Starting a membership site is impossible if you do not have a hosting company that offers you the right tools to run your web site. At minimum the hosting company should allow you the ability to create forms, set up an ecommerce site, community development tools, recurring billing modules and access level controls. But that’s not all you will need to build and run a successful membership web site.

MySQL, PERL, CGI, SSI, CRON, Curl, FrontPage, PHP scripting tools, Python, GD and ImageMagik, which allows you to create streaming videos and music are a few basic programs that come with most webhosting packages. If these are not listed on the hosting company’s sales page, either move on to another company or send an email asking for clarification.

Don’t overlook your email needs. Your hosting package should come with auto responders, mailing lists, mail forwarding, web mail, Spam control, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP. Again, if in doubt, ask. It is a lot better to know upfront what you’re getting than to discover it when you need it - but don’t have it!

Does the hosting company provide you with a control panel? These control panels (often referred to as cpanels) usually offer you many tools and features such as hotlink protection, Fantastico, management of Search Engine submittals, and error pages. If Fantastico is provided you have at your fingertips access to instant blogging software, portals, PHP, Nuke, Instant Chat, Forums, counters, FTP, and so on.

Password protection is a must. After all, if you are running a membership site you don’t want just anyone to be able to access it! Make sure the host you are looking at offers password protection of folders via the cpanel and via .htaccess.

Want to know what pages your customers are viewing, how many requests are returning an error code or where your visitors are coming from? Make sure you have tracking statistics available. Tracking statistics often include raw log or other access such as Awstats. Error logs and analogs are provided as well.

If your goal is to run a successful membership website, you really should consider purchasing the plan that offers ecommerce features, as well as Shared or Private SSL (this affords the consumer protection), Shopping Carts, Joomla, Mambo and other free membership scripts that are usually available if you have the Fantastico feature.

In addition to the basic tools listed above, you will also need to consider some marketing tools for your site when you get it set up. These will vary depending on they type of site you are building. In fact, there will be things you will need, but you won’t even know what they are until you run into a problem or two. Just head on over to the search engine and start searching.

So, here you are: poised and ready to dive in. It all started when you dared to dream of owning and running a membership site. Now you know how to find a good webhosting company. The time for hesitation is over. Just step into the water and start swimming with the giants!