1. The hosting company must control their servers. --------------------------------------------------
Most of the hosting industry is based on reselling server space of someone else. If the company you select don't own his space, it could happen that when you need to move to another company for any reason, you depend on their willingness to help you. This actually happened me some years ago when the hosting company with which I was working was very helpful, but was sold and after that, when I needed to move a client to another host, the company don't even replied my emails.
It is very difficult to move a complex site without having root access, but I had to do it. Although I lost many days and it was very painful, the migration even wasn't perfect. Now I own a VPS (and root access to it) and my life is much better. If you are really on a budget and can't afford a VPS, go for a shared host like HostGator, which is a reputable company.
2. Don't let your hosting company own your domain. -------------------------------------------------
Your domain is your brand on the Internet. Moreover, when you acquire links to your website you get traffic from them to your domain, not to your web host. If you lose your domain, all the traffic that came from those hard earned links are lost in an instant. If the hosting company gives you a domain name for free, make sure that the email of the administrative contact is an email that you control and you have a control panel where you can see the ownership of your domain.
3. Avoid Free Hosting Of Any Kind ---------------------------------
Free hosting is good for your resume or to tell the history of your dog, but when you are starting a business, even a little one, it is very important to have your own domain because if your page is hosted at someone's else domain, when you acquire links to your page, you become dependant on your hosting provider because if later you choose to have your own domain, all the links you got will still be pointing to the hosting provider which will get all the traffic that should have been yours.
4. Seek a Host With Good Support --------------------------------
It takes many YEARS to fully understand all the issues of the hosting platforms. Even many Internet business experts with 10 years+ in business don't fully understand all the options they have in their control panel. So, if you are a newbie, you could be in big trouble almost all the time if your host doesn't give you manuals, advice or help you to complete technical tasks. Remember that you bought a web host to make money, not to lose your time with technical things.
There is more then 40 Million web hoisting provider to choose from and all of them are thirsty for adding your business to their portfolio, in this situation how do you identify and distinguish the best from the worse web hosting providers. Below I have highlighted some key point to Consider When Choosing a Web Hosting Provider.
Security
The security of your website is the most important thing to consider once your site goes live, you should be 100% confident that the technology that brings your web project to life is of the highest caliber and extremely secure. If you set your website to process customer details and collect payments via the internet then you should consider a hosting provider who can provide you with a server which has encryption capabilities and the ability to set up a dedicated secure server if and when requested by you.
Server Space
Before you commit your self to a hosting provider, first consider the amount of disk space you will need to host your website, a reasonable amount is around 500 MB, to 1 GB disk space, which is sufficient enough for any small business, unless you are planning on running a software repository or an image gallery or a file sharing website. Web hosting providers offer their customers several hosting packages and many of the packages comes with un-necessary disk space for a very reasonable price in attempt to out perform their competitors in many cases I found hosting providers are cutting corners to bring it customers an excellent hosting package which only looks good on paper.
Reliability
The reliability of the hosting provider is crucial. The length of time they have been in business, their percent of uptime, reasonable uptime you should expect is at least 99.5% and their backup and data retrieval practices and policies. Some hosting providers have multiple data centres, and some might even give you a choice of where your server will be at. Ideally, the closer the server is to you the better, as file transfers and interaction with the server will be at faster speeds. This might be a good question to ask the company on the phone call above.
Support
Technical support is something that should definitely be a part of a web hosting plan. Professional web hosting providers offer customers a support ticket system, this support system track all queries made by you and will automatically notify you via e-mail or SMS when your query get updated. The support system also give you access to review the status of any tickets you have raised, set priorities and check response times.
PHP/CGI-Bin
No matter what type of site you are planning on running, chances are you will eventually need to install some type of CGI script. Whether it be a mailing list management script, contact form processor, or maybe even a fancy credit card processing script, your hosting account will need to allow you to install and run them. This requires access to a special folder on your server called "CGI-Bin". Some hosting accounts will only allow you to use "pre-installed" scripts as a security measure. These are scripts that the owners of the company have installed and configured so that they know that they will work properly and not adversely affect their server's performance. That may be all you need, but if you have the knowledge, it's always nice to have the ability to install your own scripts and configure them to suit your individual needs. You should also be sure that the account you choose supports the language in which your scripts are written, such as PHP, Perl, etc.
Both Andres Berger & Kamal Hussain are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Andres Berger has sinced written about articles on various topics from Parenting, Learning Spanish and Software. Copyright 2007 - Andres Berger has more than 4 year helping Businesses And Individuals succeed on the Internet. He can be contacted at . Andres Berger's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.
Kamal Hussain has sinced written about articles on various topics from About My Space, About Web Hosting and Smartphone Cell Phones. Kamal Hussain is a qualified teacher for further education (QTfe). He lectures in web and data encryption technologies. Kamal is also the founder of Runner a s. Kamal Hussain's top article generates over 1300 views. to your Favourites.