Choosing a Web site host

Before embarking on a new Web project, take stock of your current site with a tool like NetMechanic.

Have you ever gone through your desktop files and found leftover documents, folders, and images that were confusing or unnecessary? On your business's Web server, such extraneous content could be exposed to anybody on the Internet.

If you already have a Web site, go through it as any visitor would to see what you can turn up. Then review the files on the server itself to ensure that what's stored on it is safe for public consumption. For example, there's no need to keep multiple copies of your index page after you make a change. Take this chance to clean up not only old files, but also user accounts and any stored customer data.

If you're going to move your site to a new host, check out your scripts, your style sheets, and all of the other content, then list exactly what you'll need to transfer. Free online tools, such as W3C's free link checker, and paid services, such as NetMechanic, will check every link and file on your site and provide a report on broken links and other common problems. Some desktop applications, such as Visio, have Web site mapping tools that will go through your site and return a diagram with all of the files and the parent-child relationships among them.

If you are starting from scratch, you should run through the inventory step on your local machine or server, keeping in mind that many Web development applications add quite a few extraneous files to your folders (this is especially true for Dreamweaver and FrontPage). Once you have a good idea of your assets and applications, it will be much easier to figure out how to move forward and choose features and a hosting platform.
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