Tips To Find A Good Web Hosting Company
Once you have registered your domain name, you need to find space on the internet to upload your website to and connect it with your domain name. This process of getting space for your website is know as web hosting.
There are many web hosting companies on the internet to choose from. Use the following tips to locate a web host that is suitable for your needs:
1. The Purpose Of Your Website
You need to take into consideration the functionality of your website. Is your website going to be simple html pages or is it going to be designed to perform complex operations. Will you need the ability to store and handle data from your users. Will your website be selling products and services to your users? Will it need to store video and audio files….
2. Reliability
You need to find out the answers to these questions:
How reliable is the web hosting company?
Is the company an established web hosting provider?
Find out if the web hosting company actually owns its own web servers or are they just leasing it out from another web hosting company.
Look on internet marketing forums to find out what other users are saying about the web hosting company in question. You can do a search on Google to get more information regarding the web host.
A good web host should offer an uptime of 99% or more. This will mean that your website will be available to your visitors (nearly always).
3. Bandwidth And Disk Space
Look for a web host that provides large bandwidth and a large amount of disk space. A high bandwidth will enable your site to be accessed by a large number of people. A large amount of disk space will enable you to have enough storage space as your site grows.
Most web hosting companies promise unlimited bandwidth and disk space, take this with a pinch of salt as you will need a dedicated server to provide you will high bandwidth and storage space. Most users don’t use up the amount of bandwidth and disk space allocated to them, so the web hosting companies can make these claims.
If you intend to create multiple websites you may want to get a reseller package to do this. A reseller package will be save you money compared with getting individual packages for each website that you want to host.
If your websites are going to have large volumes of users accessing them you may need to opt for a dedicated web server. If this is an option for the future, make sure that your web hosting company provides dedicate web servers.
4. Technical Support And User Interface
Make sure that the web hosting company provides technical support around the clock. Some web hosting companies may be in a different time zone than you. It is essential that they are able to provide technical support via phone or email.
Look for a web host that offers an easy to use interface for managing your websites, email, ftp, databases, users….
5. Scripting Language
Which scripting language is your website going to be designed in?
You may want to design your website to provide dynamic content on the fly using scripting languages like ASP, PHP, JSP, Perl…
Make sure that your web hosting package provides the ability to use the scripting language that you are going to be using. Also check that they provide the latest versions of the scripting language.
6. Database Support
If your website is going to be designed to perform complex tasks like user registration and the ability to store data from your users, you may need a web host that provides database support.
The most common online databases are MySQL, SQL Server and MS Access. These databases will be enough to handle most small applications. These database should be enough to handle the purposes for most small businesses, internet and affiliate marketers.
If you need to create high end database driven website that are able to handle large numbers of users simultaneously, you will need to use Oracle or a dedicated SQL Server database.
7. SSL Certificates and Shopping Carts
If you are planning on selling products and services from your website, make sure that they provide SSL Certificates and Shopping Carts. You need a SSL Certificate to verify to your users that their financial transactions are secure. Most people will not provide their credit card details over unsecured connections.
You will need to use a shopping cart application for managing the products and services that you are selling on your website. A shopping cart creates a profession feel to your website and ease of use for your customers.
Make sure that your shopping cart application is able to handle merchant payment services like PayPal, WorldPay, 2Chectout…
If you are selling digital products you may want to use an external service like ClickBank, PayPal or PayDotCom.
Copyright 2009 Mujibur Rahman. All rights reserved worldwide.
