The Basics:
If one wants to put his/her web site online, Web hosting offers the opportunity. For making a site go online, no matter it is having large or small content one has to go onto a web server. Thus a web server is simply a larger and much more powerful computer than user’s own computer. On these servers one’s Internet content simply sits for people to access and view the information available. These web servers are stored within data centers; all what is required is simply renting some space on the server.
Why to use a web hosting service?
The first reason to choose is its affordability. The work of the web hosting companies includes looking after and updating all software required to maintain one’s site, adding security patches making sure that one’s content is safe from hackers/viruses and unwanted Spam. The first step after registration of web site’s name is hosting it with the web server. In case there comes any difficulty with the web site, full technical support is supported by the hosting company. In chases one chooses to host by own, it will cost too much on hardware, bandwidth and ongoing software updates.
What is shared web hosting?
While searching for a web host Company one will find that many are offering shared web hosting. Shared web hosting is simply a server that has a number of different web sites sitting on it simultaneously. In case of shared web hosting one will be allocated a certain amount of disk space on the server and this allows user to have a number of web sites hosted on one server. It is a very secure service even though one is sharing the server with many different companies, as no other company will have access to other’s files. There are many people having wrong opinion that using a shared service will make the web site act slowly. In case of shared web hosting the information will be displayed and downloaded equally as fast as if it where on the server on it’s own. The concept used by Web host companies is that they offer shared hosting simply to use up all the space on the server, there is no benefit to user or them having empty hard disk space.
Why good hosting is required?
If one has developed a web site for business opportunity or to sell merchandise online what all is needed is reliability as downtime costs much money. Therefore less downtime means the better chance of making money by the user. One is required to compile a whole list of questions to ask the web host company when it comes to hosting his/her site. It is necessary to have a guaranteed response time if any problem occurs with the site or if it goes offline. One needs to have 24-hour access to his/her files with 24-hour support if the site is in business of selling products online, as most of the sales could be made in the evening or nighttime. Thus it is very important to have support all time for any issues that could arise. Not only that to check the effectiveness of site it is also important to look for Statistics i.e. how many unique hits (people visiting one’s site) one is getting so that one can see the trend of people just visiting to those who are buying. Thus one should check in advance the stats offered by different companies as some web host companies offer very substantial stats while others can be less informative, so one should always ask for a demonstration before finalizing any host.
Mouth publicity is a great way to hear as to who are a good host and a bad host. One should ask his/her colleague or who is already taking the experience of that host. There are several good as well as bad hosts in the market, therefore one should ask the questions and make sure that he/she is confident with the replies before signing up.
Will hosting in own country or another, effects the web site?
It is quite interesting to know if the company is providing 24 hour support to allow for time differences, then one should have the same level service as if the web host company was based just down the road. Thus it makes no difference if the host is of same country or of another. There are many people thinking hosting their website outside of their registered country will lead to losing their domain identity, which is totally wrong example if one is based in Ireland and is having a computer website it would be something like www.computerparts.ie The. I.e. is the identity of Ireland but if one wants his site hosted in the US then he/she would still keep the. I.e., and there is no need to change to. Com. Thus the great thing about web hosting is that the world is oyster and one can shop online globally until one is satisfied with the service.
The motto of the user is to choose web-hosting company, which in within his boundary of budget but to select one from several available it is both overwhelming and challenging. Merely typing the word “web hosting” in any search engine like google will return with millions of documents and millions of host providers. Now the biggest problem is to get one out of those several hosters.
What is Budget web hosting?
Budget web hosting in the simple sense is that which offers its services with charge of minimum $10 per month. But the important consideration is not that price but also the duration that they are offering. While comparing the quotes of different companies one most take care for both the annual as well as monthly charge quoted by companies as some companies quotes annually where it needs to divide that amount by 12 months to get them converted into monthly amount so as to compare them with other monthly given charges. But important must be to note if they are charging any setup fee as it can be terms as hidden cost which needs to be taken care of while selecting for budget web hosting. Forming general impression for the company.
After considering the above parameter of money next would be to get a general impression of the company, which can easily be formed after looking on the company’s front page. The points to be taken care of includes if the company is depicting professional outlook? If they have given in their contact address just email address and phone number only or do they have shown their physical address also? As if the physical address is not given then on the verge of any problem with the website then due to lack of proper contact information one can get into big trouble.
