Choosing The Right Host For Your Website

So you have decided to create your very own internet presence? But you are unsure about your requirements?

Understanding the basics

Today there are thousands of web hosting companies out there; it all started in the late 1990’s. A hosting company, in case you don’t know, is a company that hosts your website you created on their infrastructure, servers which are located in data center facilities with redundant connections to the internet. You are basically paying for a secure & fast network to be able to serve your visitors! If you were to host your website from home you would handicapped by limitations from your local Internet Service Provider and would probably have poor uptime.

Getting started

First off, you need to go about defining your needs, in what language is your site programmed? HTML, PHP? If you have no knowledge whatsoever you might want to create your website with a SuiteBuilder, many hosts offer tools which let you create a professional looking website within minutes, without any prior knowledge. Typically you will also be supplied with a control Panel to manage all aspects of your website, Add domains, create subdomains, create databases, E-Mail accounts. Watch out for control panels named PLESK, cPanel, and DirectAdmin. Most providers have one of these three market leading control panels on offer. These also allow you to perform one click installations of popular software such as, phpBB forums, or blog portals such as wordpress, e-commerce stores. All of this makes it easier for you to create your site without technical skills and faster than if you were to setup your site manually.

Another important aspect is space. How much storage will you need? If you are creating personal website or even a small business website I doubt you will require more than 500MB of web space, many hosts offer outrageous amounts of storage, beyond 10GB, but really you only require those amounts of space if you store large data files, downloads, videos, etc. A possible danger of hosts that offer large amounts of space for cheap is that they might be overselling, offering more than they can supply. Typically large hosters who offer large amounts of storage space will have clients who upload and download large files which may slow down speeds for you, in case your site resides on the same server.

So then, a good place to start would be a host who offers around 500mb of space, at least one free domain name, a control panel, and supports a variety of scripting languages.

Finding a host with help

Customer support will be very important to you if you are a beginner; you need a host who is there for you to answer any questions or to work with you on individualized solutions. Many of the big hosting companies only offer limited support, since they have many customers to deal with. Either way the host should offer a toll free number or offer a ticketing system for your convenience. The host should have qualified employees which are able to analyze and diagnose problems you might encounter on your website, at first this might not require much skill on their part, as your site or business grows and your website gains in complexity problems might become harder to address and that is where only qualified people can help you.

Geographical location of the hosting company is not as important; just make sure they are running their own equipment in a proper data center and have multiple connections to major network carriers.

The other way

You also have the option of renting or buying your own equipment and colocate it in a data center, but this only becomes relevant if your site has grown very large and requires more resources. I suggest that for a private site you kick off with a “Starter Plan”.

If your host does not supply a website builder or does not offer any pre designed templates for you, you might want to have a go yourself creating your site on applications such as Microsoft Expression Web studio or Adobe Dreamweaver, unfortunately these applications are not available for free.

I hope this guide helped you to know what to look for when choosing a web host. There are community sites out there to help you make your choice.