There are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process when choosing a web hosting company. One of the biggest factors should be:
1) Phone support. Email support is nice, but email occasionally falls in between the virtual cracks. Getting someone on the phone when your site goes down can take a lot of mystery out of the entire process. A lot of the bigger web hosting companies offer toll free support and weekend hours to boot. Phone support is a great benefit for any web hosting client.
2)Another factor to use in deciding whether to use a particular web hosting company is their history. How long has this company been in business? Web hosting companies that have been in existence for less than a year might not be the best choice. A hosting company with a proven track record and a ton of happy clients is certainly a good sign and might work well for you.
3)How about the company's software? This varies widely between web hosting companies. I am rather fond of Cpanel merely because I am used to it, understand where the buttons are and what the features do. It's much easier to stick with something you know than switching to a new User Interface. Some web hosts offer Frontpage features and others don't. Another specific area you might want to research are the statistics programs. What sort of web statistics software is included with your web hosting account? Is Awstats included? This is one area you definitely want to heavily research before signing up.
4)Fees. I'd rather pay a little more to get all the features than fight it out with a sub par web hosting company who I can't reach if my site goes down. I've found decent web hosting for as cheap as $4 per month but generally pay around $15 per month if I want all the bells and whistles that I'll need to host a larger site. A lot of people worry about hosting fees, but I've had the experience that I generally get what I pay for.
Finally, I'd look carefully at the web hosting company's refund policy. Most offer a full refund if you aren't happy with your service. If you are paying for a full year of web hosting up front, you might want to examine the company's refund policy in detail.
Source by: Richard Martin
Friday, September 21, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Web Hosting Providing for your Needs
In today’s online world there are billions of websites. Each and every one of these websites, whether they are dedicated to blogging, sports, software, Pokemon or Jessica Simpson, all have one thing in common: web hosting.
Web hosting is provided by companies far too numerous to name, with products and services individualized to match the needs of their individual niche markets. With so many web hosting companies to choose from, and each one of them providing different services and options at different prices, how do know which one to choose? It seems overwhelming at first, but once you can identify with what it is you want to do with your website, you can start to narrow down the choices of web hosting companies quite a bit.
Before signing up with a web hosting provider, ask yourself a couple questions:
• What is it exactly that you want your site to do?
• Will you be hosting a blog or forum?
• Will you be selling products and services?
• Will you just be putting up pictures and news about friends and family?
• How do you want to administer your website?
• Do you want to make changes online in real time?
• Do you want to make changes offline so you can upload them to the server later?
• What software do you want to be working with while running your website?
• Will it be Windows based, Unix based, or something else?
The first thing to do is figure out exactly what it is you are trying to do with your website. If you are only putting up a site dedicated to friends or family, and not expecting a lot of traffic or to generate sales, then you can choose almost any web hosting provider available. Simple web pages can be generated by a host of free html web page building software, and will work quite well for small, individualized web sites. There are still plenty of companies offering free web hosting services which would work well for a website of this type. Just type in “free web hosting” at your favorite search engine and you will see a ton of companies providing this service.
If your website is going to be attracting a lot of traffic, and therefore utilizing a lot of bandwith, the you will probably want to do some more research and look into companies that are more tailored to hosting websites of this type.
One thing to consider is what type of software your website will be running on. Will it be Unix, Windows, something else? There are several companies offering web building platforms that run on ASP.net, a somewhat newer type of code for building and maintaining websites, which will only work on certain types of servers.
When choosing a web hosting provider, make sure you start by asking yourself these types of questions before you rush out and sign up with a provider. Identifying exactly what you want your site to do, and how you want to do it, and with what software before you sign up for a provider will save you a lot of time and headaches in the long run.
Source by: David Nemer
Web hosting is provided by companies far too numerous to name, with products and services individualized to match the needs of their individual niche markets. With so many web hosting companies to choose from, and each one of them providing different services and options at different prices, how do know which one to choose? It seems overwhelming at first, but once you can identify with what it is you want to do with your website, you can start to narrow down the choices of web hosting companies quite a bit.
Before signing up with a web hosting provider, ask yourself a couple questions:
• What is it exactly that you want your site to do?
• Will you be hosting a blog or forum?
• Will you be selling products and services?
• Will you just be putting up pictures and news about friends and family?
• How do you want to administer your website?
• Do you want to make changes online in real time?
• Do you want to make changes offline so you can upload them to the server later?
• What software do you want to be working with while running your website?
• Will it be Windows based, Unix based, or something else?
The first thing to do is figure out exactly what it is you are trying to do with your website. If you are only putting up a site dedicated to friends or family, and not expecting a lot of traffic or to generate sales, then you can choose almost any web hosting provider available. Simple web pages can be generated by a host of free html web page building software, and will work quite well for small, individualized web sites. There are still plenty of companies offering free web hosting services which would work well for a website of this type. Just type in “free web hosting” at your favorite search engine and you will see a ton of companies providing this service.
If your website is going to be attracting a lot of traffic, and therefore utilizing a lot of bandwith, the you will probably want to do some more research and look into companies that are more tailored to hosting websites of this type.
One thing to consider is what type of software your website will be running on. Will it be Unix, Windows, something else? There are several companies offering web building platforms that run on ASP.net, a somewhat newer type of code for building and maintaining websites, which will only work on certain types of servers.
When choosing a web hosting provider, make sure you start by asking yourself these types of questions before you rush out and sign up with a provider. Identifying exactly what you want your site to do, and how you want to do it, and with what software before you sign up for a provider will save you a lot of time and headaches in the long run.
Source by: David Nemer
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