Web Hosting

Everyday, more people are discovering the benefits and global reach of the Internet. As a result, more online businesses are being established and more websites are going up. Now is the right time to stake your claim in Cyberspace and the best way to do it is with your very own website. Because web hosting is what you need to get a piece of the action, I will help you find a good service in five easy steps.

1.) Determine Your Needs



The first step in finding a web host is determining your individuals needs. Why do you even need a website? Is it just to share photos and info with family and friends? Are you moving your business online? Do you plan to sell products or services? The answers to these questions are very important as they will ultimately determine what type of web hosting you need.

2.) Features



After getting a good idea of what your website needs, it’s time to consider the feature-set that will meet those requirements. Of course, features will vary greatly depending on individual needs but here are a few to keep in mind.

- Disk space and bandwidth

Disk space refers to the amount of space you have on the server for storing your website files. Bandwidth entails how much traffic and activity your site can support. If you don’t have enough of either, your site will be limited and can actually become slow or inaccessible. The good thing is that most web hosts supply more than enough as the average website requires less than 1 gigabyte of each resource per month.

- E-commerce tools

If your goals consist of selling products or services, selecting a web hosting plan with Ecommerce features is a must. Keep your eyes peeled for multiple email accounts, free shopping cart software and SSL encryption to protect your online transactions.

- Control panel

The control panel is one of the most essential web hosting features. This software allows you to control virtually every aspect of your account. From the interface you can access the design tool that allows you to build your site, create email accounts, upload files and much more.

3.) Reliability



Your website won’t be very popular if it’s always down because of technical difficulties. In order to avoid these issues, I suggest searching long and hard for a host that delivers a reliable service. There are many aspects that point to reliability but the most critical is uptime. Uptime refers to the amount of time your site will be available opposed to being down for a wide range of reasons. As of now, 99.9% is the industry standard so anything less should be viewed as unacceptable.

4.) Technical Support and Customer Service





When it comes to web hosting, one should never underestimate the importance of support. Anything can go wrong behind the scenes and when it does, you need to know what’s going on. I recommend looking for a company that offers various means of support including toll-free phone, email and live chat. Support is something that can make or break a web host and also determine how successful you will be online.

5.) Customer Feedback



One can learn a lot about a particular web hosting service from customer feedback. You can find web hosting reviews all over the web, and trust me, they are absolutely golden. A quality review you will tell you what to expect in terms of price, features, reliability and support. Most importantly, it will let you know what service is worth looking into and who should be avoided at all costs.

Is selecting good web hosting plan, really important? Many people who are starting out in Internet marketing wonder about this question. However, unfortunately, much attention is not given to, selecting a web-hosting plan. Many people just trust their web designer or web developer to choose a web hosting plan for them; they don’t even review their hosting plans, as they consider choosing a web hosting plan as a minor factor that will not matter too much.

Usually people do not pay much attention to web hosting plan unless there is a problem with it. So, if one is fortunate and gets a decent web hosting plan without considering his/her options, he/she perhaps will not think of choosing a web hosting plan as a very important aspect of website development. On the other hand one may view the selection of a web hosting plan in a different light, if he/she had an insufficient web hosting plan, or he/she been burned by a unreliable web hosting company.

Important points to remember are-

1. Security

2. Support

3. Speed

4. Space

5. Administrative functions

6. Cost

7. Email capabilities

8. Reports

9. Reliability

10. Extra features

Security

For website development, the security features of a web hosting plan’s servers is important, particularly if website is an ecommerce website through which customer payments are processed, or personal information is transmitted via their website. Customers may be cautious to transmit personal and financial information through their website, without a secure server. One should look for security features like: -Encryption capabilities and the ability to set up a dedicated secure server for his/her company in their web-hosting plan.

Support

Different web hosts have different levels of support with some responding to email or online requests while others offering person-to-person phone support. 24 hour technical support is being provided by few web hosts but not by all. Technical support should without any doubt be a part of a web-hosting plan. Before choosing a web-hosting plan one should make sure to find out about the quality and convenience of technical support that is being provided by that web host.

Speed

In an e- business, loading speed of a website is very important. Because, if the site takes more than a few seconds to load when people visit the website, they get annoyed and go on to the next, forgetting this website altogether. So ensure to find out the type of Internet connection the web host is using for example whether it is a high-speed connection or not, while evaluating a web hosting plan.