If proper customer support services are available.
Another thing to take care of is the support services. It is important to check if the company is having any toll free number to contact them and where are they based? As if location of company is far away then it will be much costly to use phone to contact them for a far away distance say in other city or country. Another best feature of company’s having toll free number is that it shows that the company is keen to deal with their customers openly and with honesty. Is there any guarantee or just warranty?
Another thing to note does the company, often companies, give the guarantee tends to give just mere warranty or they hide satisfaction guarantee. For selection one must choose only that company, which is, offer money back facility against dissatisfaction else one must look for other company. Is there any uptime guarantee of site given?
There must be uptime guarantee of site given. Uptime guarantee of site refers to the amount of time the server is live and serving the home pages. Uptime guarantee of 99% means the host is guaranteeing that their servers tend to be up and in operation 99% of the time. During the tenure of one year 99% uptime refers a downtime of one percent i.e. 87 hours in a year or 7 hours per month server wont be available. Thus that is an important consideration.
The user can try the given below guidelines to make the process of finding “cheap” hosting service a lot easier.
1. Act smart:
The user should keep his/her mind sharp while dealing for a use or rather acceptable use policy of that particular cheap web host. One can easily locate fair deal, due to immense competition prevailing in the cheap web hosting industry however if the user find a host offering features at an extremely cheap amount as compare to other hosts, then, BEWARE, user should never deal with such people.
2. Perform additional research:
A user should confirm about the host from several sources like reviews, related details from search engines, and even by verifying their experience in this particular sector. One should go to the support pages and see whether their provided support level matches one’s requirement or not. One cannot expect to receive best ever support for every mere little trouble which user receive through payment less than per month.
3. Check support:
These types of businesses would not survive as capable support personnel demands money. If one talks about larger companies and Windows plans then they are generally quite costly. It is a matter of fact that, cheap web hosts sell additional amount of space and bandwidth, predicting not total exploitation of it by the user. It is quite usual and there will be no negative impact on the user if he/she utilizes all the owed space and bandwidth. The user should be aware of the fact that, cheap web hosts often do not have full command over their servers and it is possible that they might have a dedicated server with another company in order to save their cost. Due to this reason only they are sometimes forced to depend on others to perform some physical tasks like replacing some hardware on the server or other sort of technical problem which they are unable to handle.
These days, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for next to nothing; however, cheap price cannot said to be the decisive factor which one should have to considered while purchasing web hosting services. This article provides a lesson of not considering the best price and features as the only passport of getting a good web hosting company but also emphasizing on reliability and honesty. If one is investing his/her money and effort into finding paying customers and he/she wouldn’t like to lose them in the condition just in order to save a few dollars per month on a web hosting service.
If a user is searching for a web hosting company, it is not a matter of concern that it is just for the inception of a web or the move of an established site; the user has to widen his/her thinking area before coming to a judgment that along which company he or she has to go with:
Customer support
Website hosting service is not restricted just to storage or bandwidth. Lacking customer support, a top-notch service is also nothing. If one is owning a business website, it is both duty and requirement of his/her hosting provider to be available for the service- 24/7, as any time any sort of technical fault may arise; neglecting it the hosting provider may suffer from serious shortage of customers and money.
Downtime assurance and service monitoring
It is a minor inconvenience to go down when it is a case of personal website; but it is serious when it comes to business website. Can anyone guess how much amount of profit would he/she lose if his/her site had been down for a week? As it is a trend of spending a large amount on advertising the website a long downtime can be lethal for today’s companies.
Basically, there are two rules upon which one can relay:
1. One should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered or not. An ideal service-oriented provider will not only give a money-back guarantee, but also offer a discount or free service as compensation for downtime. A company which avoids taking such liability will not provide an ideal service.
2. One should not go with a company claiming 100% uptime, as there is no such thing as a server with 100% uptime. If anyone ever announces that their server has a 100% uptime; one can easily conclude that they are either lying or they don’t perform the necessary upgrades that avoid a machine from being compromised.
Reputable web hosts will post statistics on their site, the remedial solution for the questions like for e.g., what is the frequency of interruption. How about the average percentage of downtime? If these aren’t posted, ask; if the answer isn’t forthcoming, that is not going to be a good sign. If one still likes to go with a host which doesn’t monitor servers, one has to do it by his/her own.
