Where you get your web hosting can be one of the most critical decisions you make about starting your website, online business, or corporate site. Every last web hosting service under the sun offers a great sounding plan and makes it seem like other plans aren't worth it, and it can be really hard to cut through all of the mess and get to what exactly you need as a site owner.

You first have to figure out just how big you expect the website to be. Will actual transactions or information be had on the website, or will it just be a page talking about your company's vision and mission, without any draw that would use up a lot of bandwidth? If your website doesn't call for a huge amount of traffic, you don't really need a huge amount of bandwidth.

If, on the other hand, you plan for the website to become huge, it's worth it to invest in a large amount of bandwidth, just so you don't end up getting hit with fees down the line. Most hosting providers, instead of cutting off your service at your bandwidth limit, will charge you ridiculous prices for any usage over that limit. Better safe than sorry.

You'll also need to determine what your storage space requirements will be. If you plan on hosting large images on your site, then you should invest in extra storage space. Most hosting providers provide ample storage for almost everything, but if your website design calls for storage of either large (or detailed) images, or lots of data, it's definitely something to look into.

Again, if you are making a simple text-based (or mostly text-based) website, you don't need to worry about very much, storage space-wise.

Take a look at your architecture requirements. Are you planning on making dynamically updated content? Do you plan on getting information from your customers through your website? You'll need some kind of database and dynamic content service. By and large, the most popular on the web today are MySQL and PHP. They provide you with powerful tools to dynamically create content for your site and store huge amounts of data.

This is the case where you sometimes can't skimp if you plan on having a small website. Most popular weblog software requires you to have PHP and MySQL (or similar), so you'll need to ensure that your hosting plan has this for all but the simplest of websites.

Finally, you're going to have to register a domain name for your website. Instead of having to fork over the extra cash for a separate registrar, find a hosting plan that includes free domain registration, just to avoid the extra hassle. If you register a domain off-site, will you really remember where you registered it in a year or two when it comes time to renew? Hosting packages that include free registration generally give you that registration for free throughout the lifetime of your hosting, so you don't even have to think about it.

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