Web Hosting: Good web host for your website.
Before you choose a reliable hosting for your website or online business, first you should make a list of your specific web hosting needs. A Reliable Web host should be a web host that meets your specific needs.
Speed and Reliability
You’ll want to make sure that your web site is accessible. Ask your web host whether he quarantees a certain percentage of uptime. Many web hosts will guarantee your web site to be available 99.5% of the time. Ask about the hardware used, the connection, and what safequards are in place to minimize downtimes. You want a server that is reliable and fast. There is a free tool available that allows you to evaluate this before making a decision. Net Mechanic will measure the speed of access for all facets of access (network speed, DNS lookup, connect time, download time, and absence of timeouts). The download time statistic is the most important single item to compare. Collect your list of candidate hosting services and run side-by-side tests of all the candidates. Sample during peak and non-peak times for optimal comparison.
Bandwidth
Some services give you a small limit on the amount of material that can be downloaded from your site each month and charge you large amounts when that limit is exceeded. Some offer huge traffic allowances for the same price. Always stay away from web hosts that say that they offer Unlimited Bandwidth Because there is no such thing called unlimited bandwidth.
Disk Storage Space and Backups
Search for a web host that offers sites of 200 MB or more. shared hosting providers will give you anything from 10MB of disk space up to several hundred GB. A good web host will backup your web directory daily. This is pretty standard throughout the industry. If a web host doesn’t provide this service, don’t even consider using them. Some web hosts will even do redundant backups to insure your web site is not lost.
Multiple Domain Names
If you have more than one domain name, You can host them using one web hosting account. Some web hosting companies may charge you extra cash for this kind of service. Others will not charge you. You only need this, if you have more than one domain name.
Email Services
Make sure the Web hosting company allows you to set up mail forwarding, the ability to forward you email somewhere else. I have several web sites and have all my email forwarded to my ISP service so I can read it all at once. It would take me a long time to downloard all my mail from each of my accounts. It’s a great time-saver.As for autoresponder,its a program that automatically sends your pre-written message to people who email you. This is a very useful tool in marketing your business as people are sent information immediately and without you doing a thing.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Services
It allows you to transfer files to and from your Web site quickly and easily. This service should be provided. Only some free web hosting services don’t offer FTP. I would be really be worried if a web hosting service doesn’t offer this basic service. Anonymous FTP Accounts, with this function allows you to set up an FTP site that people can access to download files. If you are distributing software or giving away free ebooks, this is a great tool. You can also have files transfered directly from your Web site, but it’s sometimes handy to have an FTP site as well. FTP sites can resume interrupted downloads. If someone is transfering a file, and their ISP or phone company cuts them off half way through, they can come back and continue the transfer where they left of. This works great for large downloads.
A Secure Server / SSL
This is a must if you plan to take orders online or transfer sensitive information. The secure server allows redit-card information typed into a form to be encrypted before being sent from the user’s Web browser to the server. You may have to pay an additional fee to use the secure server. You don’t have to have a secure server to take orders online, but you may lose a lot of orders if you don’t provide this for your customers.
CGI Scripts
You can use CGI to take information from a form and send it to your email account and some shopping cart programs use it as well. A good Web hosting service will have a library of CGI scripts you can use. Find out if you can add your own CGI scripts. Don’t get a service that won’t allow you to do this. You may regret it in the future even if you don’t use them now.
Flexibility
The ideal web hosting service will have lots of options and upgrades to accomodate future growth of your web site. You may need to add ecommerce to your web site (shopping cart, storefront, merchant account), or more web space, a forum, or you might just need to have your own dedicated server. A good web hosting company will have all these resources available to you if you need them.
Support Service and A Guarantee
With so many web hosting services out there, make sure you choose one that offers a guarantee. Services that offer a moneyback guarantee are confident that you’ll be satisfied with their service. Look for at least a basic 30 day money back guarantee. Once you have checked out the reliability of the servers and hardware, and located a host that provides the features you want, the final task is to evaluate the quality of their support services. Most hosts now promise 24/7 support as a standard feature but, do they really live up to that promise? It will be a good idea to find out before committing to them.
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