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The three operating systems (OSes) most commonly used for web hosting are Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X. Mac OS X is a powerful and flexible platform for web hosting, but in practice it's mainly used by a minority of Mac-based web developers. When it comes to choosing between Linux and Microsoft, your web hosting preference has little to do with what you currently use on your own PC. It's about what you want to do with your website.

Websites aren't specific to Windows, Linux or Mac OS in the same way as applications. They're made up of various kinds of programming code, some of which work on all platforms, such as HTML, while others require more specific support. As a general rule, Windows servers support Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), while Linux servers support scripting languages such as PHP, Perl and Python.

Even if these names mean little to you, when putting together your site you may incorporate ready-made code, from web design software or gleaned from online resources, that requires these technologies to run. MySQL databases, popular for business and ecommerce sites, are more commonly supported on Linux. More expensive hosting packages may cross some of these platform boundaries, but in general Linux is the more flexible option for most users.

Many hosting companies operate both Microsoft and Linux servers, and should be able to advise you on which to go for if you explain what type of website you're planning to create. If you're going to use a blogging tool or some other pre-packaged site design system to create

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a website that you'll host yourself, check its server requirements and if necessary go through them with your chosen hosting company before signing up.

More advanced website creation tools, such as packaged ecommerce solutions, may involve running a special application on the server. You'll need to check that the hosting provider will permit this.

Hidden costs

It's not surprising that when you pay only a small fee for a service, any extras are charged on top. You need to be aware of these charges so that you can compare hosting companies and packages accurately: what looks like a pricier option may work out cheaper because there are fewer extra costs.

As more and more people get online and more and more companies compete for their business, a lot of options and services that used to be charged for are now often provided within a basic fee. We've already mentioned some of these, such as forwarding. But don't let the list of freebies blind you to the other charges that won't be listed so prominently.

One important service is transferring your domain to a new host. This isn't something you'd need to do simply to point your web address at a different website, only if you later decide to ditch the company that you registered the domain with and transfer responsibility for it to another company. All that's involved is altering the record held by the registration body. It's now generally regarded as good practice not to charge for this or obstruct users from doing it. You should be able to 'unlock' your domain at any time so that you can then transfer it to a new registrar. Bear in mind that the transfer process will take a few days, and your domain may be down for 24-48 hours while the transfer actually happens. This is because of the way Internet domain names work, not because anyone's being slow.

Transferring domains from other registrars to your new host should also normally be free. Either way, when transferring a domain the yearly fee that you pay for domain registration should never be duplicated; if you switch registrars, you'll pay the next year's fee to the new one when it's due.