Once your law firm has registered a domain name, found a web designer, and the site is being constructed, your firm should consider web hosting.

Your law firm's web site can be hosted either by a third party company (out-sourced) or hosted on your own law firm's servers.

If your law firm is large enough and has a dedicated IT department, hosting the web site on your own servers may be a viable option. However, since web hosting costs have dropped rapidly in the past few years, we recommend outsourcing your hosting needs to a third party web host.

Since many web hosts provide free technical support, the hassle of keeping your web site online is diminished. Further, many web hosts have unique features that would be costly to install on an individual basis, such as web traffic statistics, firewalls, security, encryption, email, etc.

Depending upon your firm's technology needs, web hosting usually comes in two basic flavors: LINUX and WINDOWS.

The host you choose will depend upon the technology that your web site needs. If your web site is database driven and your web designer uses .asp, .cfm, .jsp, .php, or .cfm your web site will need a web host that supports these technologies. .

When comparing web hosts your law firm should look at the following information:

• How long have they been in business?
• How much are their hosting plans?
• Can you upgrade your plan seamlessly?
• How much storage do you get?
• What type of web traffic analysis programs?
• Support for streaming media?
• Database support? What type?
• Email accounts?
• Bandwidth?
• Do they host warez, crackz, adult content?
• Dedicated IP address?
• Shared Hosting?

Now that you have selected a web host, we can discuss added features of law firm web sites, such as Flash.