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Choosing A Reliable Web Host – A Beginner’s Guide
Most people don’t have a personal web page or a business web site. But there may come a day when you feel the urge to promote a product or invention or just share your thoughts with the online world. There are thousands of web hosts to choose from out there. But the question is how do you go about choosing the right one for you and do it without getting ripped off in the process. Most people feel they do not have enough knowledge or experience to get a web page or web site up on the Internet. So they are afraid to even try. This article will help those of you who want to but are either too afraid or don’t know how to get started.
You have a choice of using free hosting which gives you a small amount of space and bandwidth on their domain. Or you can have your own domain name and pay a small fee for this privilege. If you decide to use a free host provider then your site address will be something like: YourName(dot)HostDomainName(dot)com or HostDomainName(dot)com/YourName. The free services also force you to have advertisements on your website to pay for your free service. Some people prefer not to have advertisements on their sites and they want to have their own personal and/or business domain name. For instance www(dot)YourName(dot)com or YourName(dot)US or.org or.net. If this is what you want then you want to find the web host that is right for you.
First you should make a short list of things you want to do on your web site and make a list of things you want from your potential web host. As far as things you want to do on your site, that is a personal choice and I cannot tell you what you can and cannot do. But here is a small list of things that you can setup and do easily on a personal web site:
Personal Website
Picture Gallery
Discussion Forums
Blogs
E-Commerce Store and Shopping Cart
Guest Books
Mailing Lists
Polls and Surveys
Content Management
Contact Management
Auction Site (Similar to E-Bay)
Website Building Tools
FAQ’s
Wiki’s
And much much more! The good news is that most of the software required to do all of the above is included with most web hosting packages at no extra cost. The bad news is that if you don’t have much computer know how it can be difficult to install and start running the software mentioned above. The better news is that there are web hosts out there that can and will help you as little or as much as you need to get going on the Internet.
Now you need to make a list of things you want from your potential web host. Don’t worry, I’ll explain some of these in more detail:
Good server uptime guarantee (You should insist on 99.7% or more uptime)
24/7 Technical Support via e-mail
An address and phone where you can call if you need to talk to a real person
A host that specializes in supporting New Web Users Called Newbies
A realistic requirement of how much disk space and bandwidth you really need
Which Operating System do you want/need
No requirement to buy your domain name from the web host
A good web host will publish their Terms of Service (TOS) on their website. This TOS should include an uptime guarantee and refund policy. It should also include the hosts’ requirement to provide you with 24/7 support via e-mail as a minimum. Some better hosts also provide online chat and a phone number to call with technical problems. Part of their support for your billing and customer support needs should be e-mail and a telephone number. Be wary of hosts that do not provide an alternate way of contact other than e-mail. It is hard to find a host that will truly support a newbie but they can be found. Some newbie’s will require a minimum amount hand holding and some will require a walk through and some will require that the host do most everything for them. Expect to pay extra for a host that will design and manage your web site for you. You need to know how much disk space and bandwidth you will require. Most people don’t really know how much they need or want and will over estimate their requirements sometimes by 100 fold. Most web sites use between 50MB and 100MB.
And most E-Commerce store sites use less than 1,000MB (or 1GB) of storage. I suggest if you are just starting out you should start with an account with at least 200MB and no more than 500MB for a personal web page and at least 1 GB for a small business site and at least 2GB for an online store. Most people see ads from web hosts with extremely large amounts of each or unlimited amounts at ridiculously low prices. Stay away from these hosts. Hosts like this tend to sell more space and bandwidth than they have and this will cause you to have poor uptime of your website, a lot of sending in support tickets for problems and the frustration of having to deal with these problems. Plus you will not get the support you are truly looking for because they have to cut back somewhere in order to stay in business. Speaking of which it would be a shame to find your web site down and the host ran off with your money just because you didn’t want to pay a little extra. To choose which Operating System you want is easy. You have a basic choice of two, Linux/Unix and Windows. If you have no preference or special needs go with Linux. Linux provides for more inexpensive hosting packages and more hosts use Linux so hosts are easier to find. Too many people make the mistake of buying their domain name from their web host. Do not do this under any condition. Some unscrupulous web hosts will hold your domain name hostage if you want to leave them of if you don’t want to pay their rate hikes. Always buy your domain name from a separate domain name registrar.
Go about e-mailing all the hosts you feel have the requirements you are looking with your list of questions. Then make your decision based on their answers, grammar or the replies and the timeliness of their replies.
Discover how to go about choosing a Top Web Hosting Providers, to get information about Host Gator Web Hosting Review you must read Web Hosting Reviews And Ratings here.
