Technofriends

If you consider yourself as a newbie, when it comes to buying hosting for your website, am sure you too like others must be getting confused with the all the available options with Web hosting providers. In this era when the number of web hosting providers and resellers is very high, its important that you understand what you should be looking out for, in a web hosting provider.

This article walks you through the research you need to do to find a good webhosting provider. You can carry out this research for any of your website, however, for the purpose of this article, i am going to assume that you are someone who is planning to buy hosting space for your wordpress powered blog.

1.) Understand your Hosting Needs from a Software pre-requisite perspective

Your hosting needs and the research about it MUST start with the kind of application you wish to install on the space. Therefore, before you even start with your research, take a paper and a pen (or a note taking application like Evernote) and jot down all your software requirements. Ex. For Wordpress, you would need atleast PHP 4.3 , MySQL database (version 4.1.2 or greater for now) and Apache module mod_rewrite. If you have these modules/ softwares installed ( or the capability to install them) on your hosting, you are good to start with that hosting. ( atleast from the software needs perspective). Also check if you are going to get Windows Hosting or Linux based hosting.

Similarly, if your requirement is for hosting a Java application, buy hosting space / plan from a provider which offers Java package.

If your need is about hosting a ASP.NET application which you have developed, you can go for a Windows hosting with IIS.

You can also check with the hosting provider if they have expertise in the software of your choice. For Wordpress, having Fantastico De Luxe Scripts is helpful.

2.) Understand your needs from Space and Bandwidth perspective

Once you know that you will be able to run the application you intend to host on a particular hosting provider, you must size up your space and bandwidth requirement. JustHost and HostGator are two hosting providers, i recommend everyone because they offer unlimited space and bandwidth ( though there is a fair usage policy).

The last thing you want, when you go live is, issues with space or bandwidth. Its a good idea to check with your hosting provider if they have a upper cap on the number of concurrent processes or CPU cycles utilized. If yes, you might just want to check with one of the expert ( in our case Wordpress Expert) who will be able to help you validate your requirements with the Web Hosting providers plan.

3.) Uptime and Availability SLA

Its very important for you, your brand and your website’s visitors to get a valid page instead of a Gateway timeout error or some other connectivity related error. You might want to ask your hosting provider, if they have any Service-level-agreement related to Uptime and Availability.

I run around 10 websites (combined) on HostGator and JustHost and believe me, i have never had any issue with regards to uptime and availability. Till date, the uptime has been no less than 99.6% ( over a span of 2 years).

4.) Possibility to host Unlimited Domains or Subdomains?

Its also clever to check with your prospective hosting provider about the possibility of hosting unlimited domains or subdomains on the same hosting space. This is pretty useful if you have lots of space and less traffic on some properties.

For some of my websites which do not get a lot of traffic, i have bought a plan from HostGator which offers unlimited space ( there is a limit on iNode usage though, i.e. number of files which can be saved) and have configured all these domains to be served through that shared space.

5.) Do not miss out on Support. Check if the hosting provider has 24*7 support for all 365 days?

Even if you are vacationing, your website must still be working, because your readers and users are not vacationing. In such cases, its important that if there happens a mishap, you get proper support to get the issue fixed. Check with the hosting provider if they offer 24*7 support for all the 365 days. If your hosting provider says NO, am sure you are not talking to JustHost or HostGator, because they offer 24*7*365 support.

While above are some of the questions which should be the key to your research, there also are finer points you must check. Do ask your prospective hosting provider about

1.) Ask about Hidden Fees : Often many hosting providers, charge a special fees which you wouldn’t have known till either you get the email from them or your credit card gets automatically debited. Ensure that your web hosting provider is clean in terms of Hidden fees. Ask you website hosting provider if there is any fees which is charged at a later time, the answer to this question will help you get your answer.

2.) Check if you will get cPanel access: cPanel is a unix based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site. cPanel utilizes a 3 tier structure that provides functionality for administrators, resellers, and end-user website owners to control the various aspects of website and server administration through a standard web browser.

I hope the above questions will help you in getting yourself a reliable webhosting plan with your web hosting provider. Just in case, if share web hosting is not your cup of tea, you can even go for dedicated or VPS hosting which allows you to get root access to the server and then install whatever software you need.

If you are planning to get your Wordpress blog setup, you can get it for free by going through the offer from Technofriends which helps you get your Wordpress blog setup for FREE. Read more about it here.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981

Do stay tuned to Technofriends for more, one of the best ways of doing so is by subscribing to our feeds. You can subscribe to Technofriends feed by clicking here.

Related posts:

1. Looking out for a Web Hosting Service? Try out JustHost
2. Microsoft Offering Free Domain Name and Hosting for One Year. But is it worth it?
3. [Free Hosting] 3 Free Web Hosting Services (and they are ads free too)
4. [Offer] Get Your Wordpress Blog Setup and Configured for FREE