What is the relationship between web hosting and a website which performs well?

Choosing your web hosting plan can make or break your online business. It requires some level of technical knowledge and for most people, is too important a decision to be made on their own. To be truly successful online, you should begin your search with a web designer and establish a relationship with that person. They will then guide you in finding the best web hosting service to fit your needs.

How well your website performs is strongly dependant upon your web hosting plan. The hosting plan you choose directly effects the experience your prospective customers will have on your site. When shopping for business web hosting, people often make the mistake of looking for the cheapest plan they can find. The problem with this approach is that you are not just paying for hosting, you are paying for bandwidth, which directly effects how fast your web page will load. If your page loads too slowly your prospective customer will never see your site, but bandwidth is not the only factor that effects page load time. Other factors include:

The number of people connecting to your site at the same time.
The type of content you have on your site (the number of images, flash, video, audio, CMS).
How well your website is coded.
Back up and restore capabilities
Pre-loaded open source software
Security features

Of the six factors listed above, #3 is the primary offender for page load delays. Poorly coded websites are most often the result of machine-generated code, from do-it-yourself website builder applications.

Choosing a Web Designer first – Knowledge and Relationship

There are many choices for web hosting companies and many different types of web hosting services. Knowing what web hosting you will need for your website before it even exists is difficult, if not impossible. That is why you will need to begin with an experienced web designer. That person will be able to build a custom website for you and will know what type of hosting will be necessary to accommodate your site. When you hire a web designer, he or she will begin with gathering requirements from you in which you will discuss all the features and content you would like to have on your site. Your designer will then choose a web hosting service that can handle all the requirements of the site that they are going to build for you.

Another reason to begin with choosing a website designer or developer first, is that they will design your site based on the idea that they will provide the hosting and that there will be an ongoing relationship. Business web hosting often includes the hosting as well as some type of website support contract so that you will have someone you can go back to on a consistent basis. You will get personal one-on-one attention and ongoing support from someone you have a history with, and who thoroughly knows your website and your business model.

Choosing Web Hosting First – A Space in Need of a Site

If you begin with choosing your hosting plan first, then look for a designer, you set yourself up for several problems. First of all most web designers will not take a job building a website that could potentially be more than the hosting plan can handle. Secondly, many hosting services have different shareware applications that come with the hosting. You could have trouble finding a developer who is familiar with the shareware that comes with your hosting plan.

Another problem with choosing the hosting plan first is that a hosting company is concerned only with selling the hosting and nothing more. If you encounter any problems outside of hosting, the hosting company will not be able to help you. You will be essentially orphaning yourself before the project has even begun. Most web designers and developers offer their clients web hosting as well as maintenance contracts, but if you choose the hosting company first, then the person who builds the site for you does not have an ongoing relationship with you. Since there is no contract tying you to them, they have no vested interest is making your website successful.

Choosing a web hosting service for your website can be a complicated but very important decision. You will have the greatest chance for success with your website, if you begin by choosing a web designer or developer first and then have a hosting and maintenance contract with that person. That will ensure that your hosting plan will be appropriate for your website and that you will always have a website professional available when you need them.

About the Author
Kevin Kielty writes for Internet Marketing Advantage in Raleigh, NC. Web hosting and web development are his areas of expertise. Internet Marketing Advantage specializes in bringing together web development and web hosting Raleigh, NC.

The web hosting industry has become increasingly competitive and there are a myriad of companies out there battling for your business, but some won’t have you or your business interests in mind. Cheap web site hosting doesn’t mean the best hosting, and neither does signing up with the most expensive companies that “guarantee” you the best service. It is a confusing world of solutions with a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Competition is a great thing, but the frenzied levels of promotion have also forced a number of hosts to use questionable marketing tactics and a heavy load of activity with restricting fine print in their contracts. Many webhosting companies don’t make profits by establishing a solid customer base, but rather by having a high turnover. The more customers they have signing up and then dropping off… the more dollars they make.  Of course, not all hosting services take this attitude and there are some solid companies that respect their clients.

