Web Hosting - Identify Your Need

When you are selecting a web host company for you web site, the first thing you must remember is that you should carefully choose the best host for the lifetime of your site. Migrating your site from one host to another while your web site is up and running can be a painful process as you will have to deal with server's programming script compatibility issues, nameserver update propagation, etc. which may degrade your site's search engine ranking.

Therefore eventhough you will not need some webhosting features in the first place, if you are going to implement, let's say, a lot of MySQL databases, then definetely you must make sure that such database capacity is supported by your web host. The following checklist may help you to identify you web hosting need:

Web host platform - Windows or Linux

From the performance basis, it is not easy to determine which platform is the best as they are actually equally reliable. Perhaps the easier ground for choosing which platform will be more on your familiarity and personal preferences to either one of the operating system and perhaps more on your "perception" towards their reliability. Price wise normally Windows hosting is a little more expensive than Linux as Windows is only available on commercial basis while Linux is an open source distribution.

Web space and Bandwidth

You should have figured out in advance how much data your website will generate, and also the amount of bandwidth you will need. The disk space is the amount of storage assigned to your account by the web hosting provider. Bandwidth is the amount of traffic that the provider allows to be transferred to and from the website. Sites that include a lot of graphics would require more hard drive storage than a predominantly text based site. The same would be the case when dealing with bandwidth. If your website is dynamic or uses databases, make sure to check if the webhost has separate limitations on the size of databases. Also check how much your web host charges for extra hard drive space and bandwidth. If you envision that your site will continually grow, then allow some headroom in terms of storage and bandwidth.

Type of Web Host - Shared, Virtual Private Server or Dedicated Server

With shared hosting (also called virtual hosting) you will get price advantage (the most affordable hosting). However on the other hand as you share server resources (hardisk, programs and applications, bandwidth, etc.) with many other web sites, you will not get the root access of the server and there is a risk of getting affected by other site's operation. Please read details here.

With Virtual Private Server or VPS hosting you will have virtually a single web server for your web site. Other websites hosted by your web host, although also reside in the same server but they are "isolated" from your site and therefore each site will not affect others. So you'll have better server stability, and a distinct advantage over shared hosting, you will get the root access so can have more freedom to configure your web server to meet your needs. This advantage obviously comes with higher hosting cost. Details....

With dedicated server, as the name implies, you have the whole machine and the bandwith for you web site. Therefore aside from having freedom to root access operation, you will also have the whole CPU time, memory, hardisk etc. for you only. More details....

Data bases

Think of many databases (e.g. customer database, product database, etc.) you will keep in the long run and check if if the web hosting plan you consider will support your requirement. Some web hosts, particularly the shared web hosts, only allow limited number of database usage.

Scripting Modules - PHP, ASP, CGI, etc.

Consult with your web designer whether they will use server's side scripts PHP (Hypertext Pre-Processor), or ASP (Active Server Pages), or CGI (Common Gateway Interface) etc and make sure your web host support this. In using PHP and MySQL database, check the version the web host is using as sometimes different version may lead to script incompatibility and it will simply won't work the way you want it.

Pre-installed Applications

Generally web hosts come with popular web aplications like Bulletin Boards (Discussion Forum), e-Commerce and Shopping Cart application, Blogs, CMS, Wiki site creation etc. Those are very useful tools and can help you to build that types of site very easily and save you a lot of time. Some hosts also installed Fantastico, an application designed (by Netenberg.com) to make installing popular scripts easy just by doing a few clicks. Check the list of the pre-installed applications in the detailed section of the web hosting plans.

Single Domain or Multiple Domains ?

Some web host allows you to park a domain over your main domain (parked domain is putting another domain, for instance yourdomain.org, and points to your main domain e.g. yourdomain.com) so visitors to yourdomain.org will be automatically brought to yourdomain.com's website.

Other web hosts allows you to add domains to your hosting account. This addon domains (and its web pages) will act like a stand alone domain / web site so that you can host more than single website on the same account although in actuality the additional web sites reside on a subdomain of your main domain.

Therefore you should think whether you will add more domains and web sites or just subdomains will be all you need in the future.

Server's Uptime & Reliability

Check the system stability and the guaranteed up time. A good web host should be able to offer nearly 100% up time guarantee. You may want to crosscheck their stated realiability with web hosting discussion forums widely available on the Internet.

Web Host Reputation & Technical Support

Your web host reputation and the availibility of the technical support around the clock are very important especially in view of the global operational basis where geographical distance of the server and the clients are widely distributed accross the continents. Web sites should be accessible 24 hours a day and you may need technical hands to cope with the possible problems from time to time. Therefore check with the user testimonials as well as with users' comments in many discussion forums.