Ok fobotsco,
a small business, is that with plenty of graphics / pictures?
....yes, in this case you need a fast server and more webspace
....no, in this case an "average" server will do
bandwith, the sum of uploads and downloads over a specified time period
....may be calculated per day or per month
....assume a website with a total of 10 MB, viewed by 20 customers, sums up to 200 MB, a 2 GB bandwith allocation means the site can be viewed 200 times in the given timeperiod
For a small business very unlikely, guess 1 or 2 MB will be your start and this gives you at least the chance for 2000 visitors
Discspace, hard to say from here, but even with pics it takes you some time to build more than 2 MB on your site, unless you implement music.
A simple MP3 adds easily 3 - 4 MB and people putting up a jukebox need very soon some 100 MB...naturally the bandwith question comes into focus again.
CGI-BIN, ah this nice gadget, do you need database, password protected area, credit card payment facility, adult verification systems etc?
....yes, than you need it and it is a question of what comes with it, mostly simple and readily available small scripts, plenty of solutions are available for free, search for them, but here the helpline may be required for assistance.
....no, makes life much easier and saves some money.
SQL, server query language. A lot of work can be done server side, this offloads pressure on the visitors machine, but needs programming in this language and a server which provides this feature.
....yes, in case of database or other features mentioned under cgi-bin
....no, again, saves time and money
The "big" providers are connected to the world with more than one "cable". You will hardly notice if one of their connections dropps. Think of the server as your home PC, on the hard drive you have several dictionaries, each allotted to one customer with itīs own space. Now one of the customers is a "high-bandwith-user", this does disturb all the others on the same server. If one of the customers experiences a webattack, the whole server goes down. Think of sharing 10 MB space on the same server PPRuNe is hosted on.....your site will never load as PPRuNe is busy like hell day and night....
....workaround is a dedicated server for you, mostly unaffordable-may be a couple of 100 quid per month...
....workaround is a high density bandwidth connection of the provider
....workaround is a provider who limits bandwidth on each machine (unless dedicated)
One more thing, often providers offer Frontpage extensions. Also Frontpage is a very handy and good programm to create pages, it needs some features on the server side to work with all itīs features. Mostly it is not possible to have these features AND other features you may want to use on your website.
Here is what I got:
Email system (SMTP and POP3)
FTP server / client
Static IP
FrontPage extensions
Telnet
CGI-BIN
200 MB webspace
10 GB bandwidth
all for 15 US$/month
and as said....very reliable and fast
http://cwihosting.com/services.htm