Space

The space and the bandwidth that ones web hosting plan allows for his/her website use matters. Any web hosting plan offers adequate space for a standard website, in most cases. However, one should make sure that if his/her website grows, he/she can increase the space provided for his/her web hosting plan if necessary. Restrictions of bandwidth can obstruct the ability of website visitors to download or upload data.

Administrative Functions

The owner of the website should be able to quickly and easily make changes to the website though sometimes a web developer serves as a Webmaster. Through the administrative features of a web-hosting plan, this can be accomplished, normally on online accessible control panel.

Cost

While choosing a web-hosting plan, cost is very important; though, it is not the most important consideration. Sometimes one really gets what he/she pays for. Therefore, cost should be one of the factors while deciding upon web hosting plan but picking cheapest web hosting plan is not always the best idea. Furthermore, it’s not worth having free web hosting plan.

Email Capabilities

In every web hosting plan email capabilities should be included. The ability of using email aliases, number of email addresses being provided, and the ability of setting up auto responders are things, which should be considered. Restrictions on the size of files that can be sent and received or stored on the email server can also be of much value.

Reports

Reports about website activity and access to server logs should be standard features of a web hosting plan. These reports helps in marketing pains, as one can know from where his/her traffic is coming from and which marketing mediums are producing results. With the help of reports, one can even find out which of his/her web pages are most popular and which ones are not being visited at all.

Reliability

The reliability of the company who will be providing web-hosting plan is important. Like their percent of uptime, the duration of time they have been in business, and their backup and data retrieval practices play an important role in deciding whether or not the web-hosting plan one is deciding to take is reliable. Reliability is an important concern, as downtime of sites results in the loss of business.

Extra Features

Apart form standard features that are provided in a web-hosting plan, there can be options that may cost extra. Limited plans cost less than a full- service web-hosting plan. However, Full- service web hosting plan may be worth if chosen. Some of the extra features to look for are-

FTP access capabilities for sharing files and

support for software one may use for his/her website.

You only need to do a search from within Google to give you some idea of the number of web hosting companies that there are out there all over the world. Hopefully as you are going to be a business user of the Internet, you need to be choosing a hosting company that caters for business users and you should not to be tempted to use any of the free hosting services. So how do you decide?

Well when you choose a company to host your Internet business web site, then you want one that is going to be totally reliable, feature packed and have some top class support to help you with every aspect of hosting your site. Now unless you are building a web site that is going to contain thousands of pages, pictures, music files and video streams, I don’t really think you need to concern yourself too much now regarding disk storage size and monthly bandwidth usage. However, your decision should include as to whether you can upgrade your hosting package easily as and when it may be required. By this I mean paying for extra storage and bandwidth should it become necessary, this way you can start on a smaller and cheaper hosting plan and when you grow, your hosting grows with you.

You also need what is called cPanel that also includes Fantastico, this is your main control panel for your web site from where you can easily alter, arrange and set up many, many aspects of your web site including your email addresses, you can set up several email addresses for example, marketing, sales, info, admin etc at yourdomain.com

Now generally most webmasters have a difficulty here in choosing a hosting company, as most always look very similar in terms of what they offer. Which brings me to this point, personally I think you should choose your hosting company from personal recommendations whenever you can as experience can count for a lot. For instance the hosting company I use may not be the cheapest on the market but then again, it’s a long way off from being one of the dearest, but it is one of the best. Let me explain briefly a little more of what you should be looking for when deciding on you choosing the right hosting company.

Below I have listed just some of the points from my own hosting company for you to look out for when choosing your own hosting:

You need to look for hosting that can guarantee around 99.9% up time.

Live support you can talk with a live person is a nice option.

24/7/365 phone support as well as email.

Choose your hosting that includes cPanel and Fantastico.

cPanel demo shows you round cPanel that explains everything about it all.

Their cpanel is one of the best in the industry.

Tutorials (some are shown in Flash) covering all aspects of your hosting.

52 scripts that you can easily install that includes from running your own Blog, to having your own forum, to installing your own shopping mall.

There is a knowledge base also that answers a lot of already asked questions.

A user forum where you can ask other webmasters, questions regarding your hosting.

Whether you can pay for your hosting monthly or yearly.