1. Can I upgrade my plan at any time?
(A good hosting service will allow you to change your plan at any time)

2. What are your excess bandwidth charges?
(Although unlikely you will get excess traffic during the start-up phase, it is important to know how much you will be charged if you use over and above your quota of data transfer. Data transfer or “bandwidth” refers to the amount of data going in and out of your site e.g. (every time someone visits your website they are downloading data).

3. How often will my site be backed up?
(In a number of cases, you’ll find that the cheaper the price, the less likely your site will be backed up on a regular basis)

4. Do you offer secure server and ecommerce capabilities (shopping carts etc.) included or as an upgrade?
(You may not want this in the beginning but it is quite handy to have)

5. Do you offer an affiliate program or referrer bonuses?
(If you settle with a host and you are happy with the service, no doubt you’ll tell others. Why not profit from that as it can subsidize the running of your site or even turn into a good earner for you!)

6. Is your free tech support available 7 days a week?
(A VERY important point – many offer this but sometimes all you’ll get is a recorder or autoresponder message on the weekends. Telephone support is not a necessity for everyone but very nice. A good email or online ticket based support system can often work efficiently too as it provides a record for both parties.

7. Why should I choose you over other hosts offering the same sorts of features and pricing?
These questions and points are just to get you started in the reviews process and will allow you to weed out many of the fly-by-nighters. It may seem like a lot to ask, but an experienced staffer should be able to complete the questions very quickly. Always be polite when posing questions as the answers will be provided by a human being with feelings as well. By asking questions in a courteous manner, you will get the relationship off to a good start.

When composing the email, skip a couple of lines between each question to encourage the person responding to put their remarks under the relevant question. This will give you a good record to refer back to in the future. Lastly, it is definitely a good idea to respond to each response with a brief thank you note.

About the Author
Author has teamed up with ThinkHost, to provide you with a Special Offer. ThinkHost, is a provider earth-friendly, affordable, web hosting starting at $9.95/month. Use this coupon code on their package sign-up form: ThinkHost20,to receive $20 off any of their web hosting packages.
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When you are looking for a professional web hosting service, you want to look for certain features and services. Do not worry about knowing exactly what all the technical terms mean, just look for them! You should always shop around, phone the hosting companies and ask questions as part of your qualification process.

1. Reliability and Speed
Look for a hosting service that owns their own equipment, with high-speed connections to multiple Internet backbones, backup power generators and backup systems in place. The hosting company will generally brag about their high-speed connections and will usually guarantee 99% or better availability of your web site.

Many hosting services are operated by resellers. This can be a good thing if they bring better and more knowledgeable support to their resold services. Unfortunately, many resellers do not really have the resources or knowledge to adequately support you.

Years in business are something you should take a look at. Three years or more is a pretty good yardstick of reliability.

If they offer a trial period, take advantage of it and actually try the service out.

2. Operating Systems
Do they use a standard operating system configuration that they keep updated on a routine basis? If they do not, you may have trouble getting newer scripts to work. On Linux servers, look for Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, SuSE, Slackware and CentOS. On Windows servers, look for recent Windows operating systems with all patches kept current. If they do not publish this information, email or phone them to find out.

3. Language and Database Support
They should support the key programming languages and databases that are used by newer scripts and should keep these up to date as well. On Linux you should look for PHP and Perl at the least. For a database, look for MySQL. You should be allowed at least one database. You should have your own CGI Bin. On Windows systems, look for MS Access at the least and MS SQL Server for power and speed. If you want to use the Microsoft NET framework, your hosting will need to support that.

4. Support
Check their support. The minimum support is email support. The better hosting services provide 24/7 email, ticket system and live telephone support. Actually try their support and see if they respond quickly enough for your needs and if their support staff is helpful and knowledgeable.

