Publishing a website requires you to buy web hosting. Expect to pay anything from £50 to £250 plus VAT for one year’s hosting, it is advisable to shop around. Here are some tips on buying web hosting successfully:

» Select a hosting company that offers a control panel for setting up your email addresses, checking traffic statistics, one that does not restrict your bandwidth on website visitors.

» Email on the move, Web Mail is more common these days, if you have the need to read your email while on the move or on holiday go for a provider that supports webmail on your domain name.

» Make sure that your hosting package provides you with enough space to expand your website in the future should the need arise. For most small business websites, 50MB is sufficient for an initial package.

» If you expect a high volume of website visitors, ensure your package has sufficient bandwidth to avoid it going down in peak periods of the day.

» What level of support do you get? Are you provided with a low rate support telephone number so you don't have to pay out for support calls? If you can try and avoid 0906, 0870 numbers otherwise you could find costs excalating when help is needed.

» Don’t pay for the bells, whistles and all the trimmings that you will never use, and look carefully at the small print, such as what costs the hosting provider charges if you transfer a domain name to another provider.

» To publish your files to the internet, you can freely download a FTP program such as FilaZilla or Smart FTP for example.