So you want to have a website of your own? You worked overtime to design and code that beautiful website. Or might be you hired a web designer. But now comes the time to upload this to a web server, so that the world can find your amazing site. So you do a search for webhosting, and are bomabarded with a million people trying to sell you the web hosting. So what choices do you have? How do you separate the grain from the chaff? Let us begin by seeing what choices you have.

Free web hosting with Tripod/Lycos/Geocities or similar sites:
Pros:
Totally free.
Cons:
Large, Irritating ads on your website.
No support for PHP, MySql etc.
Generally no support for FTP.
Control panel is limited.
Go for this if you have a very basic/personal website. Not at all recommended for professional websites.

Professional webhosting.
Pros:
Very reliable.
Quick support.
Feature packed.
Cons:
Generally very costly.
Go for this if your budget can afford it or you have a very demanding website.

Budget webhosting:
They try to balance free and professional webhsoting.
Pros:
Cheap yet somewhat reliable.
Cons:
Some features may be missing.
Might be plagued with downtime, server crashes etc.
Go for this if you can accept your site being down.

It is also important to stay away from fly by night operators which claim to give every thing without the catch.