5. FTP Access
Many inexpensive hosting services do not provide FTP access. You will need FTP access if you plan to add much material to your website or if you need to install scripts on your website. Also check that you can change permissions on your files via FTP or through SSH.

6. Email
How many email accounts do they provide? Are they POP email accounts? Can you add forwarders and email aliases? Look for web mail access as well. The better the service, the more options they will provide for email.

7. User Control Panel
Look for a comprehensive user control panel that allows you to manage your hosting account. The better control panels also provide automatic script installers like Fantastico or Elefante. Cpanel, Ensim and HSphere and Plesk are all well known and well supported. There are many more control panels than these and they are good too, but you should probably check them more thoroughly and take a look at their demo system if they have one.

8. Domain Names
You should be able to host at least one domain name. The better hosting companies will generally allow you five or more domain names. There should be no restrictions on sub-domains.

9. Statistics
Does your hosting service include a statistics program so you can monitor your website traffic?

10. Disk Space
The absolute minimum is 50 MB, but you should be paying very low prices for that little disk space.

11. Bandwidth
The main difference between the basic and expensive plans of any hosting service is the amount of bandwidth allowed per month.

To figure how much bandwidth you need, multiply your visits per day X page views per visit X average page size X 30 days.

Example: 100 visits per day, 5 page views per visit, with a page size of 45 kb: 100 X 5 X 45 KB X 30 = 675,000 KB = 675 MB.

Try to get as much bandwidth for your dollar as possible, but beware of web hosting services that offer unlimited bandwidth. Read the fine print and their terms of use carefully. There is usually some kind of restriction that you will need to be aware of.

Make sure you read up on how they charge you if you exceed your monthly bandwidth and what upgrades they have available.

12. eCommerce
If you plan to run a shopping cart or secure payments or data transfers on your website, you need to make sure that the hosting service supports SSL.

Some Closing Thoughts:
Typical prices for professional level hosting range between $6.99 and $45.00 per month for a reasonable level of disk space and bandwidth on shared hosting. Below that you are asking for trouble because they probably do not make enough money to adequately support their equipment, systems or you.

Windows servers are usually more expensive than Linux servers because the Windows operating systems are not open source. The hosting company has to pay for using them.

When you are comparing plans, keep in mind that you are getting a better deal at $25 per month for eight domain names than $10 per month for one.

When you are looking for hosting don’t be afraid to ask questions. Good hosting services have no problem directing you to helpful information or answering your questions in a way that you can understand.

Keyword Articles: http://www.keywordarticles.org
Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of besuccessfulnews.com, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

Need some answers to questions you are having with setting up your site? The questions most people have are, which web hosting company should I sign up for? How much bandwidth and disk space do I want for my website? And how much money do I need to spend? Well, there are literally thousands of similar web hosting companies all wrestling over your business. The great thing for you is that the cost is dropping in this industry, because of all the competitors, and many are becoming dramatically more respectable companies because of how meaningful their reviews are to their sales.

In all likelihood you are looking into how to pick the right web hosting service, you aren’t starting the next Yahoo, and are working with a smaller or medium sized website. So this is where we will begin. If you are going with a small site you are pretty safe going with a cheaper web hosting service. You don’t need a lot of disk space or bandwidth for a site like this. And most companies will let you upgrade easily when you want more.

Most of you are likely looking into web hosting for a small or medium sized business. For companies it is vital to predict your future needs. Growth is what all businesses want to achieve, so make sure you don’t limit yourself. More traffic means more bandwidth is required. More products to sell means you will require extra disk space. 100 MB of disk space is a safe place to begin, but make sure the host lets you upgrade. Remember to think about any possible expansion your business will experience. I love to have extra disk space to use for backing up files on my computer, disk space comes very cheap now. Bandwidth is determined by the amount of traffic your website will get each month. 1 GB of bandwidth is a fairly safe place to start, but again remember to make sure you can upgrade.

