Once you have your domain name registered, it will need to be converted to a "place" on the internet that is capable of storing a web site, and delivering it on demand. This is called "hosting".

Most ISP's provide hosting although rates can vary significantly, and some ISP's offer more/different services and facilities than others. Hosting providers will charge a flat fee for the provision of services to a particular level or quota, and then an excess quota charge for useage beyond that. These chargeable aspects include:

• Storage Space: The number of Mb's provided to store your web site in. 5Mb is more than enough for a normal web site and you can assume that you will need about 0.2Mb per page at most.
  
• Network Traffic: The amount of data that can be delivered from your server. Assume that your web site is about 1.0Mb in size and is visited by 20 people per day. This means that during a month 600 people (30 days x 20 per day) will each request that 1.0Mb of data for a total monthly network traffic of 600Mb (600 people x 1.0Mb). As you can see it doesn't take long to build up high network traffic - imagine if you had a 5Mb site taking 1000 visitors per month. Most hosting ISP's will have a limited amount of free network traffic after which the excess is charged per Mb.
  
• Email Addresses: A fixed number of email addresses @yourdomain.com.au are usually provided. Additional email addresses can be purchased individually.
  
• Secure Server: A secure server is not always provided by hosting ISP's. You will need one if you are requesting credit card information from your web site visitors.
  
• Additional Domains: Some ISP's will allow you to host more than one website, each in its own domain, in your allocated space with a single network traffic quota. Others will charge each website as a seperate hosting account. Being able to host additional websites can be a real cost saver where several small and/or low volume sites are involved.
  
• Domain Parking: Parking a domain involves storing it on the host's server but not activating it, or putting a website in it. When you try to go to that domain in Netscape or IE, it gives the appearance that the domain doesn't exist. An excellent cost saver if you don't wish to activate all of your registered domains since a parked domain doesn't need any storage space, and generates no network traffic.
  

We use several hosting services locally, nationally and overseas. The choice of hosting service is entirely up to you, but we would suggest that you use either your current ISP, or one of the following:

• IIG: Local Cairns ISP for budget and business hosting
  
• Ilisys: UK based international hosting service now available in Australia
  
• ClariNet: Commercial hosting service in Melbourne.
  
• Web Central: Large national hosting service in Brisbane.
  

Budget	IIG	Ilisys	ClariNet	WebCentral
Storage	20Mb	10Mb	25Mb	20Mb
Extra Storage	No	$2/Mb/yr	$1.10/Mb/yr	$4.40/Mb/yr
Email Addresses	20	1	1	10
Extra Addresses	$12/yr	$16/yr	$30/yr	$22/yr
Network Traffic	500Mb	1000Mb	Unlimited	500Mb
Extra Traffic	$0.15/Mb	$0.20/Mb	-	$0.20/Mb
Additional Domains	No	$50	No	$120/yr
Domain Parking	$120 each	$75 each	No	$120/yr
Secure Server	No	$50	Yes	No
Setup Fee	$50	$0	$99	$64
Per Year	$175	$120	$264	$456
Payable	Bi-Yearly	Yearly	Monthly	Monthly
Notes	• Min. extra traffic and storage extensions may apply   • Monthly payments may be available at higher costs   • Other packages are available from each provider   • Packages subject to change - check their web sites

Corporate and business class hosting packages are available with additional services including:

• Higher storage and network traffic quotas
• Database support - ASP, MySQL, PHP
• Extended secure server (SSL) and e-commerce services
• Optional audio and video support