A4U and a lot of other new projects have put me behind schedule a little, but I’m pleased to see someone was reading the domains tutorial and jumped right in, buying the outdoor adventure travel domain name.

Ben has the makings of a good affiliate I reckon. A “just do it” attitude and not embarrassed to ask questions. Thanks to him I’ve got the next tutorial almost written so we should catch up with our schedule this week.

OK, enough of the ambling, on to hosting.

A couple of basics for total beginners. Hosting means someone providing you with the computer that your website actually sits on. The computer is called a server. It’s just a computer, but is set up so people can fetch information from it over the web rather than being sat straight in front of it.

The server runs an operating system, just like Windows or whatever version of OS you use if you’re on a Mac. There are several options for this, but in our case we’ll be looking for a server running the Linux operating system.

Linux, and many of the programs that run on it is free. This means there’s a ton a free stuff out there for affiliates to use, and we like free. Affilistore is just one example of free stuff you can use on a Linux server. The rest of the requirements for Affilistore just a Linux server running PHP (a programming language for websites) and MySQL (a type of database).
So we know we need a Linux server, but we only want to set up one, quite small site right? No problem. You don’t have to buy a whole server to get started. The way you buy hosting comes in three common stages.

1) Shared hosting

This is what we’ll be using to start with. Your hosting company gives you a limited amount of space on one of their servers, and some sort of control panel to manage your files and sites. It’s cheap, maybe £5 a month or less. The downside is that your site can sometimes run slowly if someone else is hammering the same server, or your host can put a lot of restrictions on what you can and can’t do.

The majority of sites you’ll build in your first year will run quite happily on a shared server setup so don’t panic about these restrictions just now.

2) Dedicated Server

This is where you get the whole server to yourself to do what you want with and set up a load of accounts, possibly even selling space on to someone else. It costs more, usually from £100 a month, up to thousands. You also need to manage the server yourself which needs a lot more tech knowledge. Not recommended unless this is your day job. There are companies out there who will manage your server for you though and help set it up for a price.

3) VPS or Virtual Private Server

This falls between the two, maybe £30-50 a month in price, you get more space, more control. A good move if you start building lots of sites or if you want to club together with someone you know.

The last term you’ll come across is ‘Reseller’. A reseller account gives you the power to set up sites for other people, but keeps them separate from each other. It’s a good way to organise your own sites so a lot of affiliates make sure they buy into a package like this as they grow. A reseller VPS is a popular option once you get going.

Lastly two words on service from hosting companies.

1) You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

2) Good service is about 100 time more expensive than bad service so sometimes it’s better to just grin and bear it.

There are a few exceptions, so if you have a good recommendation from someone you know & trust, go for it.

Have a look at the hosting section over at A4U and you will see people like Rackspace always being touted as excellent, but they cost about £200 per month. 1and1 are advertised a lot but are utterly dreadful when it comes to any problems.

Thecompany I’m going to recommend for this tutorial are EUKHost. I’ve had a VPS reseller account with them for a few months now and the service has been great. Jack has been quite active on the forum recently and given a 10% off code “affiliates4ucoupon”.

The ‘Copper’ level package on this page is dirt cheap at £23 a year, and adequate for what you need for this tutorial.

I’m happy to take recommendations from other hosting companies, but on the condition that they offer free Affilistore installation. I don’t want the thread turning into a sales pitch unless it benefits you, the reader.