Offer of a 30-day money back guarantee if things should change in that period.

One usually thinks that he/she will receive same services with the certain range of price, which type of host it doesn’t matter. This is not a fact. Basically, one will not find differences in the web hosting but if one will carefully analyze there will be a vast difference between each one of them. Some of which are not adequate to user’s business. There are several hosts charging $10 a month for a particular package which one can get at the rate of $5a month with other hosting provider.

Mentioned below are 3 of the steps following which one can end up on an ideal hosting selection.

1. Deciding one’s Price range:

Price is the top most concern. One can spend anything to meet his/her requirements ranging from a few dollars a month to a few hundred. There is no one but the user who knows about his/her requirement and about his/her budget. One should consider it. Here one should find providers offering shared and dedicated hosting solutions. It is quite crucial to know the actual disparity among the two. Normally, it is shared web hosting is more inexpensive as compare to dedicated hosting. In the case of shared hosting their will be several web sites on the same server making it quite affordable for each individual.

Due to this reason only a large amount of individuals and businesses began with shared hosting and its reliability and consistency is increasing day by day due to which several businesses have raised on the basis of price and reliability. One can get web hosting prices generally in the range of $5 to $30 a month. If one will talks about Dedicated hosting then the user will have all the right to exploit entire resources. User will command the web server according to the available resources. When it comes to this type of hosting it will differ in both the price and services. It can be from $99 a month to a huge amount of $300-$400 a month. Certainly, here one will enjoy a reliable service and command over content and customization area.

2. Deciding one’s Needs:

What is the requirement of the user? However, one cannot deny the fact that web hosting has become quite affordable and competitive over the last few years but one should first search out the answers of few of the basic questions. Is user’s requirement is the 100% uptime i.e. 24/7/365 or just the modest uptime i.e. 99.9% which one can find at a cheap price as per the standardization of industry in comparison to a SLA (Service Level Agreement). What is user are Criteria regarding support? Does the requirement is 24/7/365 email support or in addition to it phone support? Loss of potential data is a topic which is quite crucial but generally overlooked by the user. Does user should ensure that his/her web host offers back up / restore services or rather an option to ad it or which one can buy on additional cost. Several user’s take it easy as it is automatic but one should mind it that without proper inquiry and involvement in the package it is not going to be accomplish. Requirement of quantity of email accounts and databases can be the other criteria. If the user possesses employees then the probability is that they would like individual email accounts for the use in interoffice and external communication. While user is opting for a strategy to run an e-commerce shopping cart or rather a community forum of any sort then requirement of one or more databases is must.

Normally, email accounts are standard but several hosts demands additional amount for databases and/or limit as per their business structure. Next, important aspect is the amount of disk space and data transfer required by the user? Now a day’s disk space and data transfer are available quite cheap. It is the Performance, features, reliability, and customer service for which the user is paying. For instance, if in the future user feels requirement of graphics resulting in large data base then it is not bad to have much disk space in advance because user may not feel its importance in beginning but it can be fruitful with respect to future strategy.

3. Accomplishing one’s Homework:

After considering above steps one should go for the research mode. The step deals with the outlook of providers. User should start his/her research from host’s own web site. The web site of several companies has a section called “about us” through which one can inquire about their background/history and a synopsis regarding their products, services, infrastructure etc. one should also go through their terms and policies regarding privacy and service. No doubt, one should be aware of the depth of the lake in which he/she is diving into. This is because several problems may arise later on if the user do not have the in depth knowledge of his/her concern host. By going through these policies one may have insight knowledge on restrictions between providers and which direction one should proceed by avoiding any trouble as per changing scenario. There are several companies delivering a customer testimonial and FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page in addition to it. User can consider Testimonials as a source of providing useful information about kinds of web sites being hosted and the way the company is delivering services to its present customers. If FAQ page delivered by the company is accurate then one can solve majority of problems in a very simple manner, whether the problem is related to sales or technical doesn’t matter. Certainly, one of the crucial ways to conclude research on the concern host is to charge them with questions/need which may not be apparently answered.

Thus at the end we can say that there are literally hundreds of specific needs that any one company or individual requires while searching for web hosting services. The problems and solutions are so much that even a book can be written on it. Thus the above given is a fundamental foundation of steps that will help user in beginning with good success.