Web Hosting Guide and Tips

Web Hosting Guide and Tips - part one

Selecting the right web host is a very important decision. Whatever the purpose of your website, you will want a web host that will allow the internet to beat a path to your creation, your newly born web site. Your web host selection will enable you to interact with the denizens of the web. It’s only through your web site, and reliable access to it, that you will be able to accomplish your goals.

Your web goals may be very simple or complex. You may simply wish to share information, amaze the world with your videos or music downloads, or you may be embarking into the sea of e-commerce by selling products and services.

Choosing a web host can be a very confusing task. There are hordes of web hosts and all have wonderful advertisements promising you everything for prices ranging from the ridiculously small to the blatantly outrageous.

How to choose? The first step is easy, read this article!! I’ll go through some of the steps I have learned the hard way. Hopefully these can help you to avoid some of the potholes in the road to web mastery.

Odds are, since you have found this site, you have been burnt a time or two with a bad web host. But you have learnt and hope that a little research before handing over your hard earned cash to “We are everything to all customers for $1 per month” web host could save you from “web site not found” messages just as your web traffic begins to grow.


1. List your needs – bandwidth, storage space, number of domains which you can host, email accounts, ftp accounts, ssh access, php and mysql versions, number of mysql databases allowed, is the server Windows or Linux/Unix, cgi/perl scripts, available website free scripts for installation, website management (Cpanel, or ?), .htaccess, any special programming languages such as Ruby on Rails or Python,
2. Research – (you have already started, right? After all you are reading this!)
a. Look for web hosts –search through Google or Yahoo or whatever your favorite search engine is. Make a list, in a text editor like Note pad, of the web hosts that meet your requirements. Develop a question about the web host services they offer. (I had a particular need relating to allowable file permissions. Emailing or live chatting with the various web host candidates was a good way to see how responsive their customer service is (I’m still waiting for responses from a couple of web hosts, and its four months and counting now!).) Asking if they run SuPHP or SuExec ( add ons which increase security for the web host and web sites) can be a good question – do they know what it is?
b. If they pass the customer service/live chat test take your search to the next level. Search the web for their name - “wehostprovider.com”. Here you are looking for reviews of their service. I have even found website domains which an angry customer has bought and developed just to let others know of his bad experiences with a certain company! This can certainly be a red flag. Check the dates on any reviews, good of bad. If the information is several years old (or even months) things may have changed radically. If the reviews sound just like the sales pitch on the web host’s own site, sprinkle salt genously and move on!
Many web hosts have support forums – check them out! A few bad comments shouldn’t scare you off. Think about it, the web host could have deleted them. Leaving the bad comments gives the web host an opportunity to reply with their side of the story and how the problem was solved.

more to come