Finding a Good Web Host
Finding a good web hosting company can be a difficult thing if you’ve never had to do it before. If your not the most tech savvy person in the world it can terrifying, and you are likely to end up getting a lot of things you don’t really need. I’m going to do my best to give the no-nonsense approach to shopping for a good web hosting company.
Now part of what qualifies me to give advice on this besides the fact that I’ve worked as a webmaster for a while and have had to handle other people websites and deal with their web hosting companies, is the fact that I used to actually work at a web hosting company. I know the script, I know the routine, I know the policies, I know what is possible, and what is not, I know when I’m being played. That knowledge is indispensable, and I recommend you use someone like this to handle the setup or advice you when you get started with your own website. It will save you a lot of money and headaches.
Most sales reps will try to oversell you, frankly that is their job, and if you were in their place you’d be doing the same thing. Recognizing that you’re being sold to is very important. Also understand that they will try to talk over your head to help push the sale, they will ask you things you don’t really know like how much bandwidth you need and what not.
Tip: Don’t go local, thinking that its convenient and that you’ll get better service because they are right there. Yeah, people do this because they are applying “Brick and Mortar” logic, which has little to no place in the online world, sorry its true please get over it. Here is the reality, you don’t sign up with a no-name cellphone carrier for a reason, they don’t necessarily have the support, coverage or features of the big boys. They are usually cheaper, and you can develop a personal relationship with them and you will feel like they value your business more, but you will simply not be getting the best service, even for the price.
Large web hosting companies deal with large clients, to do this they have an enormous staff, great resources, and care about their reputation and brand. This means that it will take very little for them to handle you and your start up operation. Will you always talk to the same rep or tech support people? No. But on the other hand you probably not have much cause to be in contact with them in the first place.
Control Panel
A Control Panel is the interface where you are going to be managing your website and your account from. Its important to have a web hosting company that offers a simple control panel if you are not very tech savvy and have trouble with “complicated websites”. If you can handle your own online banking, you are probably going to be alright in most cases as long as you take the time to read everything carefully at least once. Right of the bat I can tell you I don’t like most control panels, I particularly hate Godaddy’s control panel and hate dealing with it.
Yet they are one of the most popular hosting companies and offer very competitive pricing. They have also been around a long time. You either love them or you hate them. Hostway and 1&1 have excellent control panels, I’m partial to 1&1 because I have hosted with them for about 5 years now and have not regretted it once, nor have I experienced my website crashing or being unavailable.
Bandwidth
One of the largest lies in web hosting is bandwidth. It has been the ultimate justification for up-selling to a larger account since “the before time”. I’m not joking and I’m rather bitter about this because its some mysterious thing that is used to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Here is a little story to put things in perspective for you. This site gets over 5,000 views a month, in addition to the fact I host 8 other sites on this web hosting account (which cost me $10/month) I have yet to in any single month use 1/10 of my bandwidth. That should tell you something. If you are not getting or plan on getting 20K in views a week, or offering massive downloads, or plenty of HD videos, you don’t need to worry about bandwidth just yet. Get a simple start up plan at $6/mo or so and then upgrade as your needs increase.
Web Space
This is a myth that is easy to dispel if you at least download music and videos or have bought a personal computer in the last few years. Hopefully you know enough about computers to understand the concept of file sizes and hard drive space. A web hosting account in many ways is like having a hard drive floating out there in cyberspace. Most web host will offer you at least 20GB or more of space for a basic account. If you don’t plan on hosting video, or backing up your entire hard drive (not a bad idea) to the web space, then this will be more than enough space for you. Just make sure your web host doesn’t have a reputation for lying about how much space you get while secretly giving you less than what you’ve paid for. Yes this does happen.
Number of Domains
The number of domain names that you can have may be important if you plan on starting more sites in the future or if you want to give your site multiple names. Most host will offer you a maximum of either 100 domains, or unlimited. Again depending on your needs this may or may not be very important.
Number of Databases
Many people who have heard the word Database still don’t know what it is or what purpose it serves. Rather than give a lengthy explanation I will give the practical ways it applies to you and your website. If you want to start a blog, and online store, a forum, or a multimedia site, or a web/mobile app on your website you are going to need a database, and in most cases its going to be a MySQL database. A good web hosting company will offer you 10-50 of these databases in your package with 50MB of space or so each.
Operating System
Most people will go with the logic of “stick with what you know” which would make sense in most cases. This is not one of them. Because what most people who aren’t web designers or web developers don’t realize is that Windows is not the operating system of choice when it comes to web applications. If you want to run a blog like most people today, setup an online forum or have someone build you a really fancy web application, you need to host on a PHP/Linux platform. Period.
More web designers and developers are familiar with PHP, and work with it better if its setup on Linux, as a regular user, its not going to make any difference for you, trust me on this. There is no part of the website that you would be dealing with that you would know anymore about if it were on a Windows platform. You will just “feel better” because you “think” Windows is something you know and understand. Then when you go to a designer or developer and ask them why you can’t have something done, they will come back to you with the fact that they don’t know how to do that on Windows in ASP.NET and ask why the system is not PHP/Linux.
Final Tip: If you are still lost after this don’t abandon all hope. Simply get someone who you know has been handling a website for a number of years and have them help you set these sort of things up. A $50 consulting fee for administrating your setup and following up with all the tech support people is more than fair for this. If you would like you can even get in touch with me and I will handle this for you at a rate of $30 as long as you are signing up with 1&1 other than that I will have to charge you the $50 based on the fact I will have to suffer through an annoying control panel (lol).
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