Monday, September 3, 2007

How to Stumble on An Excellent Web Host

These days, every web host you see claims to be the ultimate web host online.

But how do you HONESTLY know `which is the best web host

Firstly you need to break it down to what you need, which is either 3 types of web hosting: Shared, VPS, or Dedicated web hosting.

But you are most likely after shared hosting, which is entry and medium level hosting for small to medium sites. VPS Hosting and Dedicated Hosting are both more pricey but can handle the resource demands on more huge web site.

The Best Web Host�s Control Panel:

This is the interface that will let you tweak your site settings and even view your visitor statistics, such as which web site they came from, which country they are in and some other details. Without this, everything becomes 15 times more difficult. Creating an email account to use will suddenly take an hour of research instead of 20 easy seconds and will suddenly involve almost programmer level skills without this smart interface. Your Control Panel makes doing any of this, easy for absolutely anyone. Only go with hosts offering �cPanel� (or possibly even, �DirectAdmin�). If they don�t offer these, move on.

The Best Web Host�s Support:

Every person wants top web hosting support that will answer their questions fast. But if you are paying $2 per MONTH, you can�t expect support that�s going to be that exceptional. But some support should be available. Check if they have a phone number to call (most won�t � which isn�t necessary a bad thing), but if they have a �Live Support� chat button, that�s a Big plus, and a very useful thing to have present to you in case you need to contact them fast.

The Best Web Host�s Reliability and Uptime

If they are clearly not offering a 99.9% Uptime guarantee, move on. Downtime is stressing and costly for anyone advertising their web sites. Viewers that come to your site when it�s down, will be very turned off to coming back. The better way to know of their reliability is to read reviews and other people�s views. However a fast way to test speed (but not quite dependable) is to see how fast the host�s own web page loads up for you, which can give you an clue of what kind of speed your site will be load with.

The Best Web Host�s Free Scripts

If the web hosting company you want to run with is running cPanel, they will very often provide you with over 50+ free easily installable scripts through an addon known as �Fantastico�. This is quite useful, as it contains entire e-commerce shopping carts, blogging software, forum scripts and heaps of extras, all installable with one mouse click. Not absolutely required, but certainly comes in handy.

The Best Web Host�s Per Month Pricing

Now if you are like a good number of people. You want good value, and don�t want to use up your bank. Web Hosting has become a �commodity� item with plenty of competition. You can even find web hosts offering hosting for a measly $2 a month. However, you can expect downtime and slowness and emotional distress with these cheaper-than-a-soft-drink web hosts. End result, not worth the hassle of saving a couple of bucks with these cheaper than lollies Internet web hosts. Go for something around the $8-12 mark. Yes that�s over 4 times the fee of our $2 competition. But this means the web host can actually afford to give you top support and put your account on a server that will always be up, and actually run with speed.

In truth, you will really pay far more with a super-cheap web host because of downtime, unusual slowness, lost visitors and lost revenue, poor support, and your own frustration when you check and see your website is down and your host is out of reach to help � or don�t offer any. Web hosting is really something that will bite you in the behind if you go with the spend-nothing is best mentality and that is the truth.


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