How to Choose a Web Host - Web Hosting Guide

Choosing the Right Web Host issues

Whether you are setting up a personal or business website, you need to choose your web hosting provider wisely. The reason is that you will most certainly want your site to be seen by as many people. To do this, it is essential to take some time to review some basic but very important to provide greater visibility for your site.

Points to consider when choosing web hosting

There are so many web hosting packages available today and suppliers. Each has its own advantages and weaknesses. So how does one decide which to choose

Even after you zone in on a particular provider, you should always choose the hosting package that suits you. Each Web site hosting offer many types of packages to choose from. The most popular type is the "unlimited bandwidth package.

The following points should make your task of choosing the web hosting simple for you.

1. Server Uptime & Customer Support:

The most basic thing for a website to be found on the Internet depends on the server where the files are stored is online ie up and running at any given time. This is called server Uptime.You find that most web hosting providers will claim a server uptime of 99.99%. Some even said 100%.

If you have time, search for reviews by users of the provider on Internet forums or elsewhere online. Or opt for the larger and more established who built a reputation of trust hosting companies. Most good hosting companies to have multiple data server and backup power. Some also promised 100% and they are guaranteeing the reimbursement in the event that any downtime could happen.

Another very important characteristic of a good web hosting is customer support. They should provide its customers 24/7 support by phone and Internet. They must have a good collection of tutorials and FAQs on their website easily in case you might need help. Do not get me wrong, you can contact your hosting more often than you think, especially if you are serious about your web site support.

2. Prices and specifications included

The price range and features included in the web hosting packages are quite large. You need a balance between features and quality that will meet your needs. As with any other product, cheap usually gets lower quality. On the other hand, some prices can be exorbitant without any particular value.

Prices of accommodation packages are generally related to all the features included. These include data storage and bandwidth limits, number of allowed addon domains and subdomains, number of e-mail and FTP accounts hosted, shared or virtual plan or dedicated server, programming languages ​​and databases data, site tools, shopping cart, etc., and the list continues. It can be easily confused with the many choices especially if you're not familiar with them. Do not worry, we'll cover the essential in the next paras.

Price for shared hosting packages fair value generally starts around U.S. $ 6-8 per month. Virtual Private Server / Dedicated approximately U.S. $ 30-50 h and dedicated servers U.S. $ 60-80 h.

peak pricing: If you have not purchased a domain name or if you want to add another, then some packages include free domain with hosting. They can be a good deal.

3. Storage limits and bandwidth data

If you are new to set up websites, you may have very little idea on how much data storage space and bandwidth your site will need. First, do not worry too much about it. Even the most professional people will tell you that themselves. Because your needs will increase the number of visitors to your website increases, you know all about what you say.

Storage of data: Unless you plan to host a number of video clips / movie or a huge amount of great high-resolution images, most hosting packages will do. Normal websites rarely occupy beyond 40-50 MB (megabytes of storage space). The basic shared hosting package for the top registrar costing $ 4.99 h contains 10 GB (1000 MB) of storage space.

bandwidth limitations: bandwidth limit is the amount of data transfer per month hosting your permission. It depends on how many visitors your site has and the type of files you serve web pages basic knowledge, images or video clips, etc. Again, not much to worry about for normal sites. Most hosting providers offer "unlimited bandwidth" even on their shared hosting packages value.

A word of caution though for those who plan to host videos / video clips or high resolution images. Do not be fooled by Unlimited Bandwidth Shared Hosting packages. If you go through the "Terms of Use" and "common use policy" for most shared hosting packages, they will undoubtedly have a section where it says that you are not allowed or will be charged extra for "abnormally high use of data bandwidth." The advice is that you will probably be better choose VPS or dedicated server or cloud hosting or broadband packages.

4. Shared Hosting vs vs Virtual Private Server Dedicated Server Hosting vs. Cloud

How to choose between these types of hosting? Simply put, you must choose how busy or popular you think your site will be shared knowledge - VPS - Dedicated - Cloud, in that order.

Shared Hosting: The majority of Internet sites are on shared hosting. It is good for personal sites and small. They are the most economical hosting packages. In shared hosting, a number of usually 10-100 hosting accounts are hosted on the same physical server. They share the same storage server and a broadband connection.

Shared hosting is highly recommended for beginners and small to medium personal and commercial web sites that do not host photograph / film / video downloads.They can cost between $ 5 - $ 15 per month.

