First, choose between a free or paid blog hosting service. If you use a free blog hosting service, your blog name will be the subdomain of the web host, for example, [blognamehere].blogspot.com. With a free blog hosting service, the main advantage is that the service is free. Also, everything is already installed. You just need to set up an account, choose a theme, and customize your settings. However, a paid hosting account allows for more options. The options depend on the web host. If you choose paid hosting service, decide if you want to install your own blog application or you will use one provided by the hosting company. If you are installing your own blog application, make sure that the hosting package meets the requirement of the application.

Shared web hosting (also called virtual hosting) is the most common type of hosting service used. As the word implies, shared web hosting means that you are sharing one server (CPU time, memory, OS, applications, bandwidth, etc) with a number of clients of your hosting company. The webhost manages the server to ensure uptime, upgrading hardware and software. The cost of shared hosting often depends on the number of clients being hosted on a server as the hosting company tries to maximize profits per server. You will have no control over the server but full control over your website through a control panel. When shopping for shared web hosting, you must check the terms of service to see if there are any scripts or types of software that aren't allowed by the host. Since all the resources are shared, it is important to ensure that no one user is hogging the pooled resources. Server software like Apache or IIS allows the administrators to localize any errors or unusual CPU utilization so as to not affect the other users, but there remains a possibility of a problem occuring and all the websites on a given server going down.

Most hosting customers would rather have complete control of their server environments. They don't want to be hosted on a server with tens or hundreds of other users, who could easily use up all the resources or cause the server environment to be unstable. But at the same time most websites don't need a dedicated server. The Virtual Private Server (VPS) alternative is a very attractive niche hosting solution for a fairly large chunk of web hosting clients who would like the stability of a dedicated server but on a smaller scale. With the resources setup in such a way that each person can only use what is allocated to them, your site will be more consistent because it will always have the same amount of access to the CPU, memory, and bandwidth. Virtual Private Servers are also more secure since even as you share the memory and CPU time, you are allocated your own file system. If a website on the server is hacked, the hackers will only have access to that particular file system and would not harm the other websites. A VPS is also much cheaper than a dedicated server.

Unlike shared hosting where tens to hundreds of websites of various customers are hosted on one computer, dedicated web hosting solutions allow a client to lease the complete computer and have access to all its resources to host one or multiple websites. This makes a dedicated hosting solution especially attractive for large high-traffic websites, custom development projects creating complex web based applications, and web sites that require a high degree of uptime and total control of the hosting environment.

Managed or "fully managed" web hosting solutions take the dedicated model to a higher level. We know that dedicated hosting allows the client to have full control of the server but dedicated servers can be difficult to operate technically and require that you have certain knowledge about server maintenance and system administration. The notch above is managed hosting, as it takes the dedicated features and adds extra services like reporting and monitoring, load balancing, security, setup, system administration and software updates. This is the most hands-off solution for the client.

In situations dedicated or managed servers provided by a web hosting provider do not meet your needs, it is always possible to custom build your own server and place it in the data center of a provider. Co-located hosting means that you purchase a server from Dell, Gateway or your neighborhood hardware vendor and supply it to the host. The host will in turn plug your server at its data center providing you access to its network and infrastructure. The webhost is reponsible for the network infrastructure and the data center while you are responsible for the server through remote access. This type of solution allows the very customized and specialized web sites to function at peak performance. Many of the ulta-popular websites use a co-location strategy to provide them with the combination of customization and best possible performance.

The area of reseller web hosting is an interesting one for those who wish to create an e-commerce venture, selling web hosting and other related services. Reselling web hosting means that you contract with a hosting provider to sell their server space under your brand. Reseller agreements can be based on per signups, that is you sell one of a number of hosting packages and pay a certain amount of the fees to the hosting company. Another option involves a carte-blanche approach where you pay a set fee and receive certain resources that you are free to resell. Yet another option would be to lease a dedicated server and resell the web space, keeping all the profits.

There are many times when you are not able to, do not feel like, or don't need to spend money to host a web site. This could be the case for times when you are building a small site as an experiment, a hobby, as a test platform, or as a backup for your other site. In these and other cases, you can look for free web hosts.

This is a form of dedicated hosting which allows you control over your server by access to the root, while providing various benefits, such as reliable infrastructure, security and maintenance of hardware. Root Server hosting gives redundant (uninterrupted) internet connectivity and flexibility for you to choose operations systems and hardware specifications most suitable for your needs.

Image hosting: hosting only a few different formats of images. This type of hosting is often free and most require registrations. Most image hosts allow hotlinking, so that you can upload images on their servers and not waste space/bandwith on yours