Web hosting is the act of renting space and Bandwidth through a company so that you may publish your web site online.

You do not have to change your domain if you get a new Host. If your domain is registered in your name, all you need to do is update your namservers (from where you manage your domain names) to that of your new host.

Registering a Domain Name is very easy.

To register a new domain, visit AVHoster at WWW.avhoster.com. Type the domain you would like to buy into the search bar and press enter. If the domain is available, you can purchase it directly from AVHoster.

Uploading your site can be done in many ways, but the most popular is FTP.

When your hosting account was created, you should open CPanel and create an FTP account. Using software such as CuteFTP or WS_FTP, you can log into your Host. Then, using the program like a normal windows program, you can drag and drop files onto your Web host. These files become live online instantaneously.

In most cases, yes.

You should first try to optimize the graphics on your website. Many GIFs look just as good with fewer colors, and many JPEGs look just as good with a higher compression level. NetMechanic offers an image optimizer program online.

You should also analyze the HTML of your site. Make sure you use relative paths, so that images are not downloaded more than one time. Remove any extra spacing and when linking to other pages, use relative paths and not absolute links.

While many hosts already have it, you could also see if your Host has mod_gzip installed. This can save you a lot of Bandwidth.

Best of all, optimizing your page like this makes the user experience better as your site will load faster for them!

These are all programming languages which are referred to by their acronyms.

PHP - Hypertext Preprocessor
ASP - Active Server Pages
Perl - not an acronym

Each programming language has its own benefits and uses. It is best that you research on your own to find one that best fits your needs.

Consider subdomains as an extension of your domain. For example, your site is WWW.example.com. A Subdomain would be test.example.com, and another would be webhosting.example.com.

Subdomains are usually treated as separate sites from the main domain site.

Flash is a Client side feature - it runs on the user's computer, not on your web Host. As long as the user's Browser has the correct plugin installed, it will run on their computer.

Diskspace is the size your website can be. Every single letter on your website has to be stored somewhere on your web Host's Server. Each letter is one byte, and a megabyte is roughly one million bytes. HTML pages are usually very small, but it is the extra images, scripts, and even databases that can take up large amounts of disk space.

Bandwidth/Transfer is the amount of data the server will allow your site to send in a month. Transfer is usually measured in gigabytes - billions of bytes. Once you go over your monthly limit, we may either shut your site down for the remainder of the month or it can charge you 'overage.' This overcharge is usually about $2.00-$5.00 per extra gigabyte of transfer.

A Domain Name is a word along with a TLD that uniquely identifies your website.

MySQL and MS SQL are Database systems. Depending on what your Host provides, you can use a database to organize your data.

To help you out, we have lists on hosts that provide MySQL and hosts that provide MS SQL.

PayPal is an account-based system that lets anyone with an email Address securely send and receive online payments using their credit card or bank account.

Each user signs up with PayPal and then enters their necessary banking and credit card information. Once registration is completed, your email address is all you need to send and receive money.

Uptime is literally what it means - it is the amount of time your site is online throughout the entire month.

The best uptime would be 100%, but because things can break, many hosts offer 99.9% uptime guarantees.

Also known as shared hosting, this form of web hosting should suffice for most everyone.

Virtual hosting simple refers to the fact that your site is on one Server, and that this server hosts mulitple sites. You are virtually shared - your site will not be the only one on this specific server.

Very few sites would actually need the power of a dedicated server, so this option provides to be a reliable and cheap solution.

A Host has to make a profit to continue operating. Some hosts do not properly understand the market, and may be pricing themselves too cheap.

For most people, a dedicated IP is not required. But for people that want to provide anonymous FTP or a website using SSL, a dedicated IP can make that easier.

Not at all. You are paying for webspace that is only yours - no one may put ads on your site except you.