Other factors you should consider are email accounts, spam protection, site builders, support, site stats, additional domains, auto responders, uptime to mention a few. Many businesses will buy some of their traffic, so the uptime of your web host is nothing to joke about. If your website isn’t up then you are paying for nothing and that isn’t fun. It is unlikely you will find a company that guarantees 100% uptime, because every company needs to fix things from time to time, but look for one with 99.9 or 99.99%. Good technical support is vital for first time website owners. And if there is a problem you don’t want to have to wait a week to get it fixed. Email accounts are vital so you look more professional when writing an email. Using a gmail account when writing a business email doesn’t look to great. You should look for 20+ email accounts which is fairly easy to find now. A lot of companies offer unlimited accounts.

Site builders are a great addition if you don’t know how to make your own page, or if you are just lazy. The ability to host more than 1 domain is an exceptional bonus so you don’t have to set up a new hosting account if you want to add a domain. I would look for a web host that offers unlimited domains. Also look for a host that has CGI and MYSQL for databases. CGI access will allow you to run scripts from your website to interact with your visitors.

If you are here because you are developing a very large website then you are going to have to look for hosts that offer more bandwidth and more disk space. Dedicated hosting would be the way to go if you don’t mind spending more money. I will go into more depth about large sites in another article, mainly because 99% of people at that stage will not need help picking a host.

Alright, now you know what you want, where are the companies that offer this? http://www.web-hosting-pros.com supplies you with an updated Top 10 list of web hosts. Here you can compare disk space, uptime, features, bandwidth and price. You may notice that many of the hosts offer tons of disk space and bandwidth, having too much is never a bad thing if the price is still right. Right now Web Hosting Pros’ featured web hosting company is offering an incredible deal that anybody shopping for web hosting should definitely take advantage of.

About the Author
Stanley Goodspeed has been constructing websites used for affiliate marketing for many years. He helps his friends at http://www.web-hosting-pros.com keep a fresh list of the best web hosting companies available.
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A web host is a company that provides you with server space to host and control your website along with a whole lot of services such as software scripts, shopping carts, and other plug-ins.

Well, if you want to be on the Internet, you need a web host but not just any webhost – you need a quality and reliable web host to ensure that your website performs well. Thus, when you choose a web host you need to be careful; here are the top 5 things you must look for in any web host:

Reputation and experience
This should be your primary concern because if a web host does not have a reputation and experience to back him, then chances are that your website will be used as a test guinea pig. Plus, the web host must have a record that shows at least 95-97% server uptime, financial stability, and good testimonials from its existing customers.

Infrastructure & scalability
Your web host must be equipped with the latest infrastructure and he should be willing and able to scale up this infrastructure, given the rapid technological obsolescence that is happening around us. And that’s not all, your webhost to keep pace with your business too – if your website needs sophisticated web architecture, then you must look for a solid, technosavvy host.

Support
Does you web host have a 24/7/366 online and offline customer support system? If he doesn’t, don’t even consider him because if one fine day your site or ftp fails and you don’t find anyone to talk to, you will end up losing business as well as reputation.

Bandwidth
Choose a webhost who is known to provide the latest, super express deluxe network lines that make browsing and downloading a pleasure for all website visitors. Nowadays, audio and video are getting into the Internet like no one’s business and your web host must have enough redundant bandwidth to face heavy usage, if and when it occurs.

Software
Lastly, look at the scripts and software your host is supporting you with. Nowadays, even ordinary web hosts provide tools such as an easy-to-use control panel, shopping cart, blog integration, visitor tracking, and much more.

Those were the top 5 things you must look for before booking space with a web host. Remember, space and costs do not figure in the top 5 because most hosting plans are very affordable and give you ample space, and so they are not such a top consideration anymore.

So go ahead and hunt for the right host and just remember one thing: do not compromise on quality even if the costs are a little higher. Happy hunting then.

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