Hosting a website invokes fear in a lot of people simply because they have not had the experience nor have they arrived to the current age of webhosting. Either because they are not familiar with it, or they just don't want to try because it seems daunting.

When people do decide they want to be hosting a website, they usually are intimidated by the many choices and options. It is easy to get overwhelmed if you are not familiar with the different types of hosts and options. Should I use paid or free? What does it mean when they offer Joomla or WordPress? Where do I start building my site?

These are all legimate questions and for for the novice, I recommend doing your homework by searching online and looking at the different hosts including Hostgator or Inmotion or FatCow to name a few. On their pages you will see what they offer. Some of the main things you should ask yourself are the following:

1- Is this for personal or business use?

2- Does the hosting company offer unlimited disk space and bandwidth?

3- If I run into trouble, do they have a 24/7 customer service center with good reviews?

4- What is there uptime? (basically, 99.99% equates to approximately 53 minutes a year of downtown, don't be alarmed, this is actually good and should not be a problem for most operations.)

5- Do they have guarantees? What if I don't like my service or how they are handling my customer service. Will they refund my money?

When hosting a website, make sure that you have clearly defined what you are trying to do and go from there. If you want to throw up a simple sight with lots of functionality and user friendly, then I recommend using a low cost host with website builder options and templates already loaded up. You can produce a stunning website with hardly any knowledge just by using these options.

If you don't want these type of options you can always upload WordPress or Joomla (content management system or CMS) onto your host and it is easy to do as these options are available to you when you sign up. The options you have today are amazing due to competition in the marketplace. This benefits the consumer like you and I. If you follow the 5 questions and do your homework, you should have no problem hosting a website.