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Web Hosting – Important Factors in Choosing a Web Host

Web hosting, which is the business of providing the storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve files for a web site, is an important part of operating an online business.

Basically, this is a way of putting your company name on the web. This will allow you to share information, sell products and services, and interact with other people through your site.

Whether it is for an online business or for other applications, like an information resource, a discussion forum, or simply just for sharing views on a hobby or interest, you need to make the best decision when buying or choosing the right web hosting service and solution.

This will not be easy, as trying to choose a web host can be a very confusing exercise, especially since there is a growing number of web hosts in the internet.

Make sure that you go through a research process in choosing the most appropriate web hosting company for your internet presence.

Here are a few things that you need to consider if you would like to generate income for your website, through the use of web hosting.

Determine the Kind of Web Hosting

The first impression of a visitor or a potential customer on your web site is everything.

You need to make sure that you can keep your visitors on your site by making your online business appear as professional as possible.

Make them see a web site that they can trust.

There are many different kinds of web hosts out there, all with varying qualities and equally numerous price points.

Some actually try to justify charging higher than average prices, by offering a vast assortment of extra features, most of which almost no one will use.

By knowing the services that you require, you can shop for them by scrutinizing and reviewing the web hosts you come across, finding the right web hosting provider for your needs.

What to Consider When Choosing a Web Host

The quality of the web host can either make or break your online business, so having reliable web hosting is paramount to your success.

Downtime on your web site can lead to lost sales and decreased productivity.

It is very important to get a good host with great support, especially if you have urgent launches on your web site.

Also, look for unlimited features in all areas when signing up on a plan with the web host service of your choice.

Some of the things that you need to look for are:

- Unlimited Emails
- Unlimited Add-on domains
- Unlimited Database
- Unlimited FTP accounts
- 30 day money back guarantee
- Diskspace (at least 10GB)
- Bandwidth (at least 100GB)

Another factor that matters in an online business is the location of the server.

The lesser hops the server needs to make to reach your computer, the better the web host is.

Less hops to your computer from the server means that the server can connect to the user faster.

Having a larger disk space is also better, especially since you can store more information online and share them with your visitors.

Look for web hosts that will give you more disk space to serve as your virtual drive on your web server.

Bandwidth, which is something that people confuse with disk space, is also important.

It is basically the number of information that you can download from your server.

The bigger your bandwidth, the more people can download the information that you chose to share online.

Is Price a Factor?

Choosing the cheapest web host is not necessarily the best choice for your business, neither is the most expensive, because price offers no conclusive evidence on how well a web host will perform.

It is natural for any business to want affordable web hosting.

However, choosing when to spend on something is difficult to determine, especially if the price is no indication of its reliability.

Budget hosting solutions can be appropriate under certain circumstances.

One of the circumstances is on testing.

You can save some money by going “cheap” if your site is still in development and not quite ready for the public yet.

Once the site is developed, then you should consider getting the best web host that you can afford.

You also do not need to spend too much on non-critical websites, or websites that do not necessarily sell anything.

Also, if your business is seriously strapped for cash, wherein you are truly operating on a shoestring budget, and you think that your funds may be put to better use elsewhere, like for advertising, then inexpensive web hosting is a good option.

Be mindful, however, that availing of a low-quality web hosting service can cause your website to go down.

This can cause you to lost profit and sales on your online business, especially if you are able to drive traffic to your website because of your big marketing campaign.

Choosing the best web hosting service is very crucial in any online business, as your choice of web hosts can either lead to more problems and lost sales on one hand, and the increase of sales and success of your online business on the other.

Make sure that you spend on quality and reliable web hosting to ensure that your online business is protected from downtime that can cause your business valuable clients and profits.

Jeremy Gislason
http://www.articlesbase.com/web-hosting-articles/web-hosting-important-factors-in-choosing-a-web-host-707900.html

Comments (Close):7

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  1. phd
    10/05/02

    web hosting – Please help?
    dear sir/damam,
    i need to build a non profitable web site and do not know how— i have already got a domian name and want to find a host—- i have got lot of problems about that.
    i just need to build a web site which got these features
    1) On line Forum —–there should be passwords and id s for each user
    2) on line chatting
    3) i am a seconday level AS student and have no moeny – then i need to put google ads in my site too
    **** i have got a .co.uk name —- do i have to host with a uk server or usa
    please give me the factors that most important to this online forum
    how many web space / traffic/bhpp—–and all the this that i have to look at before choosing the host—————————————————
    if you can please suggest a good host—————-
    if u give me the perfect answer u will be my god
    take care
    ravindra

  2. LifeSux
    10/05/02

    This one has forums, chat, bulletin boards, blogs and much more.
    And they pay you to promote the site.
    http://www.executive-hosting.biz
    References :

  3. Joshua K
    10/05/02

    AsmallOrange.com is a good hosting site, and they have a forum that will be able to answer your questions about creating your website,

    I can’t vouch for them personally but my brother recomends them and he’s really good at that kinda thing

    hope that helps

    Joshua K
    References :
    http://asmallorange.com/

  4. Intentionality
    10/05/02

    Let’s attack this one at a time:

    Find out if your domain name allows for remote administration or if it’s transferrable. Basically, this means whatever host you choose would be able to use that address to connect directly to your server. If you can’t transfer the domain name or allow a host to maintain it for you, the people you bought the name from may be trying to force you to pay for their hosting in order to use the name at all. (Not trying to scare you… it’s wise to be careful about such things.)

    Forums and Chatting: what is your skill level with web applications?

    – HTML/CSS? What’s that? You’d be better off using a free forum/chat room and linking to it from your site.

    – Can write HTML/CSS: You might be able to install a forum, such as phpBB, or something similar. Take a look at the site and see if it’s your cup of tea: http://www.phpbb.com. They do have an excellent support forum to help you along if you need it.

    – I know PHP/MySQL, ASP, or other scripting: the answer is less related to what kind of forum software (you already know what you want and how to look for it) and more with the hosting provider, which will determine what you can and cannot do.

    Chatting: this is a bandwidth-heavy application for a webserver, even for a small chat room with regular use, and most web hosts charge for breaking a bandwidth limit or outright shut you down when a threshold is reached. The pain in the neck? Outgoing and incoming use counts, so denial of service or bad requests to the webserver tick against your total for the month. Once again, for a cheap solution, I’d lean towards PHP in some form: lots of hosts support it and php.net is a very active site that can give you help in using it or giving your resources in finding an answer to your problems. If you are entry-level for such stuff, I’d recommend a Java-based client that you link to from your system… especially if it’s light use. A banner ad is a small price to pay for a chatroom if it’s sparingly used compared to your forum, which accomplishes a longer conversation time with far less resources. (Chat is still useful: real-time can’t be beat.)

    Google Ad-Sense is the service you’re looking for on http://www.google.com for banner ads (or google.co.uk in your case.) Bear in mind, that this would pay upon a click, and the payout does not even happen until the money earned reaches $20 at least. This will probably not subsidize your website operation fund, but it could help.

    The co.uk name would work regardless of where your host is: IP addresses are used in DNS to transfer people, not URLs. I could use a co.uk name to transfer someone to my .com site, for example, in America, and co.uk would still be on the address bar. DNS sees it as a request for the Wide Area Network address of 123.45.678.90, thus transfering to the 9.876.54.321 server in the US for example. Domain names do not matter.

    Web space would be determinate on what you plan to do with the site and your expected traffic: 100-200 MB would be plentiful for an online meeting place for 10-20 friends. Around 500 for a small website of 45-50 people, 1 GB for 200 to 500, and 5 GB+ for 1,000 or more. (Remember: page hits are NOT recurring visitors!) Beyond that, I’d consider managed hosting instead of a service provider.

    Bandwidth is how much traffic you’d be pushing each month: this limit is god with your website, since breaking it or surpassing it would result in either a bigger monthly bill or your site being shut down until the next month (both are bad for a budding website.) I’d consider enough for chatting and forum use to be around 500MB for less than 100 people. My site has 100 users and draws up less than 230MB for only a forum. Chatting (being it uses up consistant bandwidth, instead of intermittent bandwidth like a forum would use) would increase this considerably, but not by more than half.

    For hosts, I don’t live in the UK, so perhaps some one elses answer may help you with that one!

    Best of luck!
    References :

  5. nolyad69
    10/05/02

    I’d recommend MidPhase, they’re the best host I’ve ever had.
    References :
    http://www.daylon.com/midphase/

  6. stressbattle
    10/05/02

    To host your site for free, I would highly recommend the following 2 sites.

    Awardspace -> http://www.awardspace.com (PHP + MySQL)
    50webs -> http://www.50webs.com

    Both of these sites allow you to host for free and does not have any advertisement pop ups like those provided by geocities.

    I have sites hosted on both the companies. Example
    Awardspace -> http://www.wanginternet.com
    50webs -> http://cctvcamera.50webs.com

    Also, read a review I wrote on Awardspace at http://www.wanginternet.com

    Hope it helps.
    References :

  7. Matthew B
    10/05/02

    I’d recoomend Blue Scorpion Solutions http://www.blue-scorpion.co.uk

    I’ve found them to be really good and good vaule, plus they have a price match and service garanteee so you really can’t go wrong with them.
    References :

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