Choosing a Good Web Hosting Company
Posted by: James Norris |
Filed under: Hosting Tips & Advice
Choosing a good web hosting company is important whether you are a business owner or a frequent blogger.
When deciding on a web hosting company, make sure that they are honest about their features. You’ll want a host that is both reliable and stable, and that will help you immediately following any problem you may have with your site. Most hosts offer 24-hour technical support and will gladly fix the tiniest problem for you before it turns into a disaster.
A good, reliable web hosting company will guarantee at least a 99% uptime. Don’t settle for anything less than 99% or you’ll be experiencing downtime right along with your server every time they’re down and they most likely won’t let you know ahead of time.
If you predict that your site will experience a lot of traffic flow, you’ll definitely want to choose a host that offers a higher than average level of bandwidth and disk space. However, most websites that are just getting started only use about 3GB of bandwidth each month and about 10MB of disk space. You will most likely be adding more and more files to your site as time progresses and as your site becomes better known, you will begin to experience higher levels of traffic. Eventually, you’ll need better bandwidth and more disk space. Make sure that you are aware of your host company’s hidden fees, and be aware of the unlimited bandwidth/disk space hosts. Read the fine print before making any decisions, as you are likely to get fined if you exceed the unlimited limitations. A good web hosting company will not charge you for overages, so ask lots of questions before anything is written in stone.
There are many features to think about when choosing a host company. FTP, PHP, Perl, .htaccess, telnet, SSH, MySQL and crontabs are all options that different web hosting company’s will offer. PHP and Perl are common Internet programming languages, sort of like JavaScript. The only real difference is that JavaScript runs on the actually web browser, whereas PHP and Perl run on the computer where your site is located. You’ll need .htaccess to create your own error pages for your website when a link isn’t working properly, and to prevent bandwidth theft. Telnet and SSH are used to maintain databases and to test script programs. MySQL is needed for blogging websites, and Cron is a program scheduler. It lets you schedule what times of the day certain programs will run. A good web hosting company will offer you all of these programs.
If you are conducting business through your site, you will need SSL and a shopping cart through your host. SSL is a secure server, which allows you to safely collect credit card payments or other private data through your website. SSL encrypts the data from the customer so that only the recipient can see the private information.
You’ll probably also want a host that offers e-mail and a control panel. The e-mail will help your audience to easily reach you when they feel it is necessary, and the control panel allows you to add or remove those e-mail addresses or change passwords without going through the company’s technical support staff.
All of these options are important to think about when considering what web hosting company will be a good company for you. Remember to read the small print and ask questions where you don’t understand something. You don’t want to be unhappy with your host and you definitely don’t want to get hit with any hidden fees
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