How To Choose A Good Web Host For Your Blawg
A good web hosting service that’s value for money with essential features is the foundation of a successful blawg. Here is how to choose a good web host.
Open Source Rules
If you are planning to blog then you’ll most likely use an Open Source platform like WordPress so choose Linux based hosting because Windows and Open Source platforms don’t usually see eye-to-eye.
Speed is KING
A fast web host means less frustrated visitors who don’t have to twiddle their thumbs while waiting for the site to load. Another advantage of a fast site is love from search engines because crawlers from search engines do not appreciate slow websites or sites that are frequently offline.
The web host can be as fast as lightning but if you clog up your blog with bulky images, Flash movies then do yourself a favor and see what can be done to optimize your blawg at Web Page Analyzer.
Traffic and Space
I’m sure you want your blawg to be very popular and for this you need traffic. Lots of traffic translates into the need for higher bandwidth so check with your web host company about their cap on monthly traffic. Aim for a figure higher than 3GB.
Now that you know your blawg is going to be popular which means it will need space for it to grow. You may want to add videos and audios (podcasts) in the future. Don’t settle for anything less than 1GB.
Reliability is Key
Anything less than 99.5% of uptime is considered unreliable. Check a service like NetCraft that monitors the top 50 web hosts. See the performance report of web hosts for June 2008.
Human Touch
Customer service is vital otherwise you may end of tearing your hair. Call or email the potential web hosting companies customer service department to suss out their professionalism. Bigger web hosting companies are guilty of bad customer service as they try to automate everything.
I have been impressed by the service of DreamHost and mildly annoyed by BlueHost.
What’s In the Package
Check what’s included in the package. Look out for things like:
- How many email accounts do you provide?
- How many domains can I host under one account?
- How many databases do you provide? Chances are you may not need a lot of databases but asking this question does make you look knowledgeable.
- Do you provide automatic backups? What’s the backup frequency?
- Money back guarantee?
- How usable is the control panel interface? Personally, I am a fan of CPanel and Fantastico Deluxe so if they have these two interfaces then you’ll not have much to worry about.
I heartily recommend BlueHost and DreamHost though in all fairness the service of BlueHost has recently been a little unsatisfactory.
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