Backups
IS there any host who is safe against different types of technical and programical failures, the answer is NO! So, one should make sure that the company runs scheduled backups. The other probable advice would be that one must always have a backup of his/her website himself/herself, as one cannot predict what exactly is going to happen next. CPanel, currently the most popular web hosting management software, has a very comfortable backup-making tool. Which allows the user to backup files and databases quickly and easily, so backups are not a long head ace.
Acceptable use policy
Web hosts may have 200-300 or more clients per server; one cannot predict the exact number, as companies possess different hardware; while, each hosted website has different resource usage. One cannot ignore the probability of that a few of those customers host illegal content. There are several web hosts who have had their servers unplugged, resulting in their clients’ websites going down. Definitely ,one would never like to put his/her business at risk and locate the website hosted on the same server along with illegal pornography and software sites, so to avoid such types of problems one must check host’s acceptable use policy to find out, whether the host takes care of what’s hosted on their servers or not.
Hosting one’s site on an uncared-for server will also result in a low speed. If somebody on the same server sends spam, the server’s IP address will be blacklisted and he/she will have serious problems as recipients would stop his/her receiving emails. Spam is being sent almost everywhere, so having one or two red records isn’t that bad; but, if there are more, it may become a problem later on.
Infinite bandwidth and web space
If one talks about the adage “you get what you pay for” it ideally suit for the Web hosting industry. One should not fall in the craters created by the hosts like for e.g., unlimited allowances, as there is neither unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host’s pay for each GB of bandwidth themselves. One can think that hard drives are free but they aren’t. They are just a mirage to attract customers. The average website doesn’t use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month; the customer is satisfied as he/she bought something “unlimited” and through this host automatically receives a new customer, on whom they don’t need to spend more than $1-2 USD per month. But for imagination what would happen if one person had a website, burning much more bandwidth than an average site does, and he signed up with a hosting company offering unlimited traffic? The host would simply suspend his account and tell him, that it was via too much bandwidth. There even several companies there which offer unlimited bandwidth for the user and have a statement on their requisites of service, explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB which they actually mean, for example.
Will someone really own his/her domain name?
If a user buy a domain name together with a website hosting package, he/she must make sure that the host is registered the domain name under his/her name or not. The name usually should be written in their FAQ, but, if there is no such information is provided, the user simply needs to take a step and contact them. This will also give the user a chance to detect whether their customer support team is fast enough or not. If the hosting company registers domains under someone else’s name, the user may have to face the challenges switching hosting providers later. If the user is in such situation, he/she have to file for a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which costs much beyond both domain name and web hosting service together.
Control Panel
A necessary tool for easiness and for regular maintenance, including, email mailbox additions/deletions, password resets, web additions, web count reports, statistics etc. This tool is unavoidable if the site is meant for any sort of business. That is why it is currently the most demanding web hosting management software. It is behind the screen role of a next-generation web hosting control panel system that allows a user to manage his/her domain through a web interface. The key idea is to transfer as much of the control of managing users web site to him/her; So one can say that, user have the ability to manage all the dimensions of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, web site statistics, etc.
Value-added services
In the regular interval of time, hosting companies offer diverse sort of value-added services in order to give themselves an outstanding look. Of course, these are an advantage, but customers forget that many of the services cannot be applied in any of the field. But still some of the valuable features are mentioned below:
1. Auto-installer script –
Play a role saving the user’s time if he/she is going to install a forum, image gallery, content management system, etc. Installation procedures on an auto-installer script can be done in seconds and can be easily performed by novices by avoiding difficult tasks generally related with installations.
2. Online website builder –
Mainly dedicated with showing the way by moving on which the user can design a website in a few minutes without having any creation software and knowledge. One very powerful website builder established in the market is Site Studio; this quality based editor allows for ease of use, full control of color schemes and themes, one-click publishing, and a collection of templates to brought into use.
The last tip
The purpose of this article is to feel the users that price and allocations cannot be given reference over importance of quality of service; if the user possess limited budget, then the price can be a valid criterion, but if not, it should not be given much importance.
By going through this article and asking questions, one can narrow down the list of web hosts to the extent where the user by his/her own can make the judgment between what is right and what is wrong
