How to Select a
Web Host for Your Site
The success of your website is going to depend to a
large degree on the quality of web hosting your choose for your
website. In much the same way a store owners success is
dependant on the stores location, so your choice of a web host
will affect the success of your website.
Don't be fooled into thinking decisions should be cost
related... you can get very expensive hosting from John Doe in
Timbuktu but his servers are old, can only handle limited
traffic and the link between him and the outside world is shaky
at best.
You can set up your web hosting in any country in the world,
there are no international boundaries on the internet. This
gives you the opportunity to shop around and find the best web
hosting to suit your circumstances. When conducting your
research, these are the points to investigate:
~Does the web host operate with at least a 99%
uptime?
A quality web host will use generator backup in case of
power outages and they will also have redundant back-up systems
so that in the event any of the Internet connections get
interrupted, an alternate Internet connection will take
over?
~How many domains can you host on the one hosting
account?
Many web hosts will only allow one, others allow unlimited
domains. If the web host only allows one domain, do they allow
separate I.P. addresses for each domain hosted?
Many spam related filters will block anything from an I.P.
address that has been reported for spam violations. Most small
websites are hosted on a shared server (one computer can host
many different websites) and these are all hosted under one
I.P. address. If anybody on your server gets into trouble for
spamming, you could pay the penalty because of the I.P. block
that will be imposed. If your website has its own I.P. address,
you will be unaffected.
~How much bandwidth are you allowed?
Bandwidth is the amount of internet traffic going through
your website. If you have e-books, audio files or video files
that your customers download, you are going to need a fairly
large bandwidth allowance.
The question to ask is what happens if you exceed your
bandwidth allowance? Does the host automatically increase your
fee and put you into the next hosting category or do they just
stop showing your website until the next financial month?
~How much disk space are you allowed?
It is pointless purchasing web hosting only to discover
after adding a few new pages to your website that you have run
out of disk space on the server to host your website.
Remember that pictures, e-books, audio files and video files
take up considerable space on a hard drive.
~What sort of customer support does the web host
supply?
Do they respond within 24 hours? The whole point about
hosting is you want your website online 24/7 so if something
goes wrong and you report it, how quickly do they respond and
correct the problem?
A good web host will have phone and email support, the
better ones also use live chat.
~Is MySQL available?
If your web site is going to store a lot of data, for
example in a reciprocal link directory or you are going to use
a forum you will need MySQL which is an extremely powerful and
very popular database program.
How many MySQL databases are you allowed? Some hosts only
allow one database per domain, while others allow unlimited
databases.
~Is a control panel available?
Most web hosts allow their clients to manage their website
hosting through a control panel known as cPanel. This allows
you to control all aspects of your hosting including:
- email accounts
- MySQL databases
- Passwords
- Sub-domains
- Backups
Don't just sign up with the first hosting service you come
across, do a little research first. One very good way of
discovering the best web host is to ask the question on a few
of the more popular forums. You'll soon get the good and bad
about any web host you're interested in.
Finally, price is not a good selection method. The old
premise that expensive means good quality doesn't apply here.
There are plenty of good reliable web hosts that charge a
surprisingly low monthly fee.
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