Ok you want to start your own Website (or you already have many websites online), the first question you have to ask yourself is: do I host it myself or put it into the cloud???
It doesn’t matter what the website is (at the moment: blog, Twitter connection, Facebook add on, storefront or whatever), all sites must be stored somewhere accessible to the Internet cloud. There are pros and cons to every answer depending on what your current computer configurations are like. For example if you have a local server you control and can manipulate it you can host your own website for lower costs (there are always costs involved), However if you store it on somewhere in the web on someone’s server then you have to most likely pay more and follow their policy’s (try not to go against them). Local servers you have to maintain updates with OS and anti-viruses, were as in the web server you must rely on someone else doing those updates on your behalf. Keep in mind that when updates are being installed your website is unavailable at the time. If you set the updates then you can schedule them anytime, if however someone else sets the schedule then you hope it’s not done when your web viewers need to view your site (storefronts are the worst for this). There is also security and content ownership issues, storing your site remotely means it’s possible the remote site owns your content you put on the site (pictures, customer info, credit card numbers, ect.)
Regardless you have to have a domain name that can point to the server of choice and then setup the website of your choice of software (from HTML only to scripting marvels of today depending on you web programming expertise and website integration). Sometimes in setting up a website remotely (website in cloud server) the web software is already setup for you, all you have to do is configure it for your personal setup (pictures, databases, user info).
I personally like to host the website myself (many reasons I will not go into right now), other individuals choose to use the remote option for their reasons. An example I came across recently only justifies my decision only more. I’m talking of the web (blog) author who remotely stored his website at Google for 10+ years with no problems (Website Reference), then suddenly Google Policy’s (which are always changing) had an issue with the authors website. That’s one of the problems with remote websites policy’s that’s forever changing. I know this because this site (Blcompinc.com) was originally started as a remote website to be forced to fit into their square holes of web policy, it worked but was very very restricted on what we could say or do based on the providers web policy (at the time). This was done because the site had no local server (due to costs and technology), but when the technology became cheaper and more powerful that decision was changed. By hosting your own website you set your own web policy and can say anything you think you need to say (not always great but much less restrictive). Also by hosting your own website all the content remains yours and yours alone. User information, databases and pictures among a few items stored on websites today can equal a lot of information that can be used for other purposes (not for the real reason for the content), and security is always a challenge today.
At this point it should be mentioned that local hosting of websites also can bring an unexpected issues when it comes to security (especially when updates are not being followed regularly), then there can be DDOS web attacks to database leakage to customer information being stolen. With proper handling (and most likely more money) one can avoid these issues. Also power issues come to mind with fallback options, with some remote providers this is already handled for you but the local option is even more money to deal with. Like we mentioned earlier lots of pros and cons to both options, which one is better for you? That’s a good question only you can answer based on your setups and needs. I do recommend that you research all options as much as possible with looking into bandwidth needs local and remote.
