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Web space providers advertise many features. This page will attempt to explain them. Space: This determines how big your site can get. If you plan on using a lot of images or having files that people can download, this will probably be fairly important. 5 Megabytes is probably more than enough for most sites, but some need more. Transfers/Hits: Some servers limit you to a certain amount of traffic or a number of hits, or make you pay for any traffic beyond a certain amount. I suggest that you avoid any servers like this, and only have accounts at servers which allow unlimited traffic. Type of Upload: There are two major types of uploading available. The first type is web-based. This means that they have made a form on their web page which allows you to upload files through your browser. This is generally not as powerful as the second option, FTP. If you have FTP access, you upload files with a special program, an FTP client. FTP is generally quicker and more stable than web-based upload. A third type which some servers support is upload through FrontPage (an HTML editor). This is only applicable if the server supports the FrontPage Server Extensions, in which case you can just press the Publish button in FrontPage to upload the site. CGI ability: Some servers do not allow any CGI's at all. CGI is commonly used for counters, guestbooks, etc. Many servers provide certain CGI programs such as counters which they have already configured, and give instructions on how to use. Some servers allow users to upload and configure their own CGI programs. This is a very powerful technique, but has security risks. Custom CGI ability is usually implemented through Telnet. Telnet Access: This is mostly important if you plan on using CGI programs on your web page. It allows you to access the server's command line remotely, through a Telnet client. Server-Side-Includes (SSI): Allows the server to do processing of pages before they are sent to the browser. This includes running CGI programs, including other files, etc. FrontPage Server Extensions: If these are installed, users of FrontPage can do several things. They can upload using the Publish button rather than using a FTP client. They can have imagemaps and counters, forms and guestbooks without configuring a CGI program. Other than that, it doesn't really matter. You can use almost all of FrontPage's features without the server extensions. Server Operating System: This mostly influences how you do CGI. Most servers are UNIX, and most CGI programs that you can download premade take that into account. If you know that a server is not UNIX, you can do some things that you couldn't otherwise. For example, if your server was Windows NT, you could use Visual Basic, a Windows-only programming language, for CGI programming. Banner Advertising: Some free providers require you to include their banner in your pages. Others automatically bring up a window with a banner. Some free providers prohibit any other banners in user pages, while others allow user advertising. Email: Some providers provide only web-based email, which means that you read and write email through the browser. Other providers give a POP or IMAP email address, which is accessed through a separate email program (one may be included with your browser). RealAudio/RealVideo Support: If the server does not support these, you will not be able to use these formats on your web site.
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