When looking for a shared web-hosting provider, it is important to remember that when using shared hosting, you do not have full access to the physical server. By its very nature, you are sharing all the resources of the sever with every other user. What you do will affect everyone else, just as what other users do may also impact you. There are several things you should be looking for when you are ready to start looking for a good shared web hosting provider.

Shared Web Hosting is the kind most people start off with. These review websites would often like to have you believe that there is actually a "top 10" list of web hosts. The truth is there are probably only around five quality shared hosting companies around!

These hosting plans will usually provide only one root directory for all of the domains and sites you plan to build. You will also be allowed one "primary domain". All other domains will have to be "parked" or added on to the primary domain. Without getting too technical, let's just say that some Shared Web Hosting UK scripts don't "play" well with others. And many just don't like being installed in sub-directories!

Up-time is the over all time the hosting company promises that their servers will be up and running. Some claim to have 100% up-time, but I find that to be almost impossible to have so I tend to go with the ones claiming a 99,9% up-time. This tells us that even though they take back-ups, have mirrored servers and all other stuff to keep the servers safe and running, there is always a small possibility that the servers can go down.

Just understand one thing; dedicated hard work over long hours generates a big money income. Now look again at what Affordable Web Hosting is in the context of real work.

Where do I buy a domain name? Don't worry. Nowadays, many hosting providers will give you free domain name just to sign up with them. But if you like to build many websites, then you will need to register domain names. I would suggest Moniker, Godaddy etc...

Webmasters are always asking about web hosts on webmaster forums. Find a few recent threads, and note who gets the most votes. Search engines, on the other hand, have been spammed by some hosts. If you do a search on 'the best web hosts' or 'top 10 web hosts' you'll get puff pages. Recent opinions from professional webmasters are the best.