Virtual Private Servers: This type of hosting is generally used by the average web sites with support for storage and bandwidth. Virtual private servers are hosted on a single IP address (eg 192.170.1.8) and are almost like a standalone physical dedicated server, but with less cost of a physical dedicated server. The way it works is that multiple accounts say 3-10 are hosted on a single physical server, each account has its own unique address host ID or IP, data storage and bandwidth separated from each other by software.

VPS hosting can cost between $ 30 to $ 150 per month depending on the characteristics of a 1-year contract. Note: All lower price hosting packages that you increase the number of years of contract.

Dedicated Server: They are generally used in the middle of large sites that need a scalable storage and bandwidth needs. They are hosted on separate physical servers. In other words, they have rented a server for them. They have complete control over the server with its own unique address, hard drive, RAM and bandwidth.

The price of renting a dedicated server depends on the physical server components, the hard disk capacity, processor version, the amount of RAM and broadband connection. Prices vary between $ 65 to $ 200 and above per month.

Cloud Hosting: a relatively new thing in the world of web hosting, cloud hosting is the type of the next generation of accommodation. Instead of having a single physical server, cloud hosting uses multiple servers in different locations interconnected.

The main advantages of cloud hosting is the scalability factor and cost effectiveness. For large sites there are great benefits. As the site grows larger than its current capacity, all they need to do is add another server to join the group of network servers.

Cloud hosting packages can be priced from $ 100 to $ 550 and beyond depending on the needs of storage and bandwidth.

5. Addon domains and subdomains

Addon domains are domain names ie such websites. "Http :/ / www.yoursite1.com", "http://www.yoursite2.com" that you want to host with your hosting provider. If you plan to host multiple Web sites, you must choose the package that allows it. Most cheapest web hosting packages allow a single site.

Subdomains: They are the directories that you may want to create, for example. "Http :/ / directory1.yoursite.com" or "http://directory2.yoursite.com". The number of areas under permit may be different on different packages. Not to be confused with the files for example. "Http :/ / www.yoursite.com/folder1" or "http://www.yoursite.com/folder2". There is no limit on the files.

6. E-mail and FTP accounts

Email Accounts: These are unique e-mail accounts for your website / s for example. "Name@yoursite.com". You can configure and give it to someone, your friends, visitors, customers. No worries here because most hosting packages give you a lot.

FTP Accounts: FTP stands for "file transfer protocol". FTP accounts are used to access your web hosting software files. They are a great help for webmasters in that they allow to update, delete or create new files and folders on your server directly from the software design websites and FTP software. No worries here, too, as most software will give you more than 10 accounts. You can give this to your designers and colleagues as you wish.

7. Programming languages ​​and databases

FrontPage Server Extensions, PHP5, Custom PHP.ini, Perl w / FastCGI, CGI, Python, Java, Ruby CGI, Ruby on Rails w / FastCGI, ColdFusion, MySQL (Unix), MsAccess, MySQL (Win) etc.

These are software programming and databases used by your hosting server. They are used for more advanced features such as automated Web content management, user management, execution of scripts and programs, etc. If you do not understand, you do not need. Because most of the package include languages ​​and popular databases that you might need when you want to use.

8. Content management, blogs, forums: Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, NUCLEAS, Moodle, Wordpress, Geeklog, Lifetype, Serendipity, phpBB, SMF, vanilla etc. Forum

These are tools ready for the creation of blogs, forums and content management to improve websites. Most packages have enough choice here too.

9. Web tools, marketing tools, Web Tools Shopping Cart: Website Builder, Web Analytics tools, FrontPage Extensions, Google Custom Search, Google Webmaster Tools, etc.

These are basic tools that allows websites construction gauging popularity and website statistics and site improvements is included in most hosting packages.

Marketing Tools: Google AdWords credit - $ 50 Yahoo! Search Marketing Credit - $ 25 Facebook Ads Credit - $ 50, etc.

This is advertising credits to advertise your website. They are good business if it is included.

Cart - For those who wish to sell products online this tool is very important. Most packages include them.

10. Web Hosting Tips for a good SEO

One of the things that improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and should be considered when choosing a web host is the server location. Experience has shown that search engines favor websites hosted on site when the search is performed. Major search engines like Google are known to give preference to locally hosted sites. This means that higher rank, for example. United Kingdom, it helps to have a web hosting server that is located in United Kingdom. Another thing that is also known to help SEO rankings in local search is regional TLDs or domain names. So for the UK, or.org.uk of domains.co.uk are preferred.

Another point to note is that shared hosting can hurt SEO rankings of your website. Experts believe that if you have a site that shares the same server and the IP address as a penalized Google, your site will also suffer as a result. The most obvious way to avoid this is to host your site or sites on a separate IP address that will result in a dedicated virtual private server