After considering several characteristics of your intended website – complexity, content, and your own technical abilities – in Part 1 of this article, we arrived at the following conclusions. It will be a personal website of a very basic technical nature; it will have a fair amount of dynamic content on it; and, that you’ll be doing the website development, publishing, and maintenance yourself. (We’re assuming, also, that you’ve already identified and registered an Internet domain name (e.g., www.mysitename.com) with GoDaddy.com or any of the other domain name registrars.

As we’re talking about this being a basic website, we’ve also come to understand that all the easy web hosting for beginners packages come with enough tools and resources to meet your basic requirements. All packages include an easy-to-use website design program (usually driven by automated templates), quite a few email accounts, and a file manager program to help you manage your website’s files on your server. Many hosting companies are also standardizing around offering unlimited disk storage space and unlimited network traffic as part of their basic packages. (You can always upgrade or purchase more later if needed.)

Now that your website’s preliminary requirements have been determined, it’s time to move on to consider several more important topics. How long do you plan on keeping your personal site online? Monthly plans are the standard offering, some with very attractive discounts for a year or multi-year engagements. If you’re truly serious about putting up a website, I’d suggest subscribing to at least a one-year plan. This not only gives you enough time to become established online, but you’ll also be taking advantage of any special savings.

Virtually all hosting companies charge their customers’ credit cards these days, and it’s not uncommon for them to keep your credit card number on file for auto-renewal purposes. This provides two benefits for you – security, as using a credit card online is very safe, and availability, as your website won’t be deactivated mistakenly due to lack of renewal payment. I’d suggest having them set up your account in this fashion.

Before you make your final selection between the best providers of cheap web hosting for beginners, you’ll want to try to glean a little more information about your choices. Specifically, try to find out some additional information on their web servers and network. Here are some suggestions:

- Each plan offered will have a list of features for that package. See what it says about the server hardware you’ll be hosted on. Try to determine if your website will run a generic “white box” server, or on a quality server like those from Sun, HP, Compaq, or Dell.

- As you’re a beginner to website hosting, see if your potential hosting company offers toll-free technical support by phone in your hosting plan. Chat and email are adequate, but you may want a higher degree of support available.

- Be aware that if you’re sharing an IP address with other websites on that same server (as is usually the case for cheap hosting plans), your own website may be at risk. Should any other website sharing that IP address with you demonstrate bad behavior like spamming, that IP address may be blocked. This would effectively render your website useless. Get your own IP address for an extra couple of bucks a month and avoid this issue altogether.

If you keep these issues in mind while evaluating potential providers, you’ll come out way ahead when making your selection. Competition between the best web hosting for beginners providers is keen, so take full advantage of their specials if you can. It won’t be long after that before you have your own personal website up and running on the Internet. Have fun and welcome to the fray!

With over 15 years of hands-on experience, author Markys Robertson writes extensively about website design, cheap web hosting for beginners, domain names, and other Internet related topics. If you’re seeking the best web hosting for beginners, click here to see some of Markys’ top recommended providers.

There are many options available today for cheap web hosting for beginners. (Here, I’m defining “beginner” as someone who’s putting up their first website.) More and more people are staking out their own place on the World Wide Web everyday. It’s fun, relatively easy to do, and the best part is – you can make it as easy or as complicated as you want to, all for minimal expense! But to get started, you must decide what the purpose of your website will be.

A personal website is one of the easiest to get started with. Most personal websites contain several standard features – some pages for your pictures and written content, another page listing your “favorite links”, and perhaps another one for your visitors’ log. Providers of the best web hosting for beginners all offer templates like these that can be installed using an automated script. This makes it very easy for a beginner like you to do it yourself.

Are you planning on writing a lot of ongoing commentary or other frequently-updated content for your site? If so, then perhaps a blog would be more in order for you than having to publish numerous new web pages. Most, if not all, of the best web hosting for beginners include a blogging module in their web hosting packages, and they’re super easy to install. Some good blogging software programs include WordPress, b2evolution, and Nucleus.

Now that you’ve decided on your website’s preliminary design, it’s time to identify who’s going to get their hands dirty. I’d suggest doing it yourself! There are many web hosts for beginners that make it about as easy as it can be to publish a website yourself. Really, all you need to provide are some basic to intermediate skills on that PC you’re using and a general, high-level understanding of how the Internet operates. You’ll learn everything else you need to know.

On the other hand, you may not be comfortable, or have the time, to publish and maintain your own website. If so, there are some cheap web hosting for beginners providers that offer hands-on assistance in helping you create your website. You’ll pay a slight premium for that level of technical support in your hosting package, but it may well be worth it to you if you don’t have either the time or the inclination to do it yourself.

For a basic personal website, you don’t have to worry too much about what type of hosting platform to use (e.g., Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, or other operating systems). All of them offer essentially the same types of services and features. Also, each includes one of several industry-standard control panels such as Plesk or cPanel that you’ll be using to access your web hosting account.

Your simple starter website’s requirements probably won’t exceed the usual levels of service provided in most hosting packages. The best web hosting for beginners will include enough storage space, bandwidth, and server availability to meet your needs. The more sophisticated your website becomes over time, the more services you can order from your hosting provider.

That’s it! You’ve determined the types and level of service you’ll need to put up your own personal website. Now let’s look at some of the best web hosting for beginners providers that are out there!

In Part 1 of his article, Internet expert Markys Robertson helps you determine your website’s requirements so you can choose a cheap web hosting for beginners type of solution. Be sure to click here to read Part 2 of Markys’ article – how to compare and choose between the many best web hosting for beginners options available today!