How to choose a webhost
One of the most important decisions you will need to make is where to host your website.
Simply put, a web host is the company that will
make your website available to anyone browsing the internet. But not
every web host offers similar plans or services. Here are some
things to look for when searching for your new web host:
- If your website will require some dynamic server side functionality such as a shopping cart, content management, or even simple contact forms, you will need to make sure the hosting plan you choose has the features your website developer will need. The most common languages for this are asp/.net, php, jsp and ColdFusion. Check with your developer to find out what language they are the most fluent in before you begin to shop around for your host.
- It's difficult to determine at first, but try to estimate how much traffic are you expecting to get to your website. Most web hosts base their plans on the amount of bandwidth used per month. It's also a good idea to choose a host that can grow with you and allow you to scale up your site to better hosting plans as your need increases.
- If you will be putting large files on your website such as PDFs, audio or movies, you will also need to consider the amount of storage space available on the hosting plan in addition to the bandwidth included that we discussed above. Also be sure to check to verify that your host will allow the files types you intend to use on their servers.
- Your company will also benefit from email accounts included in your hosting package. Using yourName@yourDomain.com as an email address looks much more professional than yourName125@aol.com. It helps to provide your clients with a level of comfort that you are part of a respectable organization. The other benefit is that your email address will then be able to follow you regardless of your host or ISP (Internet Service Provider).
- In order to make intelligent decisions about your advertising and future web enhancements, you need to be well informed. Site statistics should also be included in your web hosting package. They will usually be able to tell you important information such as how many people visit your site, how they got there, the pages they looked at, search phrases used and search engine spider visits.
Once you've found a host that you think has everything your website needs, you should do a little research on them before you commit to them. You need to research information like how up to date they are on their server maintenance, how reliable their servers have been, if they proactively apply security patches to their systems and how reliable their server backups have been. Doing a simple Google search on their name can unearth forum postings and website reviews about the host. Pay especially close attention to problems people have encountered with the host because while it is true that every host experiences problems from time to time, a good host will handle their problems quickly and keep their customers informed during the process. You should also make sure they have a toll-free supoort number and call it just to see how quickly they respond to calls.
Some hosts even provide public forums to their members in order to develop a sense of community. Asking a few open ended questions on these forums can sometimes get you all the information you need.
Your developer/designer is still one of the best resources when choosing a reliable web host. They probably have a list of hosts that they have used before and understand the particular configurations of the web servers.
March 06, 2005
