Setting up a catering business? Need to promote your photography skills? A freelance policy consultant up for hire by the hours? No matter which industry you belong to, giving a face to your work requires a strong online presence for others to discover and access.

First thing first, you need to have a website to showcase all your brilliance. Setting up a website requires technical expertise; hence, it is imperative to have on-board the right kind of people who can assist you with the relevant know-hows and ongoing maintenance.

You need a reliable web host provider.

A group of highly skilled life-savers who will store your website's files on its servers and deliver them to your readers' and customers' browsers. Web hosting companies offer a diverse mix of services such as, monthly data transfers, storage, email, etc. Even payment systems can be different (monthly, annual, mixed packages, etc.). So how do you decide who to buy your hosting from?

A credible company is embedded with the following core principles:

Lower costs: It is not about whether you have the ability to splurge on your budget. It’s about investing in a host provider who works in the interest of both parties efficiently to acquire a satisfactory returns on your investments.

Higher bandwidth: It’s all about how easily accessible your website is to your catered customers/beneficiaries. A credible web host provider will enable the aspect of speedy loaded pages, plugins and features given that it has rock-solid coding built in.

Good security: No point in having a user-friendly website if there’s no decent security system in place. A web host provider will provide not just the set up but also ensure support to tweak and update the security features, from time-to-time.

Rapid support: You also want a web host with 24/7 customer support - by phone, chat, knowledge bases, tutorials (check out how Fast Web Host’s support system is designed to cater to any support of your choice). Easy-to-reach communication and stand-by support from technical experts is essential to get things sorted out quickly as well as for maintenance purposes.

A few additional points to ponder:

• Consider the duration - whether you need hosting support for a short time period or for longer. There are refund options and various financial packages which you should look into for making best use of your budget and timeline.
• Web hosts often provide different offers in starter packages and then expand on their services in advanced tier plans - read everything before finalizing a plan, including features such as domain, website builders, SSL Certificates, email, etc. Having these features integrated will make your operations smoother.
• Before you make a decision, familiarize and do a research of the different web hosting services that are available (such as, shared, virtual private server (VPS), dedicated hosting, Linux Reseller hosting and WordPress hosting plans). Each of these offers different features and packages that you should analyze to decide what best suits you and the service/content you intend to curate.
• Every provider has their unique niche factors - some focus on security more while some offer email marketing and e-commerce tools. Some offers integrated packages while some encourage customized plans.  Be careful to not get carried away. If you know your product/content well, it will be easier to prioritize.
• Read the in-depth customer reviews. Real time experiences provides insight into what the company actually is capable of providing in terms of service and quality (hence, avoiding the trap of false advertising).

As you choose the right web hosting service, you become a part of the bold new world where you get back more than what you give.

Virtual or Shared Web hosting is the business of housing and serving files for a Web site. Typically, an individual or small to mid-sized business cannot afford to independently obtain an extremely robust connection to the Internet for their Web presence. Virtual or shared Web hosting provides these consumers with the option to outsource their Internet requirements inexpensively.

Using a shared hosting service allows these companies to share the cost of a fast Internet connection for serving files. It is the most basic entry-level, fee-based hosting service a customer can select.

Shared hosting offers clients the ability to host their Web site on a powerful, professionally managed server at a low monthly cost. Shared servers provide individual Web sites with redundant connectivity and guaranteed uptime. These services provide an excellent solution for entry-level hosting needs because they are designed to host small-scale e-commerce sites and static Web pages.

Shared hosting is also popular among first-time webmasters because it can provide a reliable Web presence without advanced technical skills. Such a service is also advantageous to the smaller consumer because it assures them that they will obtain transparent services and that their Web site will have its own domain name and set of e-mail addresses.

Virtual hosting services are thus extremely popular because they offer the smaller consumer fast deployment, strong resources and most importantly, low cost. By paying an affordable and predictable monthly fee to a shared Web hosting service, consumers obtain reliability, expertise and faster connections than their dial-up service can provide.

Such a service is also advantageous to the smaller consumer because it allows them outsource a high-traffic, content-rich Web site for a small percentage of what it would cost to hire a single employee to develop it and run it in-house. For this reason, most individuals and small businesses opt to select a virtual hosting service because it is inexpensive and usually provides the basic services that they require.

Convenience is another factor that drives popular interest in shared Web hosting due to the service's fast setup time and bundled features. Typically, site activation can take minutes after you have purchased services with a credit card.

The most characteristic feature of virtual Web hosting is that services are usually bundled. For an inclusive monthly fee, consumers can obtain a variety of high-quality, multi-platform Web site solutions.

Usually the bundle of services includes a minimum amount of disk storage space for your Web pages. The bundle will normally also include a minimum amount of data transfer, or a capped amount of data that your can send to individuals that access your Web site. Most virtual accounts will also include e-mail forwarding services along with hardwired, physical e-mail boxes. Mail forwarding services allows you to create e-mail aliases at your domain name that will forward to an external e-mail address.

A decent shared hosting firm will also include free 24x7 technical support in all of its service bundles. It should also include unlimited file transfer protocol (FTP) services so that you can update your Web site at anytime.

For your own reference, a shared Web hosting service should also provide you access to Web statistics, so that you can gage how many Internet clients are visiting your site. For the sake of accuracy, a reliable Web host should also provide its customers with access to raw statistical logs, so that consumers can use their own statistical Web packages for site analysis.

Other services that are typically characteristic of a shared Web host include: daily tape backup of your Web site; anonymous FTP server access so you can provide public access to your files via file transfer protocol format; and full CGI-BIN access so that as you upload scripts that will add functionality to your Web site.

Most shared or virtual hosting services now also offer hosting automation software such as control panels. The control panel allows a consumer to control most aspects of their hosting service through an online graphical interface. The graphical interface allows users to control all the characteristics of a shared hosting service described above.