use them to your best advantage. If all else fails, go for black or white.

• Use contrasting colours for text and background. It's no good having white text on a grey background – users won't even bother trying to read it.

Images:

Photographs, logos, cartoons, etc. are there to provide visually stimulating points on your site. Make them work for you.

• Use only quality images. It is a poor representation of any business to have photographs that look like they were taken with a phone camera. Get a professional photographer if necessary.  

• Stock photography is a good alternative if all else fails.
  

• Make sure your images are big enough to be seen clearly and crop to suit.

Text:
Hopefully your website has content worth reading.

• Body text should be at least 12pt. If your demographic is 50+ then it should be 14pt.

• Keep the homepage as free from text as possible. People will use images, menus and links to navigate to text if they want to.

• Use a font that is available on most browsers. Sure, Mistral looks like handwriting, but IE can't read it so nearly 50% of your viewers will see rubbish.

Copy:

This is the actual wording of your site. 

• Proofread. A typo, misspelled word, poor punctuation, incorrectly placed apostrophe... All these things can lose you credibility with a reader.

• If your client provides the copy, proofread for them. If you find errors politely point them out to your client and ask if they'd like you to correct them.

• Make sure the wording flows. People typically skim through page text so make sure it's succinct and easy to absorb. 
  

A little bit of extra thought in the design phase can save time correcting errors after completion. Your websites will be more successful, business will be better... It's not rocket surgery but it's easy